Features
Tiki is the FOSS Web Application with the most built-in features. And for features which are beyond the scope of a PHP/MySQL application, please see: Tiki Suite (Integrated Web and desktop suite).Unlike other Open Source projects that include a small set of features and then encourage users to install 3rd party add-ons, the Tiki community includes a large number of features in the main code base. This helps to ensure that when you upgrade, your existing features will not break. This also permits tight integration of the various features and makes it easier for you to re-use content across different features. For example, you can use the Wiki syntax throughout the application: in wiki pages, forum posts, trackers, and more. You can read more about the Tiki Model.
Because Tiki is in a state of continual development by the community, not all features are fully developed. This page provides a rating system for each feature to help you judge if Tiki is the right tool for you.
The ratings below are for the latest stable version. The next major version will continue to add improvements to these features and will provide new functionality, too.
Rating System
A: Excellent - B: Very Good - C: Good - D: Poor - E: Very Bad
Subjective self-evaluation by the Tiki community
- Setup/admin UI: How easy / intuitive is to setup this feature?
- UI end user : Once setup, how easy / intuitive is it for the end-user? (was it worth it?)
- Stability: How many bugs left?
- Feature-set / power: How does this feature compare to other Open Source apps? This field is the default sort order
Content features
Articles
Articles can be used for date-specific news and announcements. You can configure articles to automatically publish and expire at specific times or to require that submissions be approved before becoming "live." In addition to categories and tags, articles include their own unique classification system of Topics and Types.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: B
- End-user usability: A
- Features: A
- Stability: A
Forum
Forums are online discussions organized by topic (or thread). Tiki forums feature threaded or flat views, file attachments, moderation and queuing, monitoring (subscription) of particular forums or topics, and full usage of wiki syntax.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: B
- End-user usability: C
- Features: A
- Stability: B
File Gallery
Computer files, videos or software for downloading. With check-in & check-out (lock)Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: A
- End-user usability: B
- Features: A
- Stability: A
Calendar
Events calendar with public, private and group channelsDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: B
- End-user usability: B
- Features: A
- Stability: B
Image Gallery
Collections of graphic images for viewing or downloading (photo album)Note: The Image gallery was deprecated in Tiki 4 in favor of the File Gallery.
Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: B
- End-user usability: C
- Features: A
- Stability: B
Tracker
Facts and figures storage & retrieval. A forms & database generator, with reporting. Can be used for a bug tracker, item database, issue tracker, etcDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: C
- End-user usability: A
- Features: A
- Stability: C
Wiki
Collaboratively authored documents with history of changes. Tiki's Wiki has all the features you could want from a first-rate wiki. Ex.: attach files, comments, history, images, warn on edit, page locking, powerful wiki syntax, etcDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: A
- End-user usability: A
- Features: A
- Stability: A
Map
Navigable, interactive maps with user-selectable layers (requires mapserver)Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: E
- End-user usability: B
- Features: A
- Stability: B
Kaltura Video
Video managementDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: C
- End-user usability: B
- Features: A
- Stability: B
MyTiki
Provide content organization and communication tools for registered usersBookmark, User Preferences, Watch, User Menu, Task, Inter-User Messages, User Files, Notepad and Mini Calendar
Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: A
- End-user usability: A
- Features: B
- Stability: C
Survey
Questionnaire with multiple choice or open ended questionDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: A
- End-user usability: A
- Features: B
- Stability: B
Quiz
Timed questionnaire with recorded scoresDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration:
- End-user usability:
- Features: B
- Stability: C
Directory (links)
User-submitted Web linksDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration:
- End-user usability:
- Features: B
- Stability: C
Featured Links
Simple menu system which can optionally add an external web page in an iframeDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: B
- End-user usability: A
- Features: B
- Stability: A
Task
To do list. Can send tasks to other users. Also shared group tasks.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration:
- End-user usability:
- Features: B
- Stability:
Slideshow
Turn a wiki page into slideshow by using more than one title bar in the page. You can also make slideshows from a structure. Here is a nice example of a slideshow about Using a Wiki as an Organizational PortalDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: C
- End-user usability: B
- Features: B
- Stability: B
BigBlueButton
Open source real-time collaboration tool. (Audio/Video/Screensharing/Chat)Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: C
- End-user usability: A
- Features: B
- Stability: B
MiniChat
Real-time group text chattingDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: A
- End-user usability: C
- Features: C
- Stability: B
Inter-User Messages
