[Question] template feature for QtDN wikis
-
MediaWiki, the software that keeps Wikipedia running, has an inclusion capability. It can be (and is heavily) used for building so-called template pages. These are included within thematically connected wiki pages to build a navigation menu.
Has our wiki engine a similar feature? If not: can it be implemented?
One use case can be read here http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/4355/
-
[quote author="Wolf P." date="1299767687"]...and who decided to use just this wiki engine, and when and why?[/quote]
Me, late 2009, because integrating MediaWiki and ExpressionEngine would require an unproportionate amount of resources spent on low level integrations instead of getting devnet on the air.
It might sound like a fun engineering challenge - and I'm sure it is - but not for a 2 man team that wants to get stuff done :)
It was a reality check based on something like this:
- 2x template code
- endless account integration headaches
- 3x work on performance
- 2x work on high availability
- non-uniform dev, stage and production environments
- ongoing matching issues with EE and MW releases
- 3x work for cross site features (tag, rating, points, syntax highlighting)
- 2x things to know to do content maintenance
- mediawiki has a ton of features that will never be used
- 2x vulnerability potential
- 2x weird config settings that can be set wrong and cause issues
And so on.
I think I've said it before here, but we can at any point decide to switch to MediaWiki if the benefit/disadvantage equation above turns positive.
I did the same math for using a different forum software as well, no doubt dedicated solutions like phpBB or vBulletin could do a great job as our forum.
One could be tempted to think of this as a lesson learned from Nokia at large, but don't, it's not :)
-
Oh, thanks for the effort and the full report. :)
Although I love MediaWiki somehow, I think it would be an overkill.
...what about
- MoinMoin or
- DokuWiki or even
- Trac? or
- "something else":http://www.wikimatrix.org/ - BTW: "Textile":http://textism.com/tools/textile/ isn't listed there (??)
-
I should have been more precise, MediaWiki was just an example. Replacing the native ExpressionEngine wiki engine with "any other" engine presents nearly the same challenges. :)
It's the eternal "best of breed" vs. "one stop shop" discussion, for devnet the "one stop shop" won - so far. The future is bright, maybe one day the limited functionality of the native wiki engine warrants all the extra effort above to get a dedicated wiki engine. We're not there yet though.