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20 posts, 9 voices - Latest reply from Bowe

Plugin: PmWiki in Buddypress.

Started 1 year ago by Timschmi

This topic is not a support question

Member

Timschmi

active 4 weeks ago

Dear Buddypress-Users,

at the University of OsnabrÃ¼ck, we currently work on a component/plug-in for Buddypress that enables us to integrate wikis (specifically PmWiki with a few add-ons for the MultiUser environment at our university) into Buddypress. Our goal is to allow each Buddypress user to create multiple wikis. The interface is similar to the creation of blogs and authentication works via Wordpress MU/Buddypress, which passes the user on to PmWiki. Additionally the Buddybar is going to be displayed (just like on a blog) above the wiki, in order to guide users back to Buddypress. We don't put any of the information (e.g. URL, name, description) in the Wordpress database, but in the wiki configuration files, so the Buddypress Plugin is pretty straight forward.

We will keep the options in Buddypress rather simple right now, but it might be possible and useful to invite users to write in a wiki via Buddypress. In this first step though, wiki users have to be entered manually.

We want to get the plugin ready by 03/30. If anyone is working on something similar (or knows about a similar project), we would appreciate it, if you could let us know.

All the best,

Tim Schmidt (Tim.Schmidt@uni-osnabrueck.de)

http://www.pmwiki.org/

Posted 1 year ago #

Member

Farms

active 6 months ago

Ahhhh... the wpmu + buddypress + integrated wiki platform question. Something we've actually spent quite a lot of time thinking about ourselves!

- First up, unfortunately there's nothing out there :/
- Secondly, a third party approach is definitely a decent idea as good wikis are hard to build!
- But finally, that's not as easy as it might at first appear - and you might end up wanting to simplify things a little and build a native plugin (which is what we've been toying with for sometime).

You can actually see an example of a very basic (internal) wiki setup over at our Edublogs Campus sandpit site: http://universityofblogs.com

U: admin P: pass (gets wiped every hour)

First up there's our (pree BP :) communities: http://universityofblogs.com/wp-admin/communities.php

And as you can see each community gets its own uber simple wiki, for example: http://universityofblogs.com/wp-admin/communities.php?action=wiki&cid=1

Am not pitching http://edublogs.org/campus/ (well, ok, I am a bit ;) but rather I think it's an example of what you can get done in a fairly simple way.

Of course though - having an extra 'communities' tab is kinda counter-BP-stylee... so you can make your mind up on that too, I'm sure most of the regulars around here would definitely see mucho lacking in our setup as opposed to BP (as do we!)

Hope that helps.

Cheers, James

Posted 1 year ago #

Member

Ostropunk

active 9 months, 2 weeks ago

Can I just say that you have made a excellent choice in pmwiki. Have you thought about making group wikis?

Posted 1 year ago #

Member

Timschmi

active 4 weeks ago

@James: Thank you for your comment. Did I get it right, that your wikis are only in the backend? We want wikis on the frontend like blogs or groups.

@ostropunkt: PmWiki is really great. We have thought and discussed making group wikis? But our solution was, that wikis and groups are working in the same way.
You have a list of all your wikis on your profil.
You can have public and privat wikis.
And you can invite your friends to your wiki.

Posted 12 months ago #

Member

Ostropunk

active 9 months, 2 weeks ago

@timschmi: That sounds really nice! I just have some questions and I would appreciate if you could answer them, if you have the time.

Will it use a wikifarm installation where the main installation is in /wiki/ and when a new wiki is created it will create an independent wiki in /wiki/examplewiki/ using the wiki-engine in /wiki/ or will it simply create a new group in the main wiki /wiki/?

Will it use the user authorisation from the wpmu/bp-database or the built in system?

Will you need someone to test it? (I'm no programmer but i would love to help in anyway i can.)

Will it be available for download?

