[pmwiki-users] Using PmWiki as an invisible wiki for a personal website

[Jo Vermeulen]

Hello,

I have been experimenting with a few wikis lately in order to use one as the backend for my personal website. I was partly motivated by an article about WikkaWiki [1] that described how it can be tuned to allow only the administrator to edit pages. Moreover, they also modify the skin to hide wiki actions and the typical wiki look and feel (see [2] for details). The reason I want to use a wiki as a backend for my website is that I want to focus on the content, and want to easily add a few things on my website or reorganize content.

Although I did experiment a bit with WikkaWiki, I have also been looking into PmWiki because I like its features and customizability (amongst others flat files, the ability to upload, wiki trails and wiki groups).

I was wondering how I can use PmWiki as an invisible wiki backend. I figured out how to allow only admins to edit pages, but I'm not sure how I can easily hide edit/view/history etc. actions. Is there any PHP variable that I can use in my template (I'm creating a custom skin) to hide the actions bar at the bottom of the page?

Thanks in advance!

[1] http://www.academicproductivity.com/2009/how-to-run-an-invisible-wiki/

[2] http://docs.wikkawiki.org/InvisibleWiki

-- Jo

[Petko Yotov]

On Tuesday 03 March 2009 07:28:36 Jo Vermeulen wrote:
> figured out how to allow only admins to edit pages, but I'm not sure how I
> can easily hide edit/view/history etc. actions. Is there any PHP variable
> that I can use in my template (I'm creating a custom skin) to hide the
> actions bar at the bottom of the page?

Hi. The actions at the bottom of the default skin cannot be hidden, but can be
removed. The actions at the top right area, however, can be hidden.

These are just links in your own wiki page [[Site.PageActions]] where you have
something like this:

* [[{*$FullName}|View]]
* [[{*$FullName}?action=edit|Edit]]
* [[{*$FullName}?action=upload|Attach]]

(there is more wiki code, but the essential is what I extracted above).

I want these links to be displayed only if the visitor has edit permissions,
if not, to show a "Login" link :

(:if auth edit:)
* [[{*$FullName}|View]]
* [[{*$FullName}?action=edit|Edit]]
* [[{*$FullName}?action=upload|Attach]]
* [[{*$FullName}?action=logout|Logout]]
(:else:)
* [[{*$FullName}?action=login|Login]]
(:ifend:)

See http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/ConditionalMarkup. If you build a custom
skin, best is to start with one that exists, and modify it for your needs.

You can even hide the "Login" link like this :

* %admin rel=nofollow% [[{*$FullName}?action=login|Login]] %%

and in your skin.css file, set
.admin a { color: white; }
.admin a:hover { color: gray; }

This way, the link is white and invisible on the white background, but if you
move the mouse cursor over it, it shows in gray. And you, as the admin, know
where this link is positioned.

See also http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/WikiStyles for the %class% markup.

Thanks,
Petko

_______________________________________________
pmwiki-users mailing list
pmwiki...@pmichaud.com
http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users

[Peter Bowers]

A search term that will help you is “CMS” or “Content Management System”.  Pmwiki handles this capability without any difficulties.

 

See http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/PmWikiAsACMS and http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/CMSLike and http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/CMSMode as the 1st 3 recipes I came upon with a quick search…

 

-Peter

 

---

[Jo Vermeulen]

Thanks a lot Petko and Peter! I'll have a look at the conditional markup, and the links for using PmWiki as a CMS.

Cheers,

-- Jo

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 08:01:31AM +0100, Petko Yotov wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 March 2009 07:28:36 Jo Vermeulen wrote:
> > figured out how to allow only admins to edit pages, but I'm not sure how I
> > can easily hide edit/view/history etc. actions. Is there any PHP variable
> > that I can use in my template (I'm creating a custom skin) to hide the
> > actions bar at the bottom of the page?
>
> Hi. The actions at the bottom of the default skin cannot be hidden,
> but can be removed.

The actions at the bottom of the default skin can be hidden with:

$HTMLStylesFmt['hidebottom'] = ' .footnav { display:none; } ';

Or, create the file pub/css/local.css and add the line

.footnav { display:none; }

Pm

[Jo Vermeulen]

Thanks, that works perfectly. I can also remove the footer altogether from my custom skin I think.

-- Jo

[Tegan Dowling]

I do this for almost all my sites; I call them "stealth wikis".  See http://www.emergencydigital.com/Gallery

Tegan Dowling
http://twitter.com/wikignome


"The future’s here already. It’s just unevenly distributed." -- William Gibson

 

[Paul Giacherio]

Yeah, I'll second that PmWiki can be a terrific CMS- and doesn't have
to look like a typical wiki.
[http://www.villageschool.us/index.php] for example.

paulgiacherio
paulgiacheiro.tumblr.com

[Jo Vermeulen]

Thanks for providing another nice example of PmWiki as a CMS. That's a beautiful website! The look and feel does not give any clue that it is powered by a wiki under the hood :-)

Cheers,

-- Jo

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 3:52 PM, Paul Giacherio <paulgi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah, I'll second that PmWiki can be a terrific CMS- and doesn't have
to look like a typical wiki.
[http://www.villageschool.us/index.php] for example.

paulgiacherio

paulgiacheiro.tumblr.c shows om

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Mar 04, 2009 at 04:40:08PM +0100, Jo Vermeulen wrote:
> Thanks for providing another nice example of PmWiki as a CMS. That's a
> beautiful website! The look and feel does not give any clue that it is powered
> by a wiki under the hood :-)

Indeed, one of PmWiki's primary goals has long been its use for
web site maintenance, not primarily as a wiki. See PmWikiPhilosophy #4.

Pm

[Greg T. Grimes]

Should I feel guilty that all we use it for is an actual Wiki?

--
Greg T. Grimes
Senior Network Analyst
Information Technology Services
Mississippi State University
greg....@msstate.edu

[Paul Giacherio]

Hey Thanks-
I really love PmWiki, and have used it for a number of clients,
because it's so easy to manipulate and customize. It really can make
site maintenance almost trivial.

paulgaicherio
paulgiacherio.tumblr.com