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How to make your Wiki easier to use
By mark | August 23, 2007
Although Wiki’s can be a invaluable resource for a business, many are put off by the wiki code needed to contribute to the knowledge base system. Yeah its pretty easy to learn, but a hassle to use on daily basis. More expensive commercial products come with in built toolbars with live preview mode. But before you open your wallet why not try out FCKeditor for MediaWiki?
How much more inviting does the picture below look compared with the code above? Imagine telling your MD they need to contribute to the Wiki but you need to learn an other language.
Follow these relative simple steps below and if you run into any problems I’ll do my best to answer them.
Step One
Download the extension from:
http://mediawiki.fckeditor.net/nightly/svn/mediawiki_fckeditor_ext_N.tar.gz
This needs to be extracted into the wiki’s folder and should create a directory called ‘FCKeditor’ in the ‘extensions’ folder.
Step Two
The local config file ‘LocalSettings.php’ needs to have the line below added somewhere in the file to initialise the plugin:
require_once $IP . “/extensions/FCKeditor/FCKeditor.php”;
Step Three
The only file that needs to be changed is the ‘includes/EditPage.php’ file. For this one you can manually alter the file s/suing/using/ the instructions on the page:
http://mediawiki.fckeditor.net/index.php/FCKeditor_integration_guide
Or they can just overwrite the file (if you are running the latest version of mediawiki) with a copy downloaded from here: http://svn.fckeditor.net/MediaWiki/trunk/includes/EditPage.php
Additional Resources
Mark
Topics: Business Applications, Linux, UNIX & FreeBSD, Tech Overload, web applications |
August 23rd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Thank you for sharing!! I’m a code dunce and can sometimes feel overwhelmed. Your step by step guide was clear that even I could understand it.
August 25th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Yeah, I think the messy underbelly of wikis is the main thing keeping more people from contributing. It’s still a pretty geeky thing, though this helps a lot.
August 25th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Wikis may be simple to use, but not so easy to get everyone else to use. CMSWire has a post that gives a few strategies for integrating wikis into office life.
Another tool for businesses looking to get the most out of their wiki is Wiki Patterns, covered here. It assigns patterns to users’ behavior on the wiki, provides a classification system of concepts they’ve created, and lets people see the mistakes that others have made before them. Less time wasted = more effective (and profitable!) enterprises. What’s not to like?
August 25th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
My Managing Director has started using our company wiki alot more. It is very silly when you think about, the wiki code is very geeky like you say.
Does anyone know why Wikipedia doesn’t have UI toolbar?
Jamie