Open Source For You — December 2017

http://www.OpenSourceForU.com | OPEN SOURCE FOR YOU | DECEMBER 2017 | 91

Let's Try For U & Me

D

okuWiki is PHP powered, modest but versatile

wiki software that handles all the data in plain text

format, so no database is required. It has a clear

and understandable structure for your data, which allows

you to manage your wiki without hassles. DokuWiki is

really flexible and offers various customisation options at

different levels. Since DokuWiki is open source, it has a

huge collection of plugins and templates which extend its

functionalities. It is also well documented and supported by

a vast community.

Although DokuWiki has numerous features, this article

focuses only on the basics, in order to get readers started.

Pages

Pages can be easily created in DokuWiki by simply launching

it on your browser. The first time, you will be shown a page

like the one in Figure 1.

Find the pencil icon on the right side; clicking on it

will open up an editor and that’s it. You can start writing

content on that page. The various sections of the page can

be identified by the headings provided on it. The sections

are listed out as a ‘Table of Contents’ on the top right

side of the page.

A wiki could be defined as a simple, collaborative content management system which

allows content editing. DokuWiki can be used for several purposes like a discussion

forum for members of a team, providing tutorials and guides, providing knowledge

about a topic, and so on.

Once you have finished typing the content on the page,

you can preview it by clicking the ‘Preview’ button at the

bottom of the editor. This will show you how your page will

be displayed after it is published.

Pages can be removed by purging all their contents. Once

a page is removed, all its interlinked pages too get removed.

But we can restore a page by choosing its ‘Old revisions’

option. This option stores snapshots of the page over different

time periods, so it is easy to restore a page with its contents

from a particular time period.

Namespaces

Typically, a wiki may contain lots of pages. It is important to

organise the pages so that the information the user seeks can

be found easily. Namespaces serve this purpose by keeping all

the relevant pages in one place. The following namespaces are

bundled along with the standard DokuWiki installation:

ƒ wiki

ƒ playground

It is recommended that if you want to try anything

before getting into a live production environment, use the

‘playground’ namespace.

To create a namespace, use the following syntax:

namespace_name: page_name

If the defined namespace doesn’t exist, DokuWiki

automatically creates it without any break in linkage with the

rest of the wiki.

To delete a namespace, simply erase all of its pages,

which leads to empty namespaces; DokuWiki automatically

deletes these.

Links

The linkage between the pages is vital for any wiki site.

This ‘linkability’ keeps the information organised and

easily accessible. By the effective use of links, the pages

are organised in a concise manner. DokuWiki supports the

following types of links in a page.

External links: These links deal with the external

resources, i.e., websites. You can use a complete URL for

a website such as http://www.duckduckgo.com or you can add

an alternative text for that website like [[https://www.

duckduckgo.com | search with DuckDuckGo]]. Also, we can

link an email ID by enclosing it with the angled brackets, for

example <[email protected]>.

DokuWiki: An Ace Among the Wikis