ikiwiki/doc/features.mdwn

[[WhyIkiWiki]]?

Currently implemented:

* [[Subversion]]

  Rather than implement its own system for storing page histories etc, ikiwiki      simply uses subversion. (Supporting other revision control systems is also possible, ikiwiki only needs $FOO add, $FOO commit, and $FOO log).

  Instead of editing pages in a stupid web form, you can use vim and commit changes via svn. Or work disconnected using svk and push your changes out when you come online. Deal with edit conflicts with others in a sane environment. Take advantage of subversion's smart merges.

 ikiwiki can be run from a [[post-commit]] hook to update your wiki immediately whenever you commit.

* [[MarkDown]]

  ikiwiki supports pages using [[MarkDown]] as their markup language. Any
  page with a filename ending in ".mdwn" is converted from markdown to html
  by ikiwiki. Markdown understands text formatted as it would be in an email,
  and is quite smart about converting it to html. The only additional markup
  provided by ikiwiki aside from regular markdown is the [[WikiLink]].

* support for other file types

  ikiwiki also supports files of any other type, including raw html, text,
  images, etc. These are not converted to wiki pages, they are just copied
  unchanged by ikiwiki as it builds your wiki. So you can check in an image,
  program, or other special file and link to it from your wiki pages.

* [[SubPage]]s

  Arbitrarily deep hierarchies of pages with fairly simple and useful [[SubPage/LinkingRUles]]

* Fast compiler

  ikiwiki is fast and smart about updating a wiki, it only builds pages that have changed (and tracks things like creation of new pages and links that can indirectly cause a page to need a rebuild)

* [[Templates]]

  ikiwiki generates html using templates so you can change the look and 
  layout of all pages in any way you would like.

* [[BackLinks]]

  Automatically included on pages. Rather faster than eg [[MoinMoin]] and always there to help with navigation.

* [[PageHistory]]

  Well, sorta. Rather than implementing YA history browser, it can link to
  [[ViewCVS]] or the link to browse the history of a wiki page.

* [[RecentChanges]], editing pages in a web browser

  Nearly the definition of a wiki, although perhaps ikiwiki challenges how
  much of that web gunk a wiki really needs. These features are optional
  and can be enabled by enabling [[CGI]].

* User registration

  Can optionally be configured to allow only registered users to post
  pages; online user registration form, etc.

* Discussion pages

  Thanks to subpages, every page can easily and automatically have a
  /Discussion subpage. By default, these links are included in the
  [[templates]] for each page.

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It also has lots of [[TODO]] items and [[Bugs]]. This wiki is not ready for production!