The Wiki page feature in Tiki enables users to create and edit pages on the internet without knowing code like HTML, Javascript or PHP. It is an exceptionally easy-to-use tool to create and manage online teamwork and collaborative publications. Wiki page is the heart of the Tiki web application and it rely on the Wiki Syntax for a fast an optimised usage. By the way it is very similar to the Wiki Markup that can be found at the well-known Wikipedia.
Let’s start by a quick description of the Wiki syntax
The Wiki syntax includes most common formatting tools. They are easy to use right away to avoid the writer to be distracted while focusing on the "story". The whole idea os such syntax or markup is to help editors to create content and publish it as fast as possible by inserting directly styles and formatting while typing their content. In Tiki, it is also possible to use or set extensions and plugins on the fly. I’ll show you how to use a few popular ones at the end of this tutorial.
Most of Tiki’s features integrate with Wiki page feature and Wiki pages can be used as the main basic output to display any information coming from other features of Tiki. As an example, data structured or individual information from Blogs, Articles, Forums, Trackers or Calendar can be dynamically retrieved and displayed in a Wiki page.
I’ll start with a Tiki freshly installed and on the HomePage I sign in as Admin. This HomePage is the first Wiki page you’ll see after successfully creating your Tiki website. Tiki is totally configurable and the buttons or menus location can be changed. In my tutorials I always explain and demonstrate things based on the default install.
To edit the HomePage page, I click on the edit item that can be found in the actions menu at the top of your pages. This will display the same page in the editing mode and you can see tabs, a toolbar with several buttons, a text area, a description field and submit buttons. Let’s delete everything so we start with fresh content.
On this blank page to create a header I type an exclamation mark and then the content of my title.
If I want to create a bullet list for each of those lines I add a star at the start of each of those lines. To view the result I click on the preview button and this is it.
It show the syntax properly interpreted.
Unlike what happen on a word processor like Microsoft Word on your desktop computer I won’t have to stop my typing to use my mouse, to select text and press a button to apply a style. I can type content and style the same and therefor I’m not distracted while creating.
Remembering some syntax is a small price for this level of efficiency. And I can also just use back the toolbar. Most of the buttons are easily identifiable. Also if you place your cursor over a button it will display a tooltip to help you.
You can use those buttons directly on previously entered text. For example let’s type: "This is my wiki syntax example". Now I select the text and click on the underline button. Voila… our text is now surrounded by the proper syntax and again I check by clicking on preview. I can also place the cursor anywhere inside the text area and click on a button to see the proper syntax.
I click on the italic button and see this text with 2 single quote. So now we understand that you can type directly quote, quote, the text you want in italic and again, quote, quote to tell Tiki where the style ends.
Let’s preview and again, all good.
Same for all the formatting button strike-through, colour-text, heading, alignment, horizontal rule, etc. Some button may also require more information.
Using the toolbar, let’s add a link to an external website to complete the demonstration.
I need to fill a text field for the text that will be displayed and the url field to insert the link to point to. I leave the relation empty for now.
Preview, done.
There are many other command but you understand how it works now. A list of all the available command can be found using the help button on the right side of the toolbar. The online help available once in the edit mode. The Edit help is divided in 2 tabs, one tab for the Wiki Syntax and one for the Wiki plugin help to enhance your content.
Everything is there and you can see a long list of available command.
A quick look to the second tab will reveal several dozens of Tiki plugins available out of the box.
An overview of the advanced usages of the Wiki syntax
Well I guess I will do a specific tutorial for the Tiki plugins and for this video I’ll just pick one to do a quick demo.
Let’s use the "Quote" plugin.
I click on the Quote plugin icon.
It open a modal dialog so I can set it.
I put my name on the reply to, any url source will do, I add a date and then type in the body area the text I want to be quoted. Save… and it displays a quote on my Wiki page.
Another important piece of the feature is the Editing and Plugins Admin control panel where you can turn on and off dozens of options and enable more advanced plugins or disable some if you don’t want your editors to use them.
Now to conclude, let me show you how I can compose quickly a page. Let pretend I need a header, some italic text just under another section in a text box an horizontal line and an image.
Header, italic text, some text in a box, an horizontal line and then let's upload a nice picture I took.
Saving… and that’s a another great Wiki page published in no time.
That’s it for this tutorial.
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See you soon and enjoy the power of Tiki !