DokuWiki

(with a slight focus on RegioWikis)

by Andreas Gohr
CosmoCode GmbH
http://www.cosmocode.de · gohr [at] cosmocode [dot] de

1. About me
2. What are typical RegioWiki requirements?
3. What is DokuWiki and can it fulfill these requirements?
4. What plugins might be especially useful for RegioWikis?
5. Your questions answered.

• Andreas Gohr gohr [at] cosmocode [dot] de
• DokuWiki creator and lead developer
• CosmoCode GmbH
  • www.cosmocode.de
  • IT Service Provider based in Berlin
  • Focused on CMS, Wikis and Custom Solutions
  • Consulting and Support for Wikis (esp. DokuWiki)
  • Makers of www.wikimatrix.org Wiki comparison portal

(I'm just guessing these, correct me if I'm wrong)

• Small target group
  • usually just a few thousand people
• Even smaller group of people involved as editors
• Editors might not be technically versatile
• Users might not be comfortable with English speaking software
• Low to no funding

• PHP based
• Free and Open Source (GPL Version 2)
• Created in 2004
• Originally focused on documentation (hence the name)
• Quite popular today (in the top 5 league)

• no external requirements
• does not need a database
• runs everywhere where PHP runs
  • a $5 hoster usually works just fine
  • there are even free PHP hosters nowadays
  • for the French: free.fr sucks

• All page data is saved in .txt files
  • Filesystems optimize read/write by memory caching → fast!
  • Easy Backup → just copy or zip the folder
  • Easy Migration → copy to new server, set file permissions, done.
  • Accessible → data can be read and written outside the wiki (for the pros: scripting!)
• Final page HTML is stored in cache files
• Word based fulltext index for fast search even in large wikis

• Easy, intuitive syntax that is readable!
• Extensive formatting toolbar for most common syntax
• Keyboard shortcuts
• We're permanently improving
  • Intelligent context sensitive editor
  • Keep list indentions
  • List indentions with a single key
  • Relative headline level insertions
  • Link Wizard

• The whole interface is translatable
• Comes with translations for more than 40 languages
• UTF-8 everywhere and Support for Right-to-Left languages
• Optional page name transliteration for Russian, Korean, Japanese, …
• Your language missing? → http://translate.dokuwiki.org

• Namespaces allow hierarchical content organization
• Group pages (and media files) to the same topic in their own namespace
• Examples:
  • a namespace for each district in your city
  • namespaces for different topics (eg. governance, culture, sports, sightseeing)
• Namespaces can be used with access restriction

• DokuWiki supports users and groups
  • can use different auth backends
  • Example: reuse the logins from your forum
• Access Control Lists (ACL)
  • groups and users
  • pages and namespaces
  • read, write, create, upload, delete

• Upload images, documents to a central repository
• Use media files in any page
• Organize in namespaces
• Insert with a single click
• Image resizing support

• DokuWiki can be styled through templates
• Similar to how Wordpress themes work
• http://www.dokuwiki.org/template has a lot of ready made ones
• WikiPedia look and feel is possible

• DokuWiki itself is relatively basic
• Focuses on the core wiki functionality
• Nearly everything beyond can be done through plugins
• More than 500 plugins available at http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugins
• Plugins can be dowloaded and installed with built in plugin manager
• A few that might be interesting for RegioWikis:

• Display all images uploaded to a namespace as a nice gallery
• Creates thumbnails, reads image titles and dates from EXIF
• Can use Lightbox JavaScript
• Can also load images from a Media RSS feed (eg. from Flickr)
• http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:gallery

• Adds simple syntax to embed videos from popular video sharing sites
• About 30 sites supported, including Youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, …
• New sites can easily be added through a config file
• http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:vshare

• Embed a Google map in any page
• Lets you set points of interest in the syntax
• http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:googlemaps

• Similar to the Google Maps plugin
• Uses the free and open service Open Street Maps
• http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:osm

• Display data from an uploaded CSV file (eg. exported from Excel)
• Useful for publishing official numbers
• http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:csv

• Add boxes with various styles to your wiki
  • information, hint, warning
• Create multiple columns
• Or add your own styles
• http://www.dokuwiki.org/wrap

• Pekela (Netherlands) http://www.wikipekela.nl
• Beauvais (France) http://urbibus.org/beauvais/
• Eckelsdorf (Germany) http://www.eckelsheim.de/
• Sechtem (Germany) http://www.sechtem-wiki.de
• Wunstorf (Germany) http://www.wiki-wunstorf.de/
• Speichersdorf (Germany) http://www.projekt297.de.vu/
• Planebruch (Germany) http://planebruch.de/
• Your town soon?

• Main site: http://www.dokuwiki.org
  • many translations already
• Forums: http://forum.dokuwiki.org
  • sub forums for German, French, Chinese and Arabic speaking users
• IRC: #dokuwiki at freenode.net
• Ask me for a Leaflet in English or German

Thank you very much

• Stickers and leaflets here