ikiwiki 1.0 review

ikiwiki project converts a directory full of wiki pages into HTML pages suitable for publishing on a Web site

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Joey Hess

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ikiwiki project converts a directory full of wiki pages into HTML pages suitable for publishing on a Web site. Unlike many wikis, it does not have its own means of storing page history or its own markup language.

Instead, it uses subversion and markdown. It implements all of the other standard features of a wiki, including Web-based page editing, user registration and logins, a recent changes page, BackLinks, search, Discussion pages, smart merging and conflict resolution, page locking, and commit emails. It also supports generating RSS feeds and blogging.

Here are some key features of "ikiwiki":
Subversion
Rather than implement its own system for storing page histories etc, ikiwiki simply uses subversion. (Supporting other revision control systems is also possible, ikiwiki only needs $FOO add, $FOO commit, and $FOO log).
Instead of editing pages in a stupid web form, you can use vim and commit changes via svn. Or work disconnected using svk and push your changes out when you come online.
ikiwiki can be run from a post-commit hook to update your wiki immediately whenever you commit.
Note that ikiwiki does not require subversion to function. If you want to run a simple wiki without page history, it can do that too.
MarkDown
ikiwiki supports pages using MarkDown as their markup language. Any page with a filename ending in ".mdwn" is converted from markdown to html by ikiwiki. Markdown understands text formatted as it would be in an email, and is quite smart about converting it to html. The only additional markup provided by ikiwiki aside from regular markdown is the WikiLink and PreprocessorDirective
support for other file types
ikiwiki also supports files of any other type, including raw html, text, images, etc. These are not converted to wiki pages, they are just copied unchanged by ikiwiki as it builds your wiki. So you can check in an image, program, or other special file and link to it from your wiki pages.
SubPages
Arbitrarily deep hierarchies of pages with fairly simple and useful LinkingRules
blogs
You can turn any page in the wiki into a blog. Pages with names matching a specified GlobList will be displayed as a weblog within the blog page. And an RSS feed can be generated to follow the blog.
Ikiwikit's own TODO and news pages are good examples of some of the flexible ways that this can be used.
Fast compiler
ikiwiki is fast and smart about updating a wiki, it only builds pages that have changed (and tracks things like creation of new pages and links that can indirectly cause a page to need a rebuild)
valid html and css
ikiwiki aims to produce valid XHTML 1.0. ikiwiki generates html using templates, and uses css, so you can change the look and layout of all pages in any way you would like.
?BackLinks
Automatically included on pages. Rather faster than eg MoinMoin and always there to help with navigation.
PageHistory
Well, sorta. Rather than implementing YA history browser, it can link to ?ViewCVS or the link to browse the history of a wiki page.
RecentChanges, editing pages in a web browser
Nearly the definition of a wiki, although perhaps ikiwiki challenges how much of that web gunk a wiki really needs. These features are optional and can be enabled by enabling CGI.
User registration
Can optionally be configured to allow only registered users to post pages; online user registration form, etc.
Discussion pages
Thanks to subpages, every page can easily and automatically have a /Discussion subpage. By default, these links are included in the templates for each page.
Smart merging and conflict resolution in your web browser
Since it uses subversion, ikiwiki takes advantage of its smart merging to avoid any conflicts when two people edit different parts of the same page at the same time. No annoying warnings about other editors, or locking, etc, instead the other person's changes will be automatically merged with yours when you commit.
In the rare cases where automatic merging fails due to the same part of a page being concurrently edited, regular subversion commit markers are shown in the file to resolve the conflict, so if you're already familiar with that there's no new commit marker syntax to learn.
For all the gory details of how ikiwiki handles this behind the scenes, see commit-internals.
page locking
Wiki admins can lock pages so that only other admins can edit them.
Full text search
ikiwiki can use the HyperEstraier search engine to add powerful full text search capabilities to your wiki.
Commit mails
ikiwiki can be configured to send you commit mails with diffs of changes to selected pages.
Plugins
A plugin system allows extending ikiwiki in arbitrary ways.