Thread

I am contemplating the use of expressionengine to drive my new website. The site is mainly going to be a blogging site, however, I intend to incorporate a wiki and other functionality. At a bare minimum, it should have tabs like (about, blog, archive, wiki).

I have been researching movabletype 4.1. I had inquired about their integration of a wiki - which was my main requirement. It turns out they don’t have a wiki module. However, they have very cleverly incorporated the mediawiki platform through some custom coding.  It can be accessed via a tab just below a static header.  (you can see it here - http://www.movabletype.org).

Unfortunately, it is not very easy to do that without some serious php development experience.

How does expression-engine handle this?  Has anyone tried to tie mediawiki into ee directly?

Ideally, my goal is to tie mediawiki (my preference for a wiki platform, instead of the wiki module ee has) into ee and ensure that the global header and footer remains the same across all tabs?  Thanks

Victor

I’ve never played with it- but I’ll give Lisa a ‘heads up’ as I believe she ran the original EE wiki on MediaWiki before the EE one became available.

That said- it’s going to depend on what type of integration you want.  I’d imagine sharing membership would take custom php.  Running both independently on the same site would be no problem.  And anything in between will take varying levels of custom coding.

I personally would go with the EE wiki unless MediaWiki has critical features that flat can’t be added.  Or unless you run each independently, and true integration really isn’t needed.

Hi Robin

Thanks for your reply. In regards to running them separately, I will assume that there will be a tab on my blog site which , if clicked on, takes you directly to the mediawiki platform?  Then, how do users get back to the blog or other parts of my ee platform?  Thats why I was thinking of a global static header where users can easily jump from one place to another with navigational elements always available at the top irrespective of where you are ...

Victor

i think a php-include should satisfy your needs

<?php include 'http://www.yourdomain.com/staticheader.txt'; ?>

Adding a tab, link in an EE template is pretty much like adding it to a standard html page.  I’m fuzzier on what MediaWiki allows in that regard.

The include method would work for EE with php parsing on- for MediaWiki, I’m less certain.

May I back up a bit and ask what about Mediawiki you prefer to EE’s wiki module?  It seems like a lot of work to tie the two together when we have an excellent solution that is fully integrated. =)

Hi Lisa

Maybe, I haven’t fully evaluated the wiki module you guys have, however, I prefer the familiar wiki look / interface of mediawiki - the usual navigation / toolbox elements shown on the left, the main frame having tabs at the top such as discussion, history, source , and the the layout of the main article itself with a table of contents at the top .

It seems more logically laid out for me. I have been trying to find a similar layout with your wiki module but most examples I have seen have a “blogging” look. I can’t figure out how to navigate around articles easily ....

Victor

Hi, Victor—

Maybe, I haven’t fully evaluated the wiki module you guys have, however, I prefer the familiar wiki look / interface of mediawiki - the usual navigation / toolbox elements shown on the left, the main frame having tabs at the top such as discussion, history, source , and the the layout of the main article itself with a table of contents at the top .

All of this is just a matter of editing a small portion of the wiki theme file and, well, moving things around and modifying the CSS.  The source may be an issue, as currently you can only view that in “edit”, but it may be possible to do something with the readonly attribute, I haven’t really tried adding that.

There is a plugin for adding a Table of Contents to the wiki, and you can see that in use in, for example, this article and it’s built based on header tags. 

You can also add talk pages quite easily, instructions in this wiki article.

For customization, you may also want to try from the Azure theme, as that has some tabs at the top.  But it really is quite easy to customize the look and feel.

Unfortunately, I am not a programmer. I am weighing the cost of hiring a programmer to do all the modifications you suggested,albiet very easy for you, then have another build or customize a blogging template for me versus an out of the box solution. for instance i have no idea what a php include is!

Just as a note - this is not programming, but designing.  That is, the big difference is that you’re modifying standard HTML and CSS to change the look and feel and move elements around.  That’s very different and yes, you will need HTML and CSS knowledge to customize any templates in ExpressionEngine - they use standard web technologies.  However, customizing the templates is an out of the box solution - the template customization in ExpressionEngine is one of its most powerful features - it means the look, feel, and behavior of your site (the wiki included) is entirely under your control.  =)

vacquah, it seems that your maincriteria is the layout.

i too checked for wiki-designs, but i didn’t find reasonable solutions (well ... i am ready to adapt azure, which comes with the installerpackage). perhaps if anybody knows a good template or collection of wikidesigns this would be helpful ... not only for vacquah, also for me 😊

vacquah, it seems that your maincriteria is the layout.

i too checked for wiki-designs, but i didn’t find reasonable solutions (well ... i am ready to adapt azure, which comes with the installerpackage). perhaps if anybody knows a good template or collection of wikidesigns this would be helpful ... not only for vacquah, also for me 😊

yes… I am more used to the usual wiki template. This throws me off a bit. Why are you looking at something else too?

V

Hi, Victor—

Maybe, I haven’t fully evaluated the wiki module you guys have, however, I prefer the familiar wiki look / interface of mediawiki - the usual navigation / toolbox elements shown on the left, the main frame having tabs at the top such as discussion, history, source , and the the layout of the main article itself with a table of contents at the top .

All of this is just a matter of editing a small portion of the wiki theme file and, well, moving things around and modifying the CSS.  The source may be an issue, as currently you can only view that in “edit”, but it may be possible to do something with the readonly attribute, I haven’t really tried adding that.

There is a plugin for adding a Table of Contents to the wiki, and you can see that in use in, for example, this article and it’s built based on header tags. 

You can also add talk pages quite easily, instructions in this wiki article.

For customization, you may also want to try from the Azure theme, as that has some tabs at the top.  But it really is quite easy to customize the look and feel.

where can i see an example of the azure theme in use?

If you have a look at our Showcase Wiki Category then the EE Developers’ Wiki is using the Azure theme. =)

May I back up a bit and ask what about Mediawiki you prefer to EE’s wiki module?  It seems like a lot of work to tie the two together when we have an excellent solution that is fully integrated. =)

Well… Mediawiki unlike EE Wiki module has no problems with localisation at all. In order to work with Cyrillic in url with EE-wiki I had to use this solution (Thank you Derek!) and had to disable “Rank Denial to User-submitted Links” in admin panel (that is not good from security point of view). But even with this modifications, the wiki module “Wiki Table of Contents” still not working with Cyrillic at all, while similar function in Mediawiki is working with Cirillic (as well as with any other language) in all browsers without any problems. That’s the difference.