Is it currently possible to use Cristal 0.18 as UI for a running XWiki 17.4.1 instance?

Hi! Just to be as sure as possible before any attempt! To the best of my current understanding, I should be able to install a “Cristal server” and use a current XWiki 17.4.1 installation as its wiki data backend.

Am I correct? Thanks!

Hello, and thanks for your interest!
You are correct, XWiki can be used as a data source for Cristal.

If you want to try it without having to perform a deployment yourself, you can use our demo instance: https://cristal.demo.xwiki.com/ (the content is reset nightly, but the user accounts are preserved)

You can also find the details of the configuration process of an XWiki instance to make it compatible with Cristal in the documentation.
The process is not as simple as we’d wish it to be yet.

  • A Cristal Integration extension is soon to be released and should simplify the installation process
  • the CORS and OpenID connect steps of the setup can also be addressed by improvements that will be planned in future roadmaps.
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Thanks, @mleduc!

I succeeded in installing our own Cristal instance on an old computer. It is now available as a redirection at Cristal@OneMultiverse.

I need time to understand what is going on under the scene. Although it could sound a bit weird, the first thing I’m concerned with is how to modify the font, logo, and structure and content of frames (menus, buttons, etc.).

Could you please give me a hint to advance on this objective?

To possibly get Cristal and Xwiki used here, I need to mimic the look and feel of the main website of my current company.

I made some advances to tuning the “traditional” XWiki installations by using the huge number of available alternatives, but I am very excited about the possibility of understanding and working with Cristal!

If I’m not wrong, our Cristal is now serving XWiki pages from https://cristal-backend.demo.xwiki.com/xwiki. I will try now to connect it now to an XWiki 17.4.1 wiki running on the same box.

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You are welcome to open discussions if you need more details. I’m curious to know where our documentation lacks clarity.

None of those features are available currently. I encourage you to open improvements issue on https://jira.xwiki.org/browse/CRISTAL
While I can’t promise they will be part of the next roadmaps, inputs from the community will definitely be considered.

For now, the main mechanism we provide to customize the appearance of a Cristal instance is through Abstract Design Systems. But, this requires development efforts, and will not allow for a lot of flexibility to change the default layout of Cristal.

I confirm.

Let us know if you hit bumps along the road!

Thanks to the Diátaxis approach to technical documentation, I’m sure I will be able to explain to you what I’m missing. In principle, I don’t think it is a problem with documentation, it is a problem with me trying to understand complex concepts in some few hours! Nothing new under the sun! But I will survive with your help!

I will do my best!

I’m curious about why it is so hard to add flexibility to the layout. I’m right now starting to understand how to use the tones of options XWiki offers us to fine-tune the look and feel of the UI (layout and components). Furthermore, I can easily understand that Cristal, being at the beginning of its development, can’t offer the same possibilities, but I don’t understand why to use an approach that declares that its objective IS NOT to allow for the redefinition of the layout and positioning of visual elements.

Be sure I will! Thanks!

So far: I’ve clone Cristal, and have it running on Ubuntu and macOS, but I’ve not being able to add a single page yet! See the error below in the image below:


Any idea is welcome! Thanks!

It’s not strictly speaking hard, just the development of another aspect that wasn’t put on top of the priority list.

It’s just because it’s orthogonal. The existent of abstract design systems has no impact on the flexibility of the layout, but also does not prevent us from implementing it either.

The message could be made less technical. But it seems to indicate that the current user doesn’t have edit rights on Main.test.WebHome. A few things to check:

  • are you logged in?
  • if you are, is the current use allowed to edit Main.test.WebHome?

All your answer before this question sounds great and challenging. Let’s concentrate now in business basis: login, edit and/or create contents. I’m afraid I’m not logged in. Here what I get:

Any clue? Thanks!

Reading at the logs, it appears that the cookies cannot be saved because you are running Cristal over http instead of https.
For now, the only solution is to serve Cristal over an https connection.

Thanks, @mleduc. What is not clear to me is how to serve Cristal over an HTTPS connection. Buy default, it starts on port 9000, and serves pages over http. I see the option HTTP_PORT, but how could I start it serving pages over HTTPS? Must I set up an HTTPS proxy?