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This is an old revision of IndependentWikkaReviews made by DarTar on 2005-07-23 01:28:36.

 

Opinions about Wikka


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Table of contents
  1. Reviews
  2. Feedback from users
  3. More on Wikka


Reviews

This is a list of opinions taken from independent reviews of Wikka.

Jay, who is big into wiki projects, is recommending TWiki although he is currently using Wikka,..

My personal knowledge/life/research management system is based on a wiki system (was zwiki, now WikkaWiki Wikka wiki). When I am working on something by extensively using one or more Wiki pages, I usually use the Wikka category feature to mark a page as CurrentWork (sometimes plus a certain degree of importance) so later I can retrieve them by visiting a dynamically generated CurrentWork page.
However, the unit of organization has to be a page. I am against prematurely creating too many low granularity pages so I have many ongoing big Wiki nodes which will only be broken down into small ones later when necessary. Within some big nodes, I have small todos which can be marked with a couple of unique strings. Wikka provides a feature called Text Search Expanded which will return the context a search string resides in along with the page title. When I search those unique strings, I can get a list of smaller todos. Using it in combination with the category feature, I feel it very productive. It works like tagging but the granularity level is much lower.


Features that make Wikka Wiki a winner:
In short, it’s a dinkum wiki. Glad I took the time to install so many and play around with them before I settled on Wikka, and that OS X had most of the tools needed built into it’s foundation so that it was relatively painless to do so.

I decided to build the Central Intake wiki using the WikkaWiki engine. It's responsive, has an almost "weblog"/word processor-like toolbar across the top for building links, and allows people to edit pages by "double-clicking" in the text area.
I think people will catch on pretty qwikily.
Later: How much do I like WikkaWiki? Enough to dump weblog software and use it instead.


I was recently looking around at wiki scripts to run my own wiki-based projects. Naturally, the first script I looked at was the MediaWiki script used by Wikipedia. In fact, at the time, I already had in mind to use that script. It had not occurred to me that there might be any other script to use. After opening up the script to poke around, however, I realized that it was so horrible that not only was I dissuaded from using it without looking for other scripts, I was resolved that it would probably be better to write my own wiki script than to use the MediaWiki script (luckily, I didn’t have to, because Wikka is pretty good)

I have been using my wiki on mookiesplace.org for keeping track of stuff that is not time-based (like the stuff here on ultramookie). But, I have found that the RSSInfo RSS facilities built into WikkaWiki Wikka Wakka Wiki is really useful! I am using my wiki a lot lately as my web-based newsreader because it is so simple to setup and use.

I think WikkaWiki has some strong points, even compared to MediaWiki. To me, it’s a good balance between features and lightness. (davidm)
David, I fully agree I installed WikkaWiki locally today and I have played with it some and it’s just what I was looking for. It has all the features that I wanted without feeling like it is bloated like MediaWiki can be at times (Niloc)


Amongst the very many wikies available (all of them with very similar names!!) this is my favourite as it is very compact, easy to install, but yet offer the possibility to make certain pages public and certain others not.

Roger Schank (1988) points out that creativity consists of two subprocesses: 1) Search process, looking among previously experienced explanation patterns. 2) Alteration process, modifying an explanation derived from one situation to be used in another.
If I look at the subprocess 1, Internet search engines and new personalised search agents look quite promising to me with simplified UIs. With these search tools it is quite easy to find out what is publicly known about the topic and whether my own approach is unique. Sometimes the ability to visualise things and see their connections is even more valuable. Therefore, I am currently excited about mindmap tools that could help me visualise large data masses like blogosphere (Mindmanager X5 and open source variants WikkaWiki linked to FreeMind).


[M]y first wiki was MediaWiki, and I just decided it was.. 'too much'. I wanted something that was easier, cleaner interface, and where new users with something to say would be more likely to add content and ended up with WikkaWiki (Jason Rahaim)

I've come to the end of my reach with my current WikiEngine and its come to pick a new one. [...] I've decided to go with Wikka Wiki, which is a fork of a dead project called WakkaWiki. Yes, Wakka does sound familiar, and yes it was named after the Final Fantasy X character. Until reading further about each Get Wiki was going to be the primary choice, as it was a fork of an older version of MediaWiki (1.1.0). What made me choose Wikka was the fact that it supported embedding FreeMind FreeMind MindMaps. You can simply copy the 'code' of the FreeMind MindMap into the page and it will render a FreeMind MindMap into the page. Or you can simply upload your FreeMind MindMap to your domain and simply put a link to it. The WikiEngine will render the linked life into the page where the link is. Collapsible elements, icons, colours and all.. I just couldn't consider something else.

