Wiki Structure
Authors have a range of options to choose from when organizing a collection of wiki pages. Used in combination, these give a lot of flexibility. An effective wiki will use all of these to optimize
- content
- navigation
These are the two most important aspects of a website.
- Wiki Word
- The most powerful organizing principle is the author’s choice of page names. When a search returns a list of pages, their names need to be clear enough to guide a visitor to the right place.
Providing a network of links to other points in the wiki, with or without wiki words, is the primary means of navigating a wiki.
- Wiki Page
- A page with text (and images), where the text can contain for instance WikiWords that automatically becomes a link to another WikiPage.
- Wiki Group
- PmWiki requires every page to be a member of a group. A group is like a wiki within a wiki; it can have its own presentation look, security controls and navigation aids. With default configuration, WikiWords are only searched inside the current group, and you use either
OtherGroup/MyWikiWordorOtherGroup.MyWikiWordto refer to pages in other groups (see Links). - Wiki Trails
- A collection of pages, either in the same group or across multiple groups, can be designated as a trail. A visitor can move from stop to stop by clicking on next and previous links.
- Categories
- Individual wiki pages can also be grouped by having tags and links to a common “category” page; we say that any pages that link to a common page are in a “category” defined by that page. PmWiki uses the
[[!category]]markup as a shorthand to place a page into a category with other pages containing the same markup.
The shortcoming of categories is that categories do not distinguish between the declaration of a category ([[!structure]]) and the link to a category ([[Category/Structure]]).
- Page text variables
- A newer and more powerful concept than Categories, pages can use one of more page text variables to store page attributes. These can the be used in page lists.
- Page lists
- Page lists provide a powerful means of presenting lists of relevant pages, or selection of data from within a page. Lists are template based and are highly customizable.
- Include other pages
- The capability to include parts of other pages also provides a flexible means of sharing content between pages.
- Search
- Being able to search is a fundamental requirement of a website. In PmWiki search, like pagelists is both powerful and highly customizable.
This page may have a more recent version on pmwiki.org: PmWiki:WikiStructure, and a talk page: PmWiki:WikiStructure-Talk.