History: Content Creation and Management Tools

            ^Since this is a nice introduction, perhaps it should be ((moved)) to ((info:Features))?^


!Content Creation and Management Tools

The following provides brief introductions to the various tools TikiWiki offers for creating and managing content on a TikiWiki site. Note that very few TikiWiki sites attempt to offer all these features. On most TikiWiki sites, you'll find ((Articles)), ((Comments)), ((FAQ)), ((Forums)), ((File Gallery)), and ''naturally'', a ((Wiki)). 


!!((Articles)) 

The articles & submissions system allows editors to publish articles in a Content Management System (CMS), with administrable advanced topics system, image inclusion, control on publishing dates, submission system. The articles enable full use of wiki syntax as well as regular HTML. Articles home page lists the most recent articles in a slashdot-like manner.


!!((Blog))

Blog are great and they are very popular today. A weblog is a collection of posts ordered by date. It's like a journal on the web. A post can be a comment about something the user did, a review, a thought, anything. The Tiki Blog system is quite powerful. Users can create blogs and, of course, post entries into private or public blogs. If you want, you can choose a Blog and make it appear as the home page of the site. Tiki also implements the Blogger XMLRPC interface, allowing you to use applications such as wBloggar or Blogbuddy to manage and edit weblogs.


!!((Comments)) 

Comments are used to provide user-feedback to many Tiki features. Users can comment on Wiki pages, image galleries, file galleries, articles and polls. The comment system can be configured to allow users to vote on comments. A karma system maintains a level for each user. The level improves when a user comment is voted on by another user. Good qualified users votes add more points to a comment than users who didn't get good qualifications. Comments can be displayed/hidden using simple controls and the user can control how to sort votes, the number of votes to see by page and the minimum threshold (score) for a vote to be displayed.


!!((Directory))

The directory organizes Web links into convenient categories similar to the dmoz open directory project or Yahoo! Users can browse link descriptions navigating the categories by drilling down to increasingly specific sub-categories. Or they may search for specific text. Users can also suggest links they would like to see added to a directory. Thus, a successful directory is built by its Tiki community. Admins, or editors they designate, can validate user suggestions before they are posted. An unlimited number of categories can be created and they can be related to one another encouraging users to move from one to another. Tiki tracks the addition of new links and the amount of traffic they attract. Users can view the top-ranked new sites and cool sites (heavy traffic sites) by clicking a button. Optionally, directory rankings/stats modules can be displayed in Tiki columns.


!!((FAQ))

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) are lists of common questions and answers about a specific topic. FAQ are widely used in online communities to group popular questions and have them solved without the need to repeat the same answer multiple times. Tiki allows you to create as many FAQ as you want with any number of questions in each FAQ. Optionally, users may be allowed to suggest questions to be answered, which admins/editors can reply to or delete.


!!((File Gallery))

The file galleries section of Tiki is a very flexible download manager. You can create/edit file galleries, which are collections of files. Using the permission system, you can control who can create file galleries, upload files and download files. Statistics are recorded for each download. Rankings are defined for the top-downloaded files, most-visited file galleries, and last-uploaded files. Modules are also available to display last-changed file galleries, last-uploaded files, top-downloaded files and top-visited file galleries. You can use file galleries to distribute free multimedia files (mp3's, avi's, etc) and software (versions, patches, releases) and to add files that users can download from Wiki pages, articles, weblog posts, etc.


!!((Forums))  

Forum are a must-have feature for a community site. A forum is a collection of topics containing user messages. Using Tiki you can configure as many forums as you want and establish permissions to determine who can create forums, admin forums, create topics, post messages, vote on messages, etc. Individual permissions can be set for forums so you can have private forums only visible to some user groups. The forums section in Tiki has many advanced features such as auto-prunning to prevent the base of messages growing too big, flood-preventing, sticky topics, locked topics, etc.


!!((HTML Pages))

Tiki offers a simple way for creating pages that will be displayed to the users and that can be linked from/to any place in your site. Just create an HTML page using the editor and then you can access it using tikipage. php?pageName=some. The simple html pages system can be extended with the addition of dynamic pages.

A dynamic page is an HTML page where you can use the syntax {ed id=foo} to create dynamic sections inside the page. An editor will be automatically available to edit each dynamic zone of a dynamic page. Dynamic pages will be automatically updated without a browser refresh and without making the user refresh the page. So dynamic pages are great for sport scores, stock information, real time coverage of events or other uses that you may imagine.


!!((Image Gallery)) 

Image galleries are collections of images. Users can create galleries and upload images to private or public galleries. You can select the number of thumbnails to appear in gallery rows/files as well as the thumbnail's size. Thumbnails are automatically created by Tiki; you don t have to upload them. Galleries can be used for albums, stories, showrooms, and many other applications.


!!((Maps))

An optional usage of MapServer make it possible to shre maps and browse them in tikiwiki, with zoom, queries, interface to modify mapfiles and upload new map data in professional format (ersi and mapinfo).


!!((Newsletters)) 

The newsletters feature allows admin to define as many newsletters as he or she wants. Users can subscribe to newsletters and a email confirmation is required to prevent spamming. Then admin can send HTML-based newsletters to the (confirmed) subscribers. This can be used to communicate site news, broadcast site events, etc.


!!((Polls))

Polls are a common feature in user-community sites. Using Tiki you can create as many polls as you want and display from zero to n polls in the Tiki pages. You can also have a set of several active polls and display only one poll in a page. In that case, Tiki will rotate through the set of polls. Users with the right permission can see poll results, examine old polls and vote in any poll that is not closed.


!!((Quiz)) 

Quiz can be used for fun, for trivia, for contests or for creating courses and e-learning sites. A quiz is made of a number of multiple-choice questions, each option in a question can be assigned positive or negative points. After the user takes a quiz Tiki computes the score and an answer can be displayed to the user depending on his or her score. You can control if quizzes can be repeated and you can indicate a time limit for quizzes. If you want, quiz results can be stored and you can review the results. Statistics are always stored for quizzes--keeping track of the results of each quiz.


!!((Surveys))

Surveys can be used to gather the opinion of users in your site. You can create surveys using different question formats: short-text questions, multiple-choice questions, single-choice questions and two different rate questions. Users can fill in the surveys and then you and they can check the survey's statistical results.


!!((Trackers)) 

Trackers are a powerful and flexible tool. Trackers are used to keep a record of a collection of items. You can set up what fields items will have per tracker. Then you can add/remove items, list items, comment items, attach files to items etc. Items can be assigned to user/groups and if the item is open it will appear in the user-preferences screen. Trackers/items can be monitored by email. You can use trackers for support tickets, feature requests, buying orders, bug reporting, feedback reporting, submission of news, etc. Many workflows can be modeled using one or more trackers.


!!((Wiki)) 

The Wiki is a collaboration environment where the users can edit the pages they read. Links to wikipages are created automatically using capitalized words smashed together (e.g., WikiPage). A special editing syntax is used to provide features such as bold text, images, external links, etc. A history is kept for each page so admins can view diffs and rollback a page to a previous version if a user breaks a page. Wikis can be used for documentation, support, intranets, and many other uses. The Tiki Wiki system has all the normal features Wikis have plus a lot more.