How to increase active installs of XWiki?

[vmassol]

So in the spirit of that laziness, the install should be as easy as one of those package installation commands for one of the supported platforms. I suspect that will take a good deal of work, so the other possibility is preparing a self contained, prebuilt XWiki appliance that some one interested in evaluating the software can just download, and run under their hypervisor of choice.

I think we’re already doing that. We have 2 of them ATM:

• The deb install (with apt-get): https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/AdminGuide/Installation/InstallationViaAPT/
• The Docker images: https://hub.docker.com/_/xwiki/

What we’d like to add is a RPM one in the future but we’re lacking someone in the dev team using RPM. If someone could contribute and maintain one that would be the best FTM.

Do you have anything else in mind?

[pdwalker]

Please note that my installation memories my be incorrect, or I may have been just doing something silly. When I do a new install, I’ll actually pay attention and write down anything that actually is a real difficulty.

an update after your last post.

[vmassol]

Documentation II: There are a lot of “weird” search results in the google search index. Especially when I searched for more advanced stuff I found myself a lot on PDF Export or history pages for articles. Maybe you can prevent google to index these?

@rbr: do you have an example so that I can see what’s wrong and what would need to be changed?

Thanks

[vmassol]

Don’t fight Sharepoint, complement it: I digged up this Xwiki vs. Sharepoint comparison and while it is dated and has a lot of valid points I found that attacking Sharepoint is mostly fighting a losing battle. So it may be better to concentrate on the points where you can add value for a company alongside Sharepoint not trying to replace it. Maybe have an extension (if there is not any yet) that adds integration to sharepoint (export to sharepoint,…).

I agree with you. More generally speaking having a large number of integrations with all kind of external software is the best because it allows XWiki to fit in an existing ecosystem. It also does automatic advertising for XWiki.

The only issue is that developing integration is complex and long (and needs maintenance since the other software is constantly evolving too). I don’t see this as being possible for the xwiki dev team. As you can notice on extensions.xwiki.org there are several integrations (google docs, github, onlyoffice, etc). Nobody has done a sharepoint one yet though.

[rbr]

@rbr: do you have an example so that I can see what’s wrong and what would need to be changed?

Yes: This google search for xwiki form validation has this page as second(!) result.
And there are more, I’ll report them if I find more.

Maybe it would be a good idea to add rel="nofollow" to all “action links” like history, export, etc as described here.

[vmassol]

Ok I see, thanks for the example.

Maybe it would be a good idea to add rel=“nofollow” to all “action links” like history, export, etc as described here.

That’s an excellent idea Do you think you could create a JIRA issue for this?

[rbr]

Done: https://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-15386
I’m still not sure which component to choose, maybe you can help here?

[vmassol]

Done: https://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-15386

I’m still not sure which component to choose, maybe you can help here?

Thanks. I’ve added the affects version + component.

[vmassol]

Get more enterprise “aware”:

Just one example: Asking for “grant all privileges on . to xwiki@localhost[…]” (see here ) is nothing I could pull off easily in most companies I know.

Note that this this is not something required by XWiki. XWiki just needs to be able to create a database/schema, delete a database/schema, etc. I think this is just a documentation issue. The problem is that us devs are not aware of the right config required (we’re not DBAs). so we’ve been waiting for the community and for people with good knoweldge of MySQL to update it to the minimum required

AFAIR several users have identified the minimum required along the years but none seems to have contributed it back in the page. That’s sad.

Could someone help out on this?

EDIT: I’ve modified the page and updated the text FTM: Give privileges to the xwiki user for accessing and creating databases (for the multi wiki support). Specifically the xwiki users needs permissions to be able to execute CREATE DATABASE, DROP SCHEMA, and then all CRUD operations on tables. Note that the command below should be tuned to be more restrictive as granting all permissions is not required:

[safronovyua]

Hello!

I think it will be an interesting and hot discussion, thanks for the questions.
I will also bring in my 5 cents:

1. Attracting more users / Have XWiki bundled in some distributions (e.g. linux distributions) & Attracting more users / Provide an XWiki package on the Snap Store (an app store for Linux supported by more and more distributions and the list is already impressive) & Keeping users / Fail to install XWiki:

After a long search, I accidentally found the site Bitnami (https://bitnami.com/stacks), on which I found acceptable builds:
a) To test XWiki on Windows: https://bitnami.com/stack/tomcat, which included the entire Apache Web Server, Tomcat, MySQL - all that was missing was XWiki
c) For installation in virtualization work : https://bitnami.com/stack/tomcat/virtual-machine, VM Debian, includes everything above.

On the Bitnami site there was a survey of users which systems they would like to see in assemblies. I answered - XWiki.
Please note that they already have some wiki systems builds, use search word Wiki.