Posted 12 months ago #

Member

Timschmi

active 4 weeks ago

> Will it use a wikifarm installation where the main installation is in /wiki/ and when a new wiki is created it will create an independent wiki in /wiki/examplewiki/ using the wiki-engine in /wiki/ or will it simply create a new group in the main wiki /wiki/?

It will be for example (Link will not work) http://mybuddypress.de/wikis/examplewiki
The engine will be the same for all the wikis. You can even those the skin for your wiki. But one cool feature is, that you can inherid material from the main wiki. The idee is: We have lots of course-material in one wiki. But you want to rearrange it useing the existing stuff in a subwiki. It is even possible to have something like. http://mybuddypress.de/wiki/examplewiki/wiki-for-our-next-meeting.
But we don't have a user interface for that at the moment.

> Will it use the user authorisation from the wpmu/bp-database or the built in system?
The authorisation will be from the wpmu/bp-database. If you are a user of Buddypress, you can create new wikis, invite friends etc. It is based on the group plugin and will work in a simular way.

> Will you need someone to test it? (I'm no programmer but i would love to help in anyway i can.)
If you send me an E-Mail i can give you the access-data. If you wan't to help, documentation und support will be importend. In a few weeks, i would love to see a video on wordpress.tv showing the stuff.

> Will it be available for download?
Yes. If it works correct and documentations is done, you can download it. Everything should be GPL.

----
Sorry for my english.
timschmi@uos.de

Posted 12 months ago #

Member

Ostropunk

active 9 months, 2 weeks ago

Great! I'm even more excited about this now. I've sent you an e-mail. :D

Posted 12 months ago #

Member

Farms

active 6 months ago

By the way, if you\'re a premium member we\'ve released our Communities plugin, including wiki functionality, here: http://wpmu.org/an-alternative-to-buddypress-three-new-wordpress-mu-plugins-communities-messaging-and-friends/

Posted 11 months ago #

Member

Zanzoon

active 11 months, 3 weeks ago

mmmm....wiki on buddypress, this would be amazing!
add to that a karma plugin for users who work more on the wiki and it will be just great!

Posted 11 months ago #

Member

Timschmi

active 4 weeks ago

Hello,

our PmWiki-plugin is now working under:
http://www.elloandfriends.uni-osnabrueck.de

You can sign up and test it. Please use hidden wikis, if you are not interested in english linguistics.

Posted 10 months ago #

Member

David Lewis

active 1 hour, 48 minutes ago

@Timschmi

That is so great! Will you be making the plugin available to the community at large? It's not that tightly integrated (you have to essentially leave BuddyPress and come back)... but it's better than nothing!

Perhaps integrated Wiki's will arrive in a future version of BuddyPress (Please BP team). I would envision them appearing within Groups. So group would navigation be "Home, Forum, Wire, Wikis, Members".

Posted 10 months ago #

Member

Timschmi

active 4 weeks ago

Wikis "appearing within Groups".

I think that integrating wikis into groups is not a good idea. You can have a blog without a group. And you can have a blog without a group. I think itâ€™s the same problem.

But it depends on your project.
Please try: (If you are logged in) My Account -> Wiki -> Create a wiki
Please use a privat wiki for testing. http://www.elloandfriends.uni-osnabrueck.de/

Ciao Tim

Posted 10 months ago #

Member

Ostro

active 10 months ago

@Timschmi

Hi Tim! I think that the plugin is looking good at the moment. Even if it's only in it's starting phase. Personally I would prefer a stronger integration, although this probably can be done with skins it would e neat if the wiki loaded inside bp much like group forums. But it's hardly very important right now. I have a question though.

Will it be available for download soon or is the plugin not meant for the public? Looking forward to being able to tinker with it on my testinstall of buddypress.

PS. As the plugin works now each wiki can have a wire. The user experience is pretty much the same as a group except it does not have a forum. And if I understood everything correct the plugin is based on buddypress groups. The difference right now between placing the wiki inside a group making a "group wiki" and how it is now is that the current solution basically creates 2 types of groups, one with forum function and one with wiki function.

