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Features / Usability

Features / Usability


Tiki Wiki Feedback

posts: 15

I am not sure if this is the right categorie. If it's not, then please excuse my mistake.

The backstory:

We want to transfer our "front-page" information database into a tiki wiki.
Therefore I wrote a parser, which filters the relevant informations out of the .htm documents, writes them into a sql string and imports all of the pages in the tiki wiki database.

When the pages are imported (something around 6.000+ .html pages with about 500.000 lines of html code), I parse the .js menus and create structures according to our menus. These structures have partially with more than five sub folders.

Problems that I encountered:

It is not really clear which is the current release.

I often just found 12, or 13. To get the version 14 or an update of the 14th version i had to dig through the whole site.

There are around 20 options for the html mod

in tiki wiki. Partially without a proper description of what the setting will change.

not only html has this problem,

but many other settings too. Often stands in the "i"-hover description only the same text, as alredy is on the page.

Bootstrapmenu is only one level deep.

In the forum i was told, that this is how boostrap is handling things. I think that this i simply not right. And i can't find any prove that this is like bootstrap meant it to be.

The cookies, which are set for the navigations,

so that they stay open after i change the site, have a typo. Therefore the menus won't get opened. I already opened a thread in the forum, where the only response was "did you check the overflow settings in css?". That has nothing to do with css: overflow:hidden or something. When there is a "display: none" because of a wrong setted variable, i can hide my overflow like i want, it doesn't change anything.

when they are parsed to check if they are open. That lead to the problem, that if you have, like we have it, sub sub sub folders, they automatically close if you change the site. That is annoying. And I don't think that it is a good thing in a wiki environment.

PageSlugs change if you rename a site.

You have no control about that, i looked it up in the source code. I know, the definitiv of a page slug is, that you can call a site by the name. But if you have a tiki wiki to document your source code or something similiar, you will have links to other wiki pages, and if you have a typo, which you did not see in the beginning, you have to change... every... single... link, on every single page.

Many parts of tiki wiki seem to be started but not ended.

I often came to a point where i though "oh neat!" and after testing the feature all what was left was "ouh... nice try, but not completly thought trough", like the one level bootstrap menus. Which good wiki has such a flat hierachie?

another point is the search...

on https://doc.tiki.org/tiki-searchindex.php?filter~content=&sort_mode=score_nasc&filter~categories=&filter~language=" class="wiki wikinew text-danger tips">THIS site. You are not able to change the sorting column. If you press the drop down menu, the page just reloads. Sometimes, if you are fast enough, you are able to do it. One time I made it to change the sorting to "visitis", where the whole page crashed, because of:
The following error message was returned:

Unknown column 'visits' in 'order clause'

The result of this project


Right now we all have doubts if tiki wiki is the right platform to move our informations to. We simply look for a simple to edit wiki, with self buildable menus, a wysiwyg editor and different right groups.

Tiki wiki provides every feature we need, but really often we come to the point when we say "that is sooo strange".

Many parts, as already written, seem to be started but not ended, or not thought through.

Maybe we do something wrong, maybe it's our fault, but that is the reason why i am looking for the communication with you guys.

I Hope you don't take these things personal, I am just wondering if some one else came across these problems, and if some one could help us with one of these problems.

Greetings


posts: 4656 Japan

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback. I can respond to some of your points at least.

> It is not really clear which is the current release.

If you're referring to the current release in order to download it, there's a download link in the footer of every page, which links to a page that describes the download options. Is this what you mean, and if so maybe the link needs to be more prominent.

>There are around 20 options for the html mod

Sorry, but what do you mean by "html mod"? Do you mean in the wysiwyg editor? If so, as far as I know, Tiki is using the standard CKEditor, so that site (http://ckeditor.com) could be visited for more information.

> ... Often stands in the "i"-hover description only the same text, as alredy is on the page.

Yes, I agree this needs to be improved in some (or many?) cases (better tooltip information).

> Bootstrapmenu is only one level deep

This is in fact the intentional design of Bootstrap. Please see https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/424 where Bootstrap developer mdo says "Multiple levels of dropdowns are not coming to Bootstrap." Every stock Bootstrap site/menu has this limitation.

If you want more than one child level, use the "cssmenu" parameter rather than "Bootstrap", when assigning the menu. In Tiki, menus can be multi-level if this parameter (a legacy setting retained after Bootstrap was integrated) is used.

...

> Many parts of tiki wiki seem to be started but not ended.

Tiki has been evolving for over 10 years. Any parts that don't seem to be finished probably have been undergoing some reworking and maybe aren't as finished as they need to be and are intended to be. With the help of good specific feedback the problems can be found and fixed.

But it's also important for users to understand the source of the problem (for example, the default Bootstrap design, concerning two-level menus) and Tiki's configuration options (for example, using the cssmenu parameter to activate up to four-level menus). If you didn't find the documentation about this, then maybe the docs need to be improved.

I've been involved with Tiki for quite a few years and I also come across things that make me say "that is sooo strange", so I understand your feeling ;-) . But we do want people to have a good experience with Tiki so it's good to get feedback like yours.

-- Gary

 

 

posts: 15

Hey Gary,

first, thanks for the fast reply, it actually helped me.


Jear, the download links aren't very prominent or eyecatching. This might be an issue.I looked at different sites and saw different ways to come to the download section.


With the HTML Mode settings i mean, you have tons of settings which ar partly shattered through the menus. Like:

Html Mode

Full Html Mode

Wysiwyg is optional

Parse Wiki Syntax

HTML Cleaner

...

 

If you search in the admin Panel for "html" you will get a taste of what i mean. I don't know what is the right way to get all the settings which belong together, it is just something which bothered me.


The thing with the bootstrap menu is good to know! I searched for it and the only relevant source was a plugin which enables sub menus.

And yes, we use the normal (non Bootstrap, non Superfish) menus.


That the tiki is evolving and activly develop is a thing which i really like (who would not) and i can understand that some things, get a bit strange over the times. I mean, you don't develop and refactor each plugin every day. Who would do this?

And as i wrote, i don't want to offend anybody here, i really like tiki wiki, and even more if i compare the features of tiki wiki with other wiki softwares, so i hope that i might help with the feedback.


 

But i have a last question, regarding the urls. Is it possible to set independent urls for wiki pages? 

We have the use case, that we want to automatically link your "F1"-help function to the belonging wiki page. Therefore the url has to be "static". Is there a... feature? Plugin? Something else? So that we could reach a page always with the same url, without the fear of a changed title?

posts: 3665 United States

 

But i have a last question, regarding the urls. Is it possible to set independent urls for wiki pages?
We have the use case, that we want to automatically link your "F1"-help function to the belonging wiki page. Therefore the url has to be "static". Is there a... feature? Plugin? Something else? So that we could reach a page always with the same url, without the fear of a changed title?

 

You can refernece a page by its ID (which remains static) instead of its page name. This way, if you change the page's name, the URL (if you use the ID) will still work.

For example:

http://doc.tiki.org/tiki-index.php?page_id=4719

is equivalent to the page:

https://doc.tiki.org/Tiki+Administrator+Guide

even if the page name changes.

 

HTH,

- Rick  |  My Tiki Blog |  My Tiki UserPage

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