Enable users to send internal messages to each other. (like email but internal to your tiki site). A broadcast is a message sent to many users, the message can be sent to a Tiki group or to all users (if permissions are ok).Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: B
- End-user usability: B
- Features: C
- Stability: A
Spreadsheet
Datasheets with calculations and chartsDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: A
- End-user usability: A
- Features: C
- Stability: C
FAQ
Frequently asked questions and answersDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration:
- End-user usability:
- Features: C
- Stability: C
Newsletters
Content mailed to registered usersDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: A
- End-user usability: A
- Features: C
- Stability: B
Blog
Online diaries or journalsDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: C
- End-user usability: B
- Features: C
- Stability: C
Live Support
One-on-one chatting with customerDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: C
- End-user usability: B
- Features: C
- Stability: C
HTML Pages
Static and dynamic HTML content. Note: HTML can be used in wiki pages. This is a separate feature.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: B
- End-user usability: A
- Features: C
- Stability:
GMap
Use of Google Maps interactively inside Tiki.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: B
- End-user usability: B
- Features: C
- Stability: B
User Files
Users upload files and store them in their tiki personal space, they can then download the files.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: C
- End-user usability: C
- Features: C
- Stability: B
Notepad
Users can write, upload, download and read notes. Notes can be read as raw text files or as Wiki pages interpreting the Wiki markup syntax. The user-quota that admin can control is used to set the maximum size that user notes can take.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration:
- End-user usability:
- Features: C
- Stability:
User Page
Permits each user to have a personal wiki page.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: A
- End-user usability: B
- Features: C
- Stability: A
Shoutbox
Quick comment (graffiti) box. Like a group chat, but not in real time.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: A
- End-user usability: A
- Features: D
- Stability: A
Contact us
Basic form from visitor to adminDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: E
- End-user usability: A
- Features: D
- Stability: A
Webmail
Give users Web-based access to their POP3 or IMAP e-mail accountsDeveloper site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: C
- End-user usability: C
- Features: D
- Stability: C
Shopping Cart
Products or services can be maintained in wiki pages or Pretty Tracker and added to Module Cart through the PluginAddToCart and sent to payment.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: B
- End-user usability: B
- Features: D
- Stability: B
Friendship Network
Users can identify other users as their friends.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration:
- End-user usability: B
- Features: E
- Stability:
WebHelp
The generated webhelp is a static representation of the structure with a js tree that can be used to navigate the structure and a search function, print function, history and some other gizmos.Developer site:
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Self-evaluation Ratings
- Setup and administration: D
- End-user usability: D
- Features: E
- Stability: E
Navigation features
| Feature name and link | Description | Dev (Bug reports & Feature requests) | Setup and admin UI | UI end user | Stability | Feature-set and power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Global category system. Items of different types (wiki pages, articles, tracker items, etc) can be added to one or many categories. Categories can have permissions. |
| B | B | B | A |
| Menus | Menu items can be filtered by permission, by group or if a feature is turned on or off. Also works with phplayersmenu or suckerfish CSS for nice dynamic menus. |
| C | A | B | A |
| Site Identity | Site Identity feature helps an admin to simplify the customization process of his/her site. Instead of hacking the tpl files code manually you can have your own Site Header area with Site Logo and more optional elements set up directly from Tiki Admin section. |
| B | A | B | A |
| Module | Boxes of content, typically on the left & right of portal-styles sites. Very useful for navigation & content re-use. |over 100 built-in modules and site admins can create their own using HTML. |
| A | A | B | A |
| Structure | Create hierarchically organized breadcrumb navigation aids for Wiki pages, and also allow printing all pages in the structure and in the same order through an easier way than one by one. |
| B | B | A | A |
| Wiki 3D | Morcego 3D network browser Java applet |
| C | C | B | B |
| Semantic | Going beyond Backlinks, allows to define some semantic relationships between wiki pages |
| C | C | B | B |
| Bookmarks | User bookmarks let users bookmark internal or external pages, create folders and organize their personal bookmarks in folders. Bookmarks can be cached if that option is enabled. A module is provided to let the users see their bookmarks, navigate through them, and add new bookmarks. |
| C | C | C | C |
| Custom Home | If enabled, a customized page will serve as the home page for the Tiki. Custom home page by default group is also possible |
| B | A | C | |
| Meta Tags | Administer your meta tags via the admin panel (no FTPing) |
| B | A | C | |
| Search engine optimization | Tiki is search engine friendly. If you are using Apache, you can rename _htaccess to .htaccess to get Short URLs |
| C | |||
| User Menu | Add personal items to the User Menu section in the application menu. |
| unrated |
Transversal features