In this article about the competition between Microsoft and Lamp, Wikka is mentioned as one example for free software solutions running on lamp.

I think commitment is a mark of character and the prerequisite of success with any meaningful goal, and I would just like to give one more nod to the developers of Wikka Wiki for taking an active interest in my satisfaction with their product. Wikka Wiki has my vote for “wiki engine of the year.” It is truly The Little Wiki That Could. A powerful little tool that comes with a full set of features and a development team that is working hard to make it even more powerful and easy to use. [...] Wikka Wiki seems to be the perfect solution for what I need to do. It has an RSS capability which allowed me to display my delicious links to Wikka’s relevant support pages and create a custom support page; allows users to lock down any pages that they create, limiting read, write, and comment privileges - which may appeal to people doing educational research for a variety of reasons; presents a very simple interface and allows for categorization of content, making it easy to search; displays images, flash files, and also supportsFreeMind mind mapping software. There’s more, too. Take a look at the full feature list.

I have been running OpenWIKI (which sits on ASP and MSSQL). While it is great of of the 'box', it lacks file-uploads and features for handeling code snippets. Wikka a GPL, PHP, MYSQL wiki with much stronger features for formatting, attachments, and code snippets.

...Die Engine macht soweit einen recht flotten Eindruck, das Programm ist nicht übermässig gross und hat alle Features, die man so braucht. Nachdem es auch MySQL als Datenbackend nutzt, ist es zudem recht flott. Was es bisher leider noch nicht gelernt hat, sind Locales, damit ist die Benutzerführung bisher nur auf Englisch möglich. ...

Um strukturierte Textinhalte online abzulegen eignet sich ein WiKi am besten. WikkaWiki ist eine schlanke und flexible Wiki-Engine. [...] Das WikkaWiki sticht durch seine einfache Installation sowie übersichtliche Stuktur, einfache Handhabung und sehr gut und ausführlich behandelte Dokumentation heraus. Es eignet sich auch für Wiki Neuanfänger, da es die Wiki Formatierungen ganz genau beschreibt. Auch ich selbst habe dieses Wiki für meine Software-Dokumentationen udgl. im Einsatz und kann dieses Programm nur weiterempfehlen.

Wikka is an Wiki written in PHP with some great features:
PHP and MYSQL make it lightweight and fast. (Okay so that’s propaganda from the website but it really is great.)
Page level security so you can determine which pages can be viewed and edited by others.
Like other Wikis it uses the CamelCase syntax for links to other pages but it also has some neat tricks for creating elements like lists, horizontal bars, etc.
Its functionality can be extended using plugins called actions. People have written actions to display rss feeds and calendars among others.


I think WikkaWiki is a very under-rated powerful wiki system. If you look at the feature list, it has many thoughful productive features which overcome some of the limitation of a wiki system.

I couldn’t find any wiki software that I liked. Some were too simple, some were too hard, some did not work, and mostly some did not have access control as I wanted. I finally stumbled on one named Wikka Wiki which has most of the features that I wanted without the bloat and side-effects. It runs nicely, I finally got a chance to get it installed and running.

I choose Wikka because I really liked how it works compared to flexwiki, plus it has built in FreeMind integration, which I just found phenomenally cool. Wikka itself was very easy to setup, and just as quick to get up to speed using it. I'm also a big fan of how it handles security per page, basically keeping a separate ACL for each page where you can specify who can see, edit, and comment on the page.

I love this new wiki. It's the only one I found that has commenting feature for each page and a good log of activity. I'm using a copy of it to collaborate with two people on writing a book about Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur for international interns arriving here.

Thanks to a link submitted for consideration in the InnovationTools links directory, I just learned that Wikka, an open-source wiki tool, enables you to embed mind maps created in FreeMind, a free program written in Java. You can either link to an external FreeMind map, or you can embed it directly into a Wikka page. Very cool!

