Talk:PmWiki
Latest comment: 1 month ago by 5ko in topic Needs a limitations section desperately
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Older comments
editArticles about wiki engines ought to briefly describe system requirements, and perhaps note at least a few of its syntax features, if there are any relevant issues there. (for example: "uses syntax based on blahblah wiki"
- agreed
MySQL?
editI can't find anywhere how to enable MySQL storage for PmWiki. --210.213.194.226 (talk) 04:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
- There is not yet (afaik) a general PageStore class that allows holding the data in MySQL databases, but there is the DataQuery plug-in that has possibly some of the functionality (created by an independent developer). --5ko (talk) 07:18, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
I've removed the following Books LLC and Alphascript references:
- LLC Books, Free Wiki Software, ISBN 978-1156996164
- Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, John McBrewster, History of wikis, ISBN 978-6130050306
See: User:Fences and windows/Unreliable sources and Amazon.com controversies#Sale of Wikipedia.27s material as books. °°Playmobilonhishorse (talk) 01:43, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Needs a limitations section desperately
editThis article really needs a section covering the limitations and problems with PmWiki. It is a very poor wiki for use with large amounts of content (on a specific page or in total). This article gives the impression that PmWiki is on par with many more advanced wiki engines. --173.13.177.204 (talk) 20:04, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
- There are wikis with 10000+ namespaces (wikigroups) and 1M+ pages which have no problems running happily PmWiki for years. For wikis with very large number of pages, a number of optimizations/recipes are documented in the Cookbook. Disclosure: I am one of the developers, and I am unaware of poor performance of PmWiki with large amount of content compared to other PHP/no-database wikis - such poor performance hasn't been brought to our knowledge, neither on our public issue tracking system, nor on our public mailing lists. Where can we learn more about the problems and limitations? --5ko (talk) 14:26, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
- About the "large content on a specific page", I invite you to create such a page on pmwiki.org - either in the PITS issue tracking group, or in the Test group, so we could look into any problems and limitations which might need fixing. Here is a page containing about 1.4M bytes of content, and it looks good. --5ko (talk) 14:53, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
- PMwiki downside is the creator is prideful. They don't understand why anyone would "need" certain features yet at the same time say "oh ya someone created a recipe for that feature". So they like to have their cake and eat it too. You can't claim a feature that is not a part of the maintained base of PMwiki, but they always do. The downside to pmwiki is not the size of the pages it can handle, but rather the ability to have many thousands of wiki pages in a format that can be easily maintained. You could do it but imagine hosting wikipedia in flat files, a nightmare. The same goes with levels of hierarchy. PM has argued with people gaslighting them saying "I don't see why anyone would need more hierarchy than groups/pages" but yet touts a recipe made by others to achieve this (in a hacky way) as a feature of the program. Conclusion is if you want a minimalistic wiki, pmwiki is a great one. But don't expect to start the next wikipedia without hiring a developer (or becoming one) to overcome the limitations (and yes they exist!) of pmwiki. -NatureWiki (user of pmwiki) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.175.54.158 (talk) 15:26, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
- This comment contains several claims that are inexact and is frankly unfair. The original author completely understands that other people may need certain features, that's why he designed a highly customizable markup engine allowing easy integration of new functions and programs, without the need to modify any core files (so when you upgrade to a new PmWiki version you don't lose your customization). The documentation, and various comparison sites such as WikiMatrix never claim that a feature provided by an addon is a "core" feature -- it is always clearly marked as addon. There are indeed 900+ addons. However, there are some "core" features that can be enabled in local configuration -- these are usually marked as "options". Hierarchical WikiGroups are indeed an addon -- the default PmWiki installation only has 2-level hierarchy and unlimited namespaces (while Wikipedia has a single level hierarchy with only a few namespaces). In addition, PmWiki allows any level of hierarchy with a core feature called WikiTrails/Breadcrumbs available out of the box (pages in a single namespace, or in different namespaces, with a tree-like index with branches and subpages). The flat file storage can indeed be problematic with many files on old filesystems, but that is true for any file-based wiki. And again, the PageStore class can be easily extended to allow custom storage solutions -- people who need them have used SQLite and MySQL. For me there are 3 minor/major downsides, as of 2020: (1) it is still a "wiki" using not WYSIWYG editor but wiki markup, which has some learning curve, and even with extensive documentation it takes time to master as our attention span tends to get shorter; (2) the core doesn't have an easy click-to-install way to download and enable addons -- because the author considers having executable program scripts in writable directories a security nightmare -- developers of addons are free to implement whatever they like; (3) there isn't an out-of-the-box way to allow random people to create accounts with e-mail verification and password recovery -- although a wiki can allow random people to edit without creating accounts. --5ko (talk) 22:44, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