These are features that can apply to multiple content areas.| Feature name and link | Description | Dev (Bug reports & Feature requests) | Setup and admin UI | UI end user | Stability | Feature-set and power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workspace | Workspaces permit you to segment a Tiki instance into smaller section, and restrict access, and change preferences and the theme. |
| D | B | B | A |
| i18n | Tiki is translated in 35 languages. Handles multilingual navigation & content. Can keep track of translation (de)synchronization. http://wiki-translation.com |
| C | B | B | A |
| Compression | Transparently compress your pages on-the-fly, if the requesting browser supports this |
| A | A | B | A |
| Theme | 6 built-in themes and several more theme options. Easy to add more or to create your own. |
| C | B | B | A |
| RSS | Generates RSS feeds and RSS feeds can be included in Tiki. |
| B | B | B | A |
| Interaction with popular external softtware, services or websites | For example: Google video, Google Maps, YouTube, Skype, Google AdSense, Mindmap and many more! |
| A | |||
| Js calendar | js calendar is a nice date & time picker optional in calendar and trackers. |
| B | B | E | B |
| Comment | Quick feedback available for many features (wiki pages, articles, blogs, etc) |
| B | B | B | B |
| Mobile Tiki & Voice Tiki | Provide voice-based browsing capability and WAP / PDA / i-mode / etc for Web-enabled cell phones. http://mobile.tiki.org |
| B | B | B | B |
| Watch | Receive an email when an item is updated |
| B | B | C | B |
| Mail-In | Submit Wiki pages or articles via e-mail. |
| C | C | C | B |
| Tags | Tags (or freetags) are the folksonomy tagging. |
| A | B | C | B |
| Mods | A tool for distribution, install, upgrade and removal of Tiki components, also called mods. |
| E | B | D | C |
| Stats | Site-wide statistics for many features. Referrer stats and search stats also available. |
| B | B | C | C |
| Banners | Insert, track, and manage advertising banners. |
| B | A | B | C |
| Rating | Lets users vote on wiki pages & tracker items |
| D | B | D | C |
| Search | internal search engine which indexes through many features |
| C | C | C | C |
| Contribution | Allow selecting, reporting and exporting the type of contributions of your users. (only for Tiki = 2.0+) |
| A | A | B | C |
| Score | This feature is a game to motivate people to participate in the community. Users are given points for things they do in the site, like writing an article, reading an article, starting a new topic in forum, voting a poll, etc. They also earn points by being popular, like having his/her blogs and articles read and commented. Then the users will be able to see their position in a ranking. |
| C | |||
| Accessibility | Web accessibility |
| C | |||
| Tell a friend | Add a link "Email this page" in all the pages at the top of the screen |
| B | B | B | C |
| Karma | Vote comments from 1 (poor) to 5 (very cool) |
| D | D | D | D |
Text Area features
These are features that you can use in all text-entry areas, such as wiki pages, blogs, articles, and forum.| Feature name and link | Description | Dev (Bug reports & Feature requests) | Setup and admin UI | UI end user | Stability | Feature-set and power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wiki Plugins | Over 100 built-in plugins extend the function of wiki syntax with more specialized commands. It is very easy to create your own plugins with plugin alias or from scratch. |
| B | B | B | A |
| Wiki Syntax | Apply formatting without learning & using HTML. Usable throughout various features, not just the wiki! |
| B | B | B | A |
| Dynamic Content System | Bloc of content which can be reused and programmed (timed). |
| C | A | A | A |
| Toolbars | Those little icons on the left the edit page : you click on it and a javascript is used to insert a tag in the textarea, depending on your actual selection. Useful to add wiki syntax. You can create your own quicktags. |
| C | C | B | A |
| PluginCode | Displays a snippet of code | B | B | C | B | |
| PluginFlash | Can add flash to a wiki page, an article, etc | B | A | B | B | |
| PluginModule | Insert a module in a Wiki page, an article, etc | B | C | B | B | |
| Copyright | The Copyright Management System (or ©MS) is a way of licensing your content, typically under and open or free content license. By switching this feature on you can define a content license for all your wiki content, associate copyright notices with individual pages and even display a full license for printing. |
| D | C | ||
| External Wikis | Create links easily with other wikis. | B | B | A | C | |
| toc, maketoc | Automatically generates a table of contents based on sub-page titles within a structure (toc), or from the headings on a page (maketoc). | A | C | A | C | |
| Cookie | Taglines drawn randomly from tagline database |
| B | B | A | C |
| Hotwords | If enabled, Wiki pages are parsed and some words are automatically converted to HTML links. |
| C | |||
| Cache | External URLs can be cached inside Tiki - this is possible for links from the Wiki as well as for the User Bookmarks | B | B | A | C | |
| Content Template | Choice of pre-filled texts for Wiki pages, articles, newsletters and html pages to give a consistent look and feel. |
| B | B | B | C |
| Polls | Brief list of votable options; appears in module (left or right column) |
| B | A | C | C |
| Dynamic Variable | Snippets of text which can be reused throughout Tiki. |
| C | C | ||
| Smiley | Love them or hate them! |
| A | A | A | C |
| Spellcheck | Identify misspelled words and offer suggestions. |
| D | C | D | D |
Administration features
| Feature name and link | Description | Dev (Bug reports & Feature requests) | Setup and admin UI | UI end user | Stability | Feature-set and power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Permission | Different rights can be assigned to groups. (ACLs) |
| C | A | A | |
