The goal is to have some open discussions about XWiki: pain points, future, ideas, etc.
See below for ideas of proposed agenda. Please reply below if you’re going to attend and/or if you wish to propose some topics to cover. We’re always keen to hear from XWiki users around the world; thus if you’re an XWiki user please join us to explain to us what you’re doing with XWiki!
I see @nha4601 has registered too which is cool. It means that we’ll have 2 XWiki users which is great. Usually there are plenty of xwiki devs but less users And we always love to hear how users use XWiki, and see what they’re missing, what they like/don’t like, etc.
Anything specific you’d be interested in hearing about?
Hmm oddly I think XWiki is pretty much perfect I researched quite a few wiki solutions to arrive at XWiki, what would be really nice is some video examples of certain common situations, like it seems a really common thing to want hostname based wikis:
I got it wrong and as of such will be redoing my install (this coming tuesday), it would be nice for one of the devs to youtube/video them doing an install. I imagine you would immediately start getting community feedback from it going ‘Ah on mine … I did’ therefore allowing the production of more of such things.
Also gives a nice way for users who like me was looking at wiki solutions to be able to see how it all works
Here are some topics I’m prepared to discuss. I wanted to jot down some notes before the meeting and realized that I might as well post them! Please feel free to add/edit these.
How we’re using XWiki:
a. internal corporate wiki application for use as an engineering knowledge base; XWiki selected after comparing 13 different tools. I personally
b. content in both French and English
c. trying to standardize and coordinate best practices across six physical locations across the USA, UK, and France
d. we would like to use XWiki’s class structure to establish input forms, display templates, and standard properties for different types of content pages. We’ve established a preliminary data model, but have encountered challenges in trying to implement it (due to complexity, bandwidth, available XWiki examples)
e. Deployed in a Windows environment (offline, no internet access); will transition to using IIS as reverse-proxy for ease and simplicity of integrated Windows authentication for logging network activity
f. We are trying to use content moderation to ensure that our content has high integrity. We’ve established moderators for sections of content who, in theory, should subscribe to page notifications and actively direct and review edits. → Are there any extensions for tracking moderation activites, i.e. mark pages as patrolled?
Feedback:
a. Impressive performance, response time, stability; much easier to administer compared to MediaWiki
b. Bundled features are key and ease deployment
c. Visual editor works well and is a must for having a low barrier for user participation
d. Class structure seems more formal and capable compared to SemanticMediaWiki; however, it is more difficult to learn and has fewer built-in result formats.
e. Integrated Solr search demonstrates impressive capabilities compared with simple text search only (which is provided by many other software tools)
Desired customizations:
a. Is it possible to add additional facets to the Solr index and page class structure? For example, it would be helpful to have a property for site/location applicability and to be able to use this for faceted search.
b. Long-term we would like to extend site icons with custom developed icons for our different products for easy use in content pages.
c. Customize deployment of HelpCenter application - Maybe the solution for us is to not deploy HelpCenter. We want the Home\Help page to cover not only XWiki software help, but also topics on how we’re using XWiki. Additional included content would be helpful for our novice users. We’re manually creating help pages on how to perform basic functions/tasks such as: external vs internal links, how to create links, difference between page name and title, how to add a table of contents, how to apply style formatting, etc.
d. easy template for navigation panels; We’ve currently hijacked the HelpCenter application code for displaying cards. I’ve posted a discussion thread on this, but am still trying to work through the details of establishing similar functionality.
Ideas for new features:
a. Built-in (extension) to support layered and editable image markups. Many of our pages are “how-to” pages containing a list of steps with screenshots that have boxes, arrows, and comments drawn on them. There is no easy way to update the base layer (screenshot), but maintain all of the markups.
Best practices - it would be good to establish these for:
a. Deployment environments
b. Configuration tracking (I’ve thought about installing git on our server and mirroring files to a git repository to track and manage changes to our configuration - not sure if this is best practice or if there is a better method)
c. Management of video assets- should these be stored externally, or managed directly on XWiki (there is an extension for this, but I went a different route based on video file size and our backup strategy - which has a daily snapshot of attachments - this would explode in size!)
Wish list:
a. More documentation, examples, explanation, etc. How best to navigate to hidden pages.
b. Expand user community; more active user community; annual conference similar to EMWCon
And we always love to hear how users use XWiki, and see what they’re missing, what they like/don’t like, etc.
and as of such will be redoing my install (this coming tuesday), it would be nice for one of the devs to youtube/video them doing an install. I imagine you would immediately start getting community feedback from it going ‘Ah on mine … I did’ therefore allowing the production of more of such things.