[D-community-discuss] choosing the right CMS
Chris Lale
chrislale at untrammelled.co.uk
Mon Mar 5 18:43:39 CET 2007
Hello Holger
Holger Levsen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> to be able to work on content and to be able to create a nice design for
> debian-community.org we need to choose and setup a CMS.
>
> I think a wiki is the way to go.
You could have both a CMS and a wiki and link the two.
I have only a little experience of ikikwiki, but I do know something of
MediaWiki. So here are some comments with that bias.
> [...]
>
>
> Things I like about ikiwiki:
>
> - no dynamic pages. After a page is changed, all pages (which need to be
> recreated) are recreated.
With MediaWiki there is no need to recreate any page. A page is only
ever created once and the contents is never lost - even in an attack.
All future edits are stored as diffs. Is this what you mean by dynamic?
> Advantages of this: very little server load, harder
> to exploit.
>
> - no PHP. -> Harder to exploit.
>
This is a good point in ikiwiki's favour.
> - being written with security as a priority
>
... but is a young project and carries a warning about possible security
issues. These should be quickly sorted though. The main problem with any
wiki is not so much security as _spam_.
> - supports static pages from different sources (e.g. svn) and offline editing,
> generates RSS feeds, has utf8-support.
>
Media wiki also has RSS feeds and utf8-support see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_feature_list
> - unlike many wikis, ikiwiki does not have its own ad-hoc means of storing
> page history, and instead uses a revision control system such as Subversion.
>
This is a revision control link is a useful feature if you are going to
be developing software or Debian-doc/Linux-doc type documentation. (Have
you got ikiwiki "history working"? I have not been successful yet.)
> - good, extendable design. For example, the markup-language is realized via
> plugins (the default markup-language is very easy email like syntax).
I like this approach. It means that you could opt to use standard
wiki-text eg if accessibility is an issue, or choose something else.
> Also
> the code base is small and the upstream author is Joey Hess, a (very active
> and good) debian developer.
>
> - it's a young (still small) and active project.
>
MediaWiki is a mature (and large) and active project!
> - I envision automatic notification of translation teams if specific pages are
> changed, because ikiwiki is build with extendability in mind and because it's
> still young and we know upstream, I hope this will be easy.
>
MediaWiki does automatic notification of changes.
Perhaps it would be possible to run a separate ikiwiki for each language
and have inter-wiki links? (This is an approach used by MediaWiki.)
> I also want to know what you think, why ikiwiki is
> a bad choice and mediawiki (or moinmoin) is better.
I think the choice of wiki software depends on the _purpose_ of the wiki.
If the purpose is to develop software, MediaWiki
* does not link to CVS or SVN
This might be a disadvantage.
If the purpose is to develop documentation, MediaWiki has these useful
features:
* produces TOC automatically.
* produces optional numbered headings automatically.
* No need for CamelCase when creating links.
* Allows namespaces.
* Allows links to individual section, not just pages.
* Allows transclusion of atomic nodes - could be a single word or a
whole section - into pages.
* Allows inclusion of graphics eg screenshots.
* Allows subpages
* Allows classification of pages into categories so that you can have
category views (eg for level of difficulty, particular distribution,
type of installation (eg desktop, mail server, webserver), etc.
* has good internal search (title and text).
It also has features that make it accessible and easier to manage a
large wiki:
* Editor toolbar
* anti-spam features and spam blacklisting
* email notification
* multilanguage support
* third-party plugins ("extensions")
* RSS feeds
* utf8-support
I wonder whether the choice of software would be easier when the
objectives of the project and the purpose of the wiki are clearer?
--
Chris.
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