Wikidot Community

Why am I asking? Because Wikidot gets rewritten as a "version2" and it is at the point that major suggestions that require deep changes could still be incorporated into this.

One of the features would be e.g. the whole new way of editing pages — instead of opening a box at the bottom of a page and scrolling to preview changes the whole page (or a section) would just magically become editable - either with the wiki syntax or wysiwyg.

Blogging will be a cool thing for sure. A universal page-query tool that would allow you to list e.g. all pages changed within the last week. And sort them according to the number of changes.

Wikidot currently targets computer geeks rather than casual Internet users. And has to change. It needs to be powerful, cool and a pleasure to use.

If you have any suggestions for the new version — just post it below! Thanks!

Well, since you asked ….. I would like a greeting monkey. It would sit at the doorway to my wiki and greet people. You know, say hi, ask how a user's day was, maybe talk about bananas. :) Just kidding. :)

Here's the suggestions I can think of off the top of my head :

1. I second the expandable / collapsible code block.

2. Universal includes. Right now I have a class starting on monday. It would be easy to let everyone know with a universal include that appears on the top of every page.

3. Custom syntax highlighting. I'm working with many languages, some variants of other languages, and the number is sure to increase over time. I know this could be a pain, but it would help quite a bit. (help me anyway.)

4. Multiple news / blogs that can be linked. This explanation is not adequate, but, let me try. I have a news page for every section. If I could have these as the sections of a blog where they all automatically appear together in the main news / blog page, that would be great.

5. Search by category. (I may have missed this one.)

6. Have the category appear in the page title in searches, and at the html title, but not in breadcrumb navigation or in the page title. Right now I'm having to put the name in manually and thus breadcrumbs look like this : Basic4GL : Core Language of Basic4GL : etc…

7. Break up the "List all pages" automatically like mediawiki does. As it is now, I have so many pages "List all pages" doesn't list all my pages. :) Secondly, it's hard to navigate in one big file.

8. Have the option for the html title to appear as : [page name] - [category] - [wikiname].

9. WYSIWYG editing is a pain. Please keep wiki syntax able to be set as a default preference.

10. Automatically redirect to the new page when a page is renamed.

That's all I can think of right now.

About targeting the causal user… er… This is your baby, but I have to say you would try to attract people like me who like to write about what they do. The causal user is on youtube watching a monkey fall off a tree. In other words, they don't have anything to write about. Instead, they read what other people write when they want to know something. Which reminds me….

—hartnell

EDIT SECTIONS

My pages tend to get long so i second an "edit sections" feature. Preferably as a flag that can be turned off or on for each individual page. Maybe a flag that can be included in page's templates for example?

EMOTICONS

And emoticons: i know the idea is scary because it reminds of idiotic forum posts filled with smilies and roflcopters but in my case it would allow for good combo notation. Or in the case of a D&D-related wiki it would allow to insert a picture of a 20-sided die instead of writing d20. And so forth.

EMPTY ATTACHMENT FOLDERS

I also realised that once i move a file i've uploaded the folder created remains there - at least in the backup. Isn't that potentially bothersome, for a big wiki? How about including an option to remove empty file attachment folders for those who want to keep things tidy?

WYSIYWG EDITOR

Concerning the WYSIYWG editor, i'm fine with it as long as you keep it 3-lines-of-buttons at most, like the way it is now, otherwise it could get a bit over the top, and scare away the new, casual userface you're trying to lure.

TABLES

Finally, tables. I use the a lot, for combo notation,

they look nice but it's really hard to edit after a while:

||~ Floater Input ||~ Float Type ||~ Recomended Floats ||~ Easy Floats ||~ Comments ||
|| df+p+k HIT _
G,uf/df+p HIT _
BT p+k HIT _
(p+k,)p CH || Head Crumble || p+k,p;p,p,pkg || f+p,k,k _
p,p,p,k || kolita se WALLS f+p,k,pkg;f,f+k ||
|| b,b+k+g HIT _
G,d/u+p CH _
(p,)df+p CH || Stomach Crumble || p+k,p;p,p,pkg _
p;f+p,k,k _
d+p;df+p,pkg || low throw _
p,p,p,k || uparxei kai to classiko d+p,DF+k _
kai to u+p oki gia tous koulous ||
|| f+k+g HIT _
d+k CH p _
(d+k,)p HIT || Slam || //d+p;df+p,pkg _
p;f+p,k,k _
p;p+k,pkg// || u+p oki _
//f+p,k,k// || //prepei na testaro to p,p,p,k :-)// ||

etc and that's only 1/3 of the table. It gets really hard to read after a while (also it was a pain in the ass to stick @@ in the begining and end of each line in order to avoid parsing) I don't have a suggestion on how to simpify this though, maybe "begin table" "end table" tags? , dunno really.

My two penny worth….
View permissions (as previously discussed)
WYSIYWG for the general user (already mentioned)
Tables. Like the post above, i use tables alot in one of my wikis. It/ they are frequently updated by other (well should be)
I am using zoho, instead.. but the downside is that the updates aren't notified to the wiki users
Editing the pages off line, till i get it right, then uploading it, would be really nice.

In addition to some of the comments earlier:

Drag and drop of pages on the sitemap function, which changes the parent page

** A function to list all pages without a Parent Page** the "module pagetree" function does not allow you to do this, and pages with no parent can just be lost from the sitemap.

Let's see. Well, first off there's my big list of compiled suggestions: http://community.wikidot.com/forum/t-9890/official-suggestions-thread although they're not all that carefully thought through :P

Then, for some more elaborate and extensive suggestions:

• Make it easy to integrate with other applications (CMS, forums, galleries etc.) like Joomla! and SMF (which already have a working bridge to connect the two). Possibly just for login (logging in to your wiki would keep you logged in when entering e.g. your SMForum in another database and vice versa) maybe also for userprofiles (meaning there's only one userprofile, shared by all applications. This would mean you would have to choose one as the appication to store your profile in, as the rest wouldn't be used).

