Hello!
I have been looking for a strong CMS to initially power a website I wish to develop for personal researching needs. I am a doctoral student in Instructional Technology, and I read a great deal as well as need a space for note taking.
What I wish to do, and why I seek this community of knowledgeable users, is to at first create a basic site using Drupal and password protect it for myself only. Then install a WikiMedia type environment behind the secured environment where I may log into my site from anywhere so that I can build collections of notes and referenced articles. At some point I intend to open up the security to include collaborative writing amongst fellow researchers. I am thinking of WikiMedia as a tool simply because it's an easy structure to quickly write within, but it is possible that the Book function within Drupal might be better, but I have no actual production experience with either WikiMedia or Books in Drupal.
So the question is initially technical: can a WikiMedia environment be installed within Drupal? And then, how would I go about doing it if it is possible?
The second question is: how does the Book feature in Drupal stack up against a WikiMedia approach?
A few years ago I experimented with building a CMS site based on e101, which ultimately came apart because of security issues. So with that experience in mind, I have been sifting through the different platforms available and Drupal percolated to the top ranked CMS to work with. Later, I will use this new CMS environment to extend a conventional website I am maintaining by taking advantage of all the great tools available.
So can someone provide me with some directions regarding WikiMedia Behind Drupal question? And with the Book vs WikiMedia question?
I thank you in advance for any assistance or direction you provide!
-George
Comments
Strengths and weaknesses
MediaWiki is better for arbitrary relationships among nodes, some of which may not yet exist. You can create a "link" to a nonexistent page, and if you click it, you're prompted to write the content.
Drupal's book module is stronger for hierarchical organization -- essentially it's an outline relationship manager, and in fact it's being abstracted as such in Drupal6.
Some of the other major differences (such as CamelCase linking) can be papered over with add-on modules.
wikitools module
I'd suggest checking out the wikitools module.
wiki modules
What I'm using for my firm's internal wiki are wikitools, interwiki, diff, the core book module (renamed to "wiki" in Admin > Content > Types > Book") and comment mover for moving comments from wiki pages to a Wiki Talk forum (similar to Wikipedia's Talk Pages).
I decided on using the core book module instead of creating a new "wiki" content type because I wanted the core outlining and book navigation features.
Other modules to consider are freelinking, the PEAR wiki filter and TOC (part of tweakbox) for a nice table of contents.
Here is a good how-to on configuring a wiki with Drupal:
http://drupal.tschannen.net/wiki/set_up_a_wiki_with_drupal_5
I know this is a very old thread ...
Christefano, do you have an updated link for the how-to that you've included here? Or perhaps you can send me just the text content.
Thanks.
Hi Chris, I found your demo
Hi Chris,
I found your demo site through google and interested at building up a wiki site with drupal too.
but ...Why did you build up wiki site with drupal when installing mediawiki is pretty easy? Are there any features that mediawiki doesn't have, and drupal has it?
Media Wiki is too hard to use
Media Wiki is too hard to use and formation are complex for Search enginer.
I love this CMS