As a wikis main function is often to document something it is usually tied to something. A community or a project, or if you will, a group. The nature of this documentation is fairly static and in depth, as in once the documentation is done it covers most aspects on the subject and changes very little. A wiki page is often written by many people.

Compared to that a blog is quite different. While a blog can be tied to something else it is tied much more loosely and can in fact stand on its own. The nature of a blogpost also differs from a wiki page in many ways. They tend to focus on the specialised and recent. You seldom return to a blogpost to edit it, you write a new one instead. A blogpost is often written by one person.

This is why I think merging the two different types of groups so that wikis appear inside groups instead of having them appear inside their own group category would be preferable.

While running blog on your own makes perfect sense, doing the same with a wiki does not. Especially on a social network site. If you simply just want to use a wiki-engine, simply just install one.

This is just some reflections I had on the plugin.

But then again elloandfriends is your project and you know best what kind of solutions will work for it. I also have no idea of the technical difficulties involved. But as for the plugin as such I think it would be more user friendly and create less confusion with wikis integrated in groups.

Posted 10 months ago #

Member

David Lewis

active 1 hour, 48 minutes ago

@Timschmi

As stated above, a blog is typically more personal... written by one person. A Wiki is the opposite. The whole point of a Wiki is group collaboration... group being the key word. So within an organization, you may have a Management group, an IT group, a Training group... etc... and they would all have their own documentation to manage and collaborate on. So to me... Wiki's within a group just make sense. Right now, the only thing you can share within a BuddyPress group is chat on the wire. But within an organization (for instance)... groups have much greater needs that that.

In case you couldn't tell... I'm hoping to use BP someday as an Intranet... which to me means social networking + collaboration and document sharing. BP 1.0 has the social networking aspect nailed right now. It's VERY nice. So sweet. I just hope it takes off and developers start getting on board to extend it.

p.s. I like the Elgg approach of having Wiki's and Files within groups but also allowing you to browse *ALL* Wikis and Files on the site... so you don't have to get to them from the group.

Posted 10 months ago #

Member

martinhason

active 5 months ago

@Timschmi:
Hi Tim! Much time have passed since the last post and I have an one question. Will pmwiki plugin be available for download? I would like to use it. If the plugin wasn't made public, I will have to write it again.

Posted 5 months ago #

Member

Timschmi

active 4 weeks ago

We will not release it at the moment, because you can't use it out of the box. But if you can programm in PHP then maybe it's a good starting point for your project. I will discuss it in the next week.

Posted 5 months ago #

Member

Bowe

active 1 day, 1 hour ago

I would be very interested in a simple wiki plugin for buddypress!

Posted 4 months ago #

Member

Timschmi

active 4 weeks ago

Hello, today we talked about our Wiki-Plugin.

There three elements involved.
1.) Buddypress Wiki-Component (Based on the Buddypress Group-Component)
2.) Wiki-Box. (The interface to create and manage PmWikis)
3.) A normal PmWiki with no changes.

We hope to get a new version of the wiki-box in the next 4 weeks. We need that to integrate PmWiki in our local CMS.
Than we will update the Buddpyress Wiki-Component, so it will work and the lastest realise of Buddypress. It will take around 2 - 4 Weeks. Hopefully the plugin will be out this year.
Than we have to clean it up und write some dokumentation.

But after launding
http://www.elloandfriends.uni-osnabrueck.de
http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de
we will realise a new Buddypress-Side. Sorry. Because of "money" this is more importend at the moment.

The plugin is very powerful. But i don't think it will work out of the box in every environment. You need to programm a bit of PHP to get it working for your needs.

Ciao Tim

Posted 4 months ago #

Member

D Cartwright

active 4 days, 10 hours ago

Hi there.

Would it be possible to work with you on this or get a copy of your code so far? I'm going to be working on something similar very soon and I'd be more than happy for us to collaborate.

Posted 4 months ago #

Member

Bowe

active 1 day, 1 hour ago

sounds promising Tim and I'm looking forward to it!

Posted 4 months ago #

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