• Extend the flexibility in design.

1. The way the layout works. What if I only want one menu, or maybe 4. What if I want to add my own special kind of top menu navigatin, in flash/java that the rest of my website is using, so that its easier to maintain the same style wherever a user goes.
2. Easy change of theme/style, regardless of layout (type of menus etc.) except if you add something that is non-wikidot-default, like an own made flash menu as mentioned above. A good example of how to do this would be the Invision Power Boards. There, you can add new themes without uploading any content, because the new themes uses non-local files (links to already uploaded files), or just makes some simple changes to the css/html without adding any new pictures anywhere.

• The WYSIWIG editor has been mentioned many times already, but I'd like to add this: there should be some extensive possibilities about it, at the very least the following, one for when editing/writing WikiPages, one for editing/writing ForumPosts:
  • Option in personal settings to have it on or off by default when editing/writing.
  • Option in personal settings to set No, Lite or Full Menu when editing as default.

The same options should be presented while editing, like a simple "WYSIWIG?" button, and a menu foldable on three different stages.

• Easy-to-make user groups (along with the permissions). Like, Super Admin, Admins, Moderators, Privileged Users, Users and Guests as default.

Will add more as soon as anything comes to mind. Is there any perticular date as to when we should stop care to add any more big suggestions such as this?

And, just out of curiosity: Why doesn't any wikis use closing tags, like bbcode? Just saying, that things like lists and quotes would be a whole lot easier to do if there were closing tags. As the lists are now, I can't add a paragraph within the list, because then I brake it. Making a list by doing [*]<content>or [list<content>[/list] would be a whole lot easier for me, but ye, I'm already very used to using bbcode. Just wanna know how a wiki benefits from this kind of syntax.

Being one of the new kind of folks you're trying to help/attract, these are the areas I'm currently struggling with…and don't readily see discussion or how to information:

1. I have a closed site for collaborative work, but there are those who may be interested in our work and are directed to the site. I would love to allow a "guest book" kind of place where someone could send a comment to my e-mail (either Wiki or personal address) without their e-mail address being seen by others and without my e-mail being disclosed either.
2. It would be awesome to be able to receive notices at our personal e-mail when there is activity on the site…someone sends a personal message or makes a post or a reply. Then, we don't have to go looking for recent changes…we'll just know what has been changed. Some blogs have this feature, and collaborative works would really benefit from such a feature. I thought I tried this…and may have to take a look again!
3. Run your step-by-step instructions past someone who doesn't already know how to do it. I have found that many times the current instructions assume knowledge that I just don't have…yet. I'm slogging my way through, but have written enough instruction manuals to know how helpful it is to run things by someone who can give it that level of check out.
4. Maybe I just haven't found it yet, but a glossary of terms would help newbies…

In the meantime, let me just say that this is a wonderful tool you have created and I am grateful for whatever you do!

Some more suggestions:

• Make it more more mobile phone friendly. I tried it with my Nokia 6280. In the built-in browser it looked pretty screwed up (but that thing screws up everything…) and log-in didn't work. In Opera Mini it looked pretty nice, but the log-in still doesn't work, you just get redirected to the same page. I don't think that log-in works on any mobile phone. Any chance this could be changed? (I presume that would require a whole recoding…)

• Make sure the software is not made to just fit well with the wikidot.com site, but to fit well as an independent software suitable for most servers and hosts (e.g. PmWiki had many files with weird file extensions, causing it to have problems with the filemanager my host used). Should also work well alongside other applications, i.e. there's no need to put every possible feature for the wikidot application in one install. It's much better to have a very light install with many available extensions to add if needed. Some might want a Wiki capable of working as a CMS, others might just want a wiki, plain and simple.

• Should be possible to upload several textfiles (like in a zipfolder) instantly turning them into pages. Very useful if I wanted to restore a backup I once made, but should also work even if you have content already, but you have a whole new category you want to upload. This would require some simple solutions for problems like identical pagenames and the sort though.

• More multiediting actions, like: Change all category "car:.." to be called "automobile:..". Or merge (move into) category "bikes:.." with category "vehicles:..".

• Could it be remotely possible to let someone create their own syntax? Maybe not adding new features, but switching what symbols do what, like making @@ be a heading, instead of ++.

• Make certain things ine a theme extra easy to edit. Like how headings look like, and if they should look any different in a meny. And how borders are styled (you might not have borders for tables and pics yet, but you should, hehe), so that you can give them custom styling. I guess this is mostly up to the ones creating the theme, but the user should be notified somehow in the admin panel, by being linked to a tutorial maybe. Or every theme could include a helpfile by default, making this file accessable through the admin panel.

• Maybe make a guide on how to install Wikidot locally on your computer, if you just want to try it out, or use it as a personal digital notebook. Some example Joomla! guides: http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/2013/93/ http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,37364.0.html

Hopefully it would be relatively easy to transfer the local installation (or backup) over to an online server, but I'm clueless about these things…

I don't have any particular feature suggestions, but I recently came across a javascript toolkit called dojo which looks pretty interesting. Might be worth checking out as a more browser-compatible base for wikidot v2.

Also, I posted this elsewhere, but Safari is now available for Windows; I read that wikidot doesn't have any Macs available for development. It'd be really nice to have Safari support. :)

Now that I'm moving some sections out of GDN, seamless interwiki linking would be nice. From the manual, I took it to mean that only interwiki linking to predefined wikis were allowed, however, if you could automatically make it where every wiki on wikidot could be linked to each other using the same method, that would be great. Thanks.

—hartnell