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Extending Tiki

Tiki, from a software engineering standpoint, is a monolithic application. We have strong opinions on the advantages of this approach to avoid development fragmentation and to ease refactoring. Please see: http://pluginproblems.com/ and Versions.

Currently available extension mechanisms

Tiki has various mechanisms to allow extensions and customisations. In fact, more ways than most modular software.

If you are new to Tiki, before you start down this list, keep in mind that Tiki is extremely flexible. In most cases where you'd use a plugin or write code in another system, in Tiki you are expected to configure one of the 2000+ preferences, use an existing Wiki plugin or setup a tracker.

Themes; to cleanly change the look and feel

In Tiki, the visual theme affects only appearance, not functionality, so a theme can't introduce a security risk.

Customization; quick and dirty changes to look and feel and behavior

Using the Look and feel administration panel, you can add snippets of code, which will be stored in the database, and survive upgrades:

  • Custom HTML in the HTML header
  • Custom JavaScript
  • Custom CSS

Simpler than writing a theme if you have few things to customize.

Profiles; bootstrapping Tiki configurations for some specific purpose

In Tiki terminology, a "profile" is a set of site configuration preferences and website item creation instructions that are applied as a group. They only add or edit content in the site's database. Some profiles are simple, like a contact form, and some are more complex.

Packages; managing PHP software libraries within the Tiki admin panel

Also called the Composer Web Installer, and introduced in Tiki18, this feature is for the installation and management of external software packages using Composer. Its main reason to exist is to facilitate installation of PHP lib dependencies that the Tiki community can't or prefers not to bundle. Ex.: incompatible licence, too big, too niche, etc. Please note that the code that uses these libraries remains managed in the main code base. To illustrate: The mPDF library is fetched as a Package, but all the other code is in Tiki.

  • Packages helped deprecate Mods, which were formerly used partly for this purpose. Mods had all the code for the functionality, whether it depended on an external library or not.
  • Packages also helped to deprecate and remove Addons. If you are writing your own custom code that extends Tiki that you want to install as a Package, you may want to look at Packages that extend Tiki which is available from Tiki 21.

System configuration; using files to override preferences

Allows system administrators to set some preferences using ini files in the file system to override the preferences in the Tiki database.

Path structure; using files to add and override arbitrary code

Arbitrary PHP code can override parts of Tiki by dropping it in the Path structure, For instance Custom php file (as of Tiki18) _custom/lib/setup/custom.php

Wiki Plugins; adding "macros", stuff to display in wiki pages

Wiki plugins are used to embed features and interactive data and functions in any wiki text area in the Tiki site, including in wiki pages, blogs, articles, forums, and so on. Importantly, although they are called "plugins", they are not third-party or aftermarket additions to Tiki - they are included with the Tiki installation.

  • You can Create a new wiki plugin, and hopefully contribute them back to Tiki.
  • You can make a Plugin Alias to make new plugins based on previously existing plugins in your tiki site. Stored in the database, they survive upgrades.

Modules; adding "blocks", stuff you can display in a layout area

Probably poorly named, in Tiki a module is a box of content that can be placed in layout areas (eg: topbar, left, right, bottom, etc) and also in text areas (eg: wiki pages). Other software tend to call them blocks, or boxes. All modules are included with the default Tiki installation.

  • You can create custom modules, which are stored in the database and survive upgrades.
  • Creating a new module is easy. Please do contribute!

Webhooks

Webhooks

DEPRECATED extensions mechanism

  • Mods used to provide themes and functionality
    • Most mods were not actively maintained so they became dead / useless code
    • Anything relevant was moved to core
  • Arbitrary PHP code in language files. Replaced with Path structure

REMOVED Addons feature

There was an Addons feature that existed from Tiki 14 to Tiki 19 which was subsequently removed in Tiki 20. If you are writing your own custom code that extends Tiki that you want to install as a Package, you may want to look at Packages that extend Tiki which is available from Tiki 21.

doc.tiki.org

Get Started

Admin Guide User Guide

Keywords

Keywords serve as "hubs" for navigation within the Tiki documentation. They correspond to development keywords (bug reports and feature requests):

Accessibility (WAI and 508)
Accounting
Articles and Submissions
Backlinks
Banners
Batch
BigBlueButton audio/video/chat/screensharing
Blog
Bookmark
Browser Compatibility
Link Cache
Calendar
Category
Chat
Clean URLs
Comments
Communication Center
Compression (gzip)
Contacts (Address Book)
Contact us
Content Templates
Contribution
Cookie
Copyright
Credit
Custom Home and Group Home Page
Date and Time
Debugger Console
Directory of hyperlinks
Documentation link from Tiki to doc.tiki.org (Help System)
Docs
Draw
Dynamic Content
Dynamic Variable
External Authentication
FAQ
Featured links
File Gallery
Forum
Friendship Network (Community)
Gmap Google maps
Groups
Hotword
HTML Page
i18n (Multilingual, l10n)
Image Gallery
Import-Export
Install
Integrator
Interoperability
Inter-User Messages
InterTiki
Kaltura video management
Karma
Live Support
Login
Logs (system & action)
Look and Feel
Mail-in
Map with Mapserver
Menu
Meta Elements
Mobile Tiki and Voice Tiki
Module
MultiTiki
MyTiki
Newsletter
Notepad
Payment
Performance Speed / Load
Permissions
Platform independence (Linux-Apache, Windows/IIS, Mac, BSD)
Polls
Profiles
Profile Manager
Report
Toolbar
Quiz
Rating
Feeds
Score
Search engine optimization
Search
Search and Replace
Security
Semantic links
Shadowbox
Shadow Layers
Share
Shopping cart
Shoutbox
Slideshow
Smiley
Social Networks
Spam protection (Anti-bot CATPCHA)
Spellcheck
Spreadsheet
Stats
Surveys
Tags
Task
Tell a Friend, alert + Social Bookmarking
TikiTests
Theme CSS & Smarty
Tiki Manager
Trackers
Transitions
User Administration including registration and banning
User Files
User Menu
Watch
WebDAV
Webmail
Web Services
Wiki History, page rename, etc
Wiki Syntax
Wiki structure (book and table of content)
Workspace
WSOD
WYSIWYCA
WYSIWYG
XMLRPC

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