After chatting to the guys on #mobitopia over the weekend I took the plunge and installed a Wiki on my box this morning. I chose the Wikka Wiki and in all the installation is painless. Upload the unpacked distribution to a web-visible directory. Create a MySQL database. Call the Wikki installation page, fill out a couple of fields and off you go.

I was using Twiki for a while and it worked great but for a personal wiki it was really too full featured and I found myself worrying about a lot of things I didn't need to. I switched over to Wikka Wakka Wiki which is a snap to install and it's stripped down to just the basics so it's perfect for my own useses. We're also using that for the public and internal Metroblogging wikis and it's turned out to be really great. That's my experience anyway.

I like MindMaps for brainstorming and storing keywords with links but it's less suitable for lots of information and collaboration.
So I was looking for an alternative. I liked the Wiki concept but I missed the visual representation of the information (and relationships within the wiki). But then I stumbled upon the Wikka Wiki. It's a nice clean wiki with an integration with freemind. The next release should integrate even better.
Now I'm testing the Wikka Wiki and FreeMind and it looks very promising.

Wakka had a few limitations of its own, such as relying on the tab character with no practical way of using it, lack of strike through text, lack of source code highlighting, lack of tables, etc. I also realized that Wakka had officially stopped development in March 2004, which spawned a whole slew of forks.
[...] After perusing through the list, Wikka Wiki stood out as containing a number of new features while adhering to Wakka's simplistic UI. Best of all, it comes with a javascript-based editor that can be used to apply formatting, lists, links, etc to your document. A few other notable features over Wakka include inline images, built-in search, and source code highlighting.

While other wiki engines are mostly cumbersome to install and handle Wikka is a perfect example for simplicity in both areas.

Wikka, eine andere Wiki-Software, ist offenbar sowohl für Administratoren als auch für Autoren noch einfacher zu handhaben, und ist sicherlich unschlagbar für alle, die schon Websites in HTML geschrieben haben und die dabei gewonnenen Fertigkeiten weiter anwenden möchten. Wikka ist auch schön, wenn man zu jeder einzelnen Wiki-Seite sofort einen RSS-Feed haben will, oder gar Mindmaps.

One of the absolute plusses of (...) WikkaWiki is that it is possible to dynamically include Freemind mindmaps, keeping them clickable and all. This (...) beats Freeminds basic HTML-export handily by offering you the real thing.

[Der] vielleicht wichtigste Nachfolger der legendären Wiki-Engine WakkaWiki

Wikka is a very promising lightweight but still immature wiki engine that can power small wikis quickly and efficiently. After it matures, it could become a serious competitor to other more known wiki engines.

WikkaWiki — Developed by Jason Tourtelotte is a very nice wiki engine, standards-compliant, feature-rich wakka fork. Probably the best around.

De wiki hier gebruikt op het moment WikkaWiki. De reden daarvoor is dat de code daarvan netter gebleven is. En gezien het aantal aanpassingen dat er toch gemaakt wordt in de code is dat wel zo handig.

[Nous] avons particulièrement apprécié l’éditeur (compatible IE mais surtout Mozilla), la possibilité de créer facilement des catégories et la présence d’un fil XML-RSS des modifications.


Feedback from users


If you are using Wikka and want to tell us your opinion about it, just add it here.
Note: some of the opinions reported below are excerpts from external sites. Should you want to remove or modify them, for instance for privacy reason, feel free to edit this page.



(PeeJay)

(LukaV)

I wanted to add some functionality to my WakkaWiki site, but found that they disappeared. Upgrading to Wikka gave me all the features that I wanted, and a bunch more.
Good job all!
(Jeff)


Now we found Jason Tourtelotte, who started Wikka. Wikka is what WakkaWiki should have been, he says. Good job!
(Bas)



But Wikka is still actively being developed, bugs are being fixed etc.
The lack of that was the main reason for me to move from Wakka.
The PHP-code of Wikka stays closer to the way the original Wakka code has been written and I find that (personal opinion) code easier to understand than the Wacko code.
(Pierre)

My first try with a Wiki was the WakkaWiki, the next logical step was to change to Wikka. And so i did.




WikkaWiki is also much faster than MediaWiki. I tried that for a little while, and found that it was too slow. Anyway, I like how there's so much development going into WikkaWiki.
Thanks for the good work.




(BotMan)



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