[safronovyua]

2. Keeping users / Fail to install XWiki & * Generally too complex to use / Frustration:

I think that for a transparent and easy installation, XWiki requires:

a) See my first answer above about including XWiki in a pre-installed installation build, like Bitnami stacks. Where is my favorite?

b) You need the correct XWiki installation documentation, which describes the XWiki installation step by step, depending on the type of platform, container, DBMS, from and to. This documentation is already offered by users, you have links to it on the Admin Guide page. It is necessary to bring it to a good single species, check its operability. It is possible to place in a single place.

[safronovyua]

3. Attracting more users / Make it even simpler and more visible to demo XWiki on XWiki SAS Cloud & Keeping users / User don’t see all the nice things they can do with their wiki and stop for lack of knowing this & Keeping users / Doesn’t see the value of the features and what they can be used for:

There is such a suggestion: create several XWiki demos with a demonstration (settings) for different user groups, different scale of enterprises, for different end use, etc.
In each demo wiki, exactly those features that would clearly show the possibilities for this particular group of users or enterprise configuration, etc. should be presented.
Nothing extra, do not mix and merge all the possibilities in one pile!

Fine tuning in each demo should be subject to:
0) Wiki type: private personal, collective open, worker closed, etc.

1. Appearance of the main page, panels, available applications in the panels.
2. Login and authorization options.
3. Users and user groups.
4. Wiki structure: it can be a knowledge base, it can be a blog or just a forum.
   etc.

In short: create templates for basic demos with a demonstration of the advantages and capabilities for each option! Here! Wow …

[safronovyua]

4. Attracting more users / Keeping users:

A comparative analysis of XWiki’s capabilities with other competitors should be conducted. How I did it in my work when choosing a wiki system as a presentation (can I upload it here for an example?).

Only in your case it should be not only a presentation, but also a full report in the form of a table. Link to the report should be from the main page of your site, and not only.

See: https://www.wikimatrix.org/

[safronovyua]

5. Attracting more users / Write a book about XWiki:

My thoughts:

1. An example of a free translated into various languages books about Git - https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

2. Creating a book should be incremental, you need to start small in the first version and continue to increase the material in the next versions of the book. The frequency of new versions of the book can vary from week to …
   This approach I met in the book The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development

[safronovyua]

In short: create templates for basic demos with a demonstration of the advantages and capabilities for each option! Here! Wow …

I’m going to further the idea: we need not only demo wikis on your resource, but also an installation and configuration wizard in the wiki itself, which will initially offer one of the prepared options (Wiki Templates) for the wiki to choose from.

By selecting the desired wiki template, the user gets the appearance of the wiki, the necessary applications and extensions, sample user groups, wiki template structure, the rights of groups and pages, if possible at this stage, etc.

---

P.S.
I also saw an interesting version of a remote builder (constructor) of firmware for a Wi-Fi module ESP on the site. The customer chooses which configuration he needs, pays a nominal fee and gets access to download the firmware.
Perhaps this option will appear and you!

[maxroub]

I can say that from self-hosting perspective it would be great to see Xwiki
in a Snapcraft or another isolation package system,
in a webapp platform like yunohost or Sandstorm,
or as a TKL appliance (somehow I liked it more than Bitnami).

Installation is kind of straight-forward: thanks to your repository. But initial setting is not so clear.

[vmassol]

I can say that from self-hosting perspective it would be great to see Xwiki
in a Snapcraft or another isolation package system,
in a webapp platform like yunohost or Sandstorm,
or as a TKL appliance (somehow I liked it more than Bitnami).

Thanks for the ideas Max. We need some volunteer to create these packaging and maintain them. Would be willing to do that?

Also we have apt-get support and docker too which both are supposed to make it easy to install/upgrade XWiki. Don’t they fit your needs?

Thanks

PS: I agree with you that the max packagings we have the better it is to increase active installs of XWiki. The only limit is having some devs to create and maintain lots of packagings.

[maxroub]

I really miss snap-like variant, and considering to invest in this direction. But without commitments yet.

Hope that I can manage it. But can’t even estimate complexity yet. Looks like to settle another build environment and adapt with new releases.
Does somebody aware of typical problems?

[vmassol]

I really miss snap-like variant, and considering to invest in this direction. But without commitments yet.

Hope that I can manage it. But can’t even estimate complexity yet.

Would be awesome. I can certainly help answer XWiki setup questions. I’m maintaining the official XWiki Docker images.

Thanks

[xrichard]

My suggestion (I have not seen above) is to promote myxwiki / community hosting and make it really work .

By hosting more “litle” wikis, “readers” can discover this marvelous tool and “content editor” can test its power without (the technical pain of) installation.

What do you think?