- I think some limitations/criticism related section might be relevant and fair. See also e.g. MediaWiki#Limitations. (Looking at PmWiki offic. web, there are e.g. problems with RSS - on subpages it's working, but not almost unusable - no content; there are also some different b3rss action based RSS links, but not mentioned at WebFeeds subpage at all. But this is not a product forum here, this is just a random and potentially unfair example.). —Mykhal (talk) 10:05, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
- It would be good if we can find reliable sources about a section "Limitations", however some online reviews I checked (for features other than RSS) seem superficial. The limitations I listed above are probably not controversial. Specifically the RSS feed output functions and formats are configurable and could be adapted or replaced in local configuration or addons (as you pointed out) but the documentation may be insufficient, and few people may have asked. :-) There are some open feature requests about RSS feeds in the issue tracking system though. --5ko (talk) 20:07, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think some limitations/criticism related section might be relevant and fair. See also e.g. MediaWiki#Limitations. (Looking at PmWiki offic. web, there are e.g. problems with RSS - on subpages it's working, but not almost unusable - no content; there are also some different b3rss action based RSS links, but not mentioned at WebFeeds subpage at all. But this is not a product forum here, this is just a random and potentially unfair example.). —Mykhal (talk) 10:05, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
- This comment contains several claims that are inexact and is frankly unfair. The original author completely understands that other people may need certain features, that's why he designed a highly customizable markup engine allowing easy integration of new functions and programs, without the need to modify any core files (so when you upgrade to a new PmWiki version you don't lose your customization). The documentation, and various comparison sites such as WikiMatrix never claim that a feature provided by an addon is a "core" feature -- it is always clearly marked as addon. There are indeed 900+ addons. However, there are some "core" features that can be enabled in local configuration -- these are usually marked as "options". Hierarchical WikiGroups are indeed an addon -- the default PmWiki installation only has 2-level hierarchy and unlimited namespaces (while Wikipedia has a single level hierarchy with only a few namespaces). In addition, PmWiki allows any level of hierarchy with a core feature called WikiTrails/Breadcrumbs available out of the box (pages in a single namespace, or in different namespaces, with a tree-like index with branches and subpages). The flat file storage can indeed be problematic with many files on old filesystems, but that is true for any file-based wiki. And again, the PageStore class can be easily extended to allow custom storage solutions -- people who need them have used SQLite and MySQL. For me there are 3 minor/major downsides, as of 2020: (1) it is still a "wiki" using not WYSIWYG editor but wiki markup, which has some learning curve, and even with extensive documentation it takes time to master as our attention span tends to get shorter; (2) the core doesn't have an easy click-to-install way to download and enable addons -- because the author considers having executable program scripts in writable directories a security nightmare -- developers of addons are free to implement whatever they like; (3) there isn't an out-of-the-box way to allow random people to create accounts with e-mail verification and password recovery -- although a wiki can allow random people to edit without creating accounts. --5ko (talk) 22:44, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
- Obviously, if you need a Wikipedia clone, best is to use MediaWiki -- it is specifically designed to support an online encyclopedia, with tools for citations, references, blocking users, admin delegation, etc., while PmWiki is more about generic websites. --5ko (talk) 09:19, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
Removal of Advert template
editI've refactored the article to hopefully feel less like an advertisement, and added some information and independent articles. I'd be grateful if the community could check whether the content could be further improved so we could remove the Advert template (English is not my native language). 5ko (talk) 00:06, 31 March 2024 (UTC)