1 An overview of some of ikiwiki's features:
6 Rather than implement its own system for storing page histories etc,
7 ikiwiki uses a real Revision Control System. This isn't (just) because we're
8 lazy, it's because a real RCS is a good thing to have, and there are
9 advantages to using one that are not possible with a standard wiki.
11 Instead of editing pages in a stupid web form, you can use vim and commit
12 changes via [[Subversion]]. Or work disconnected using svk and push your
13 changes out when you come online. Or use [[git]], [[tla]], or [[mercurial]]
14 to work in a distributed fashion all the time. (It's also possible to
15 [[plugins/write]] a plugin to support other systems.)
17 ikiwiki can be run from a [[post-commit]] hook to update your wiki
18 immediately whenever you commit a change using the RCS.
20 Note that ikiwiki does not require a RCS to function. If you want to
21 run a simple wiki without page history, it can do that too.
25 ikiwiki is a wiki compiler; it builds a static website for your wiki, and
26 updates it as pages are edited. It is fast and smart about updating a wiki,
27 it only builds pages that have changed (and tracks things like creation of
28 new pages and links that can indirectly cause a page to need a rebuild)
30 ## Supports many markup languages
32 By default, pages in the wiki are written using the [[MarkDown]] format.
33 Any page with a filename ending in ".mdwn" is converted from markdown to html
34 by ikiwiki. Markdown understands text formatted as it would be in an email,
35 and is quite smart about converting it to html. The only additional markup
36 provided by ikiwiki on top of regular markdown is the [[WikiLink]] and
37 [[PreprocessorDirective]].
39 If you prefer to use some other markup language, ikiwiki allows others to
40 easily be added by [[plugins]]. For example it also supports traditional
41 [[plugins/WikiText]] formatted pages, pages written as pure
42 [[plugins/HTML]], or pages written in [[reStructuredText|plugins/rst]]
43 or [[Textile|plugins/textile]].
45 ikiwiki also supports files of any other type, including plain text,
46 images, etc. These are not converted to wiki pages, they are just copied
47 unchanged by ikiwiki as it builds your wiki. So you can check in an image,
48 program, or other special file and link to it from your wiki pages.
52 You can turn any page in the wiki into a [[blog]]. Pages matching a
53 specified [[PageSpec]] will be displayed as a weblog within the blog
54 page. And RSS or Atom feeds can be generated to follow the blog.
56 Ikiwiki's own [[TODO]], [[news]], and [[plugins]] pages are good examples
57 of some of the flexible ways that this can be used. There is also an
58 [[example_blog|examples/blog]] set up that you can copy into your own wiki.
60 Ikiwiki can also [[plugins/aggregate]] external blogs, feeding them into
61 the wiki. This can be used to create a Planet type site that aggregates
64 You can also mix blogging with podcasting by dropping audio files where
65 they will be picked up like blog posts. This will work for any files that
66 you would care to syndicate.
68 ## Valid html and [[css]]
70 ikiwiki aims to produce
71 [valid XHTML 1.0](http://validator.w3.org/check?url=referer). ikiwiki
72 generates html using [[templates|wikitemplates]], and uses [[css]], so you
73 can change the look and layout of all pages in any way you would like.
77 Plugins can be used to add additional features to ikiwiki. The interface
78 is quite flexible, allowing plugins to implement additional markup
79 languages, register [[PreProcessorDirective]]s, hook into [[CGI]] mode,
80 and more. Most of ikiwiki's features are actually provided by plugins.
81 Ikiwiki's backend RCS support is also pluggable, so support for new
82 revision control systems can be added to ikiwiki.
84 The standard language for ikiwiki plugins is perl, but ikiwiki also supports
85 [[plugins/write/external]] plugins: Standalone programs that can be written in
86 any language and communicate with ikiwiki using XML RPC.
90 After rather a lot of fiddling, we think that ikiwiki correctly and fully
91 supports utf8 everywhere.
95 The above are the core design goals and features of ikiwiki, but on that
96 foundation a lot of other important features are added. Here is an
97 incomplete list of some of them.
101 You can tag pages and use these tags in various ways. Tags will show
102 up in the ways you'd expect, like at the bottom of pages, in blogs, and
103 in RSS and Atom feeds.
105 ### [[SubPages|SubPage]]
107 Arbitrarily deep hierarchies of pages with fairly simple and useful
108 [[SubPage/LinkingRules]]
112 Automatically included on pages. Rather faster than eg MoinMoin and
113 always there to help with navigation.
115 ### Smart merging and conflict resolution in your web browser
117 Since it uses a real RCS, ikiwiki takes advantage of its smart merging to
118 avoid any conflicts when two people edit different parts of the same page
119 at the same time. No annoying warnings about other editors, or locking,
120 etc, instead the other person's changes will be automatically merged with
121 yours when you commit.
123 In the rare cases where automatic merging fails due to the same part of a
124 page being concurrently edited, regular commit conflict markers are
125 shown in the file to resolve the conflict, so if you're already familiar
126 with that there's no new commit marker syntax to learn.
128 ### [[RecentChanges]], editing pages in a web browser
130 Nearly the definition of a wiki, although perhaps ikiwiki challenges how
131 much of that web gunk a wiki really needs. These features are optional
132 and can be enabled by enabling [[CGI]].
134 ### User registration
136 Can optionally be configured to allow only registered users to edit
139 User registration can be done using a web form, or ikiwiki can be
140 configured to accept users authenticated with OpenID, or HTTP basic
141 authentication, or other methods implemented via plugins.
145 Thanks to subpages, every page can easily and automatically have a
146 /Discussion subpage. By default, these links are included in the
147 [[templates]] for each page.
151 Wiki admins can [[lock_pages|page_locking]] so that only other admins can
152 edit them. Or a wiki can be set up to allow anyone to edit Discussion
153 pages, but only registered users to edit other pages. These are just two
154 possibilities, since page edit controls can be changed via plugins.
158 Well, sorta. Rather than implementing YA history browser, it can link to
159 [[ViewVC]] or the like to browse the history of a wiki page.
163 ikiwiki can use the [[HyperEstraier]] search engine to add powerful
164 full text search capabilities to your wiki.
168 ikiwiki can be configured to send you commit mails with diffs of changes
173 Can be set up so that w3m can be used to browse a wiki and edit pages
174 without using a web server.
projects / ikiwiki / blob