How/Why I Added a Wiki for WilsonDotNet

I've had several users of my ORMapper and UIMapper suggest that I add a Wiki to WilsonDotNet -- and I agreed it was a good idea.  My first problem was finding the time to setup a Wiki, since I'm typically pretty busy already with my work and other projects.  Of course this shouldn't be a big deal I was told since there are already some really good Wikis freely available, like FlexWiki.  So a while back I downloaded FlexWiki and proceeded to setup a simple test Wiki on my local system -- took about an hour or so.  At this point I was convinced that this would work out, but I still needed to integrate the Wiki with the rest of my existing site.

And this is where things started to go downhill.  First I wanted to allow anonymous users to read my Wiki, but I only wanted my existing subscribers to be able to edit and create topics -- yes, this isn't a "pure" Wiki concept, but its what I wanted to do.  I proceeded to look through the documentation and I found that this was something that others had also requested -- and failed.  I did more searches and again found more people wanting this type of feature, but it just isn't supported out of the box so far.  Of course you can always modify the app yourself, since its open-source, but I discovered that the codebase is quite involved.

At this point I thought I would just try some modifications to the web.config file in the authentication/authorization sections.  Surely this wouldn't be too hard, but things didn't work out so easily -- I think because the Wiki needed to be its own IIS app.  So now I decided to just give up and try it on my real site, again since I don't have a lot of time to waste getting this to work.  This resulted in discovering that you can't just create your Wiki locally and simply upload and expect the links to work correctly.  Another search showed that I wasn't alone in finding this to be an issue -- and there doesn't appear to be any solution to this.

At this point I had certainly put in more than a couple of hours, although I didn't track it to say it was 4, 8, or more hours.  So I tabled this whole Wiki thing for a good while, and then recently I decided to think about this Wiki thing in another way.  What is a Wiki?  Its a set of topics, viewable as formatted Html, which can be edited and/or created, and a history is kept too.  If you think about it that way, a Wiki does not sound very hard at all -- especially if you use the FreeTextBox for Html edits.  So I did it -- in 30 minutes at most!  And in my opinion its far better, at least for me, since it integrates with my site too.

So there you have it.  I have my own Wiki that fits seamlessly into my already existing site and ties into my existing set of users.  Its also far easier to use for someone like myself that isn't up on all the special codes needed to edit/create the formatted Html because I'm just letting my users have the full power of the FreeTextBox -- maybe this isn't a "real" Wiki, but its better for me.  I also maintain a complete history of all edits, although I haven't exposed this yet (if ever), which I do think is a good idea.  And I got all of this up and running in no time at all -- far less when compared with trying to figure out an existing free Wiki.
Published Monday, May 30, 2005 5:48 PM by PaulWilson

Comments

# re: How/Why I Added a Wiki for WilsonDotNet

Just wondering about some of the other mechanics, Paul -- are you storing the "pages" in a database, and then rendering them into your master pages? What do the "edit" URLs look like? What about creating new pages?

TTFN - Kent

Monday, May 30, 2005 8:11 PM by Kent Sharkey

# As is often the case, Paul has it right

Rather than religiously following an idea (that I still think only wikipedia
got right, but that it...

Monday, May 30, 2005 8:31 PM by TrackBack

# re: How/Why I Added a Wiki for WilsonDotNet

Hey Kent:

I'm using the file system for my topics, and their history, although it wouldn't be much harder to use a database. As for the details, you can view all the code in my free section of code on the site itself:

SideBar:
http://www.wilsondotnet.com/Code/?path=Wiki&file=ControlMain.ascx
http://www.wilsondotnet.com/Code/?path=Wiki&file=CWiki.ascx.cs

Content:
http://www.wilsondotnet.com/Code/?path=Wiki&file=Default.aspx
http://www.wilsondotnet.com/Code/?path=Wiki&file=DWiki.aspx.cs

Basically, a logged in user see's a link to edit the current content (the querystring is ?edit=name instead of ?topic=name) and there is also a textbox and linkbutton to create a new topic (placed in a separate form by using my WilsonWebForm).

Thanks, Paul

Monday, May 30, 2005 9:40 PM by Paul Wilson

# Weird Wiki

Thursday, June 02, 2005 11:38 AM by TrackBack

# re: How/Why I Added a Wiki for WilsonDotNet

I created my own wiki for a proof of concept on a project @ work not too long ago in 2.0 so I couldn't use FTB and instead tested with telerik's RAD editor. Either way, I was able to create the entire thing extremely fast including revision management and internal link transformation. Unforturnately, I couldn't convince certain people that this was a better way to manage the particular project than storing every single detail individualy in a database. Sigh.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005 7:50 AM by Chris Wallace

# re: How/Why I Added a Wiki for WilsonDotNet

I've had some issues as well with FlexWiki...
First I think their code doesn't really follow their own guidelines:

http://www.flexwiki.com/default.aspx/FlexWiki/DeveloperGuidelines.html

Also, they don't accept any code before you submit a non-assignment agreement, sent to the redmond headquarters itself 8-/

http://www.netindustry.nl/blog/2005/04/flexwiki-make-double-click-editing.html

Sunday, June 12, 2005 5:57 PM by Wiebe Tijsma

# re: How/Why I Added a Wiki for WilsonDotNet

I'm hoping to enlist your help in creating a VERY user friendly, an almost braille version, of a WIKI for teachers to use. Its purpose is to promote educational staff development and ultimately better educated children. You stated it took you roughly 30 minutes to create. I assume you have a fairly strong technical background and this is something I lack. I don't know what I don't know about website construction and the use of the internet as a means of educating employees. I do however see the power in a tool like this and am asking for your help or anyone else who reads this who would be able to point me in the right direction for that which I describe.

Monday, June 13, 2005 10:55 PM by Associate Principal

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