| Theme Control | Using multiple Themes / Styles on your Tiki site |
| A | A | A | A |
| Cache | Tiki uses the Smarty template engine's built-in cache | A | A | B | A | |
| Group | Groups can be included in groups to inherit permissions. |
| A | |||
| User Administration | Registration, Login & Banning |
| A | |||
| Installation | A wizard installer script + profile selector |
| A | A | A | |
| External Authentication | Can use LDAP (Active Directory), PAM, Auth, Http web server or CAS. In 2.0 Shibboleth |
| B | A | B | A |
| TRIM | A combination of shell and PHP scripts to install, update, backup and monitor (check security of) a large number of Tiki installations (instances). |
| D | C | A | |
| Edit CSS | Can create (via the browser) new css suffixed with -user |
| B | |||
| Communication Center | Send/receive objects to and from other Tiki-powered sites |
| B | A | A | B |
| Intertiki | Authenticate users based on users data from external tiki. (several "slave" sites and a "master" site). Groups & setting can be transferred. Introduced in Tiki 1.9.3. |
| D | C | D | B |
| Banning | Block access from individual IPs or ranges of IPs. |
| A | A | A | B |
| Edit Template | Edit SMARTY templates. |
| B | C | B | |
| Action log | Follow what a user is doing on a single or multiple users, groups or categories basis. |
| B | B | B | C |
| Phpinfo | Added a phpinfo link to check your php installation in the admin menu. | C |
Advanced features for programmers
| Feature name and link | Description | Dev (Bug reports & Feature requests) | Setup and admin UI | UI end user | Stability | Feature-set and power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integrator | Automatically import external HTML pages into Tiki. |
| D | B | B | B |
| PluginSQL | Display select queries in your wiki pages | C | C | B | ||
| Debugger Console | Debugger Console |
| B | |||
| WebServices | Can consume webservices in JSON or YAML. |
| D | C | B |
Other
| Feature name and link | Description | Dev (Bug reports & Feature requests) |
|---|---|---|
| We eat our own DogFood | Tiki is a community. Tiki is a software. The Tiki community is recursively using and improving the Tiki software, which is used to support the community. |
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| Open development | Written and maintained by an active and international community of volunteer contributors. While many developers offer consuting services, no company controls the development. Think of Tiki as applying the wiki way but not just to content but to software development as well. YOU are invited to participate!" Please read more about the Tiki Model | |
| Open standards & protocols | Tiki developers are Tiki users too and prefer open protocols and standards. http://tiki.org/TikiStandards | |
| Platform independence | Tiki runs wherever PHP runs, on Linux, Mac, Windows and many more other operating systems. |
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| Documentation | Tiki's documention is handled on a wiki (of course!). So you can participate! The are links from your installed Tiki application directly to the corresponding documentation wiki page. Many links are broken because of a major reorganization. Please bear with us and participate! |
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| Browser Compatibility | On the client side, all you need is a Web browser such as Firefox, Konqueror, or Internet Explorer. Also usable from many other browsers. |
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| Zend Framework, Smarty, MySQL, PHP, jQuery, HTMLpurifier, FCKeditor, etc. | Tiki makes good use of existing & active open source projects. |
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General notes:
About Tiki Features
Because Tiki offers such a large number of features "out-of-the-box", it can be overwhelming, even to an experienced user or administrator. Tiki has all the classic CMS and portal features of other applications, but also includes features not available anywhere else. Tiki is highly configurable and modular; all features are optional and can be administered through Tiki's browser-based interface.What makes Tiki different? Its tight integration of all the features.
Community
The whole Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware is a very active project. On average, there is a commit to the code (such as a bug fix or a new feature) every 2 hours. Over 200 people have contributed to the source code. With such a large number of contributors, the features continue to evolve and get better. Because Tiki is an open source project, you can participate and help make it better!Using this evaluation
This self-evaluation of features will help you know what to expect after installing Tiki. Many features are widely used and quite stable. Others are new and experimental. While others are no longer maintained and may have limited functionality. For beginners, we recommend using features that have been rated as A or B; they are the most stable. The features and ratings are based on the latest stable version of Tiki.Updating this evaluation
To update and improve this self-evaluation, please login, then click the name of the feature. You can then complete any of the missing information or change items that you feel are incorrect. For example, if you think a feature deserves a B rating instead of a D, you can change it. You can also add comments about the features.Note: All changes will be reviewed by a project admin and may be edited or modified, if needed.
To report a bug or request a new feature or enhancement, please use our bugs & wishlist tracker.
Missing features
This page may not list all features. For example, many plugins are missing from this self-evaluation.By now (if you read this far!), you must be thinking "Wow, what does this thing not do?". Please see "Major Features Missing In Tiki" for a list of features that are not a part of Tiki.
