Wiki Frustrations
Anyone who does web development can hopefully relate to how frustrating some things can be. Today I was looking at various options for adding a Wiki to our website in the future. We are looking at possibly integrating a wiki application to provide an Ecommerce Glossary. We'll see.
So while I was downloading and installing some various Wiki applications, I came across one thing right away. The developers of these web applications have missed some crucial aspects that I would say are no-brainers. First of all, the install instructions for all of the five applications that I tested were incomplete at best. Some were completely wrong, and I needed ot basically figure it out myself. I consider myself to be a pretty competent programmer, so I got through it. However, developer's of applications like this need to be aware that the number of people using their product is directly related to how difficult it is to install.
Once I got through installation, I found that 3 out of the 5 Wiki applications didn't work properly out of the box. In all three cases, I had to manually track down errors and fix either bad coding or improper database entries. Once again, if you are developing software and it doesn't work, then don't release it. More importantly, don't put "stable release" next to the file download unless the thing actually works.
Eventually I got all five different applications working. At least they appeared to be working. Then it was time to look at what the options were. Two VERY important things that I look for are the ability to customize the layout and also how difficult it is to make SEO improvements. Again, 2 out of the 5 had no way to customize the layout other than by changing the limited CSS available. In one of those cases, the markup that was output by the application was so limited that doing a custom layout would be impossible. I don't see changing a few colors as being "customizable", but maybe that is just me.
When it came to SEO improvements, they all boasted that you could clean up the URLs using ModRewrite. So I figured why not? In the end ALL 5 APPLICATIONS DID NOT WORK PROPERLY. Can you believe that? A couple of them were just so far gone that I didn't even bother. Another one of them didn't work until I just went in an created my own Rewrite rules. Those are ruled out, and I would love a few minutes with the developers. Another required quite a bit of custom work, which led me to my favorite so far, which required me to simply fix one line of code. Don't get me wrong though, the documentation swore by that piece of code, and it wasn't until I changed it to something other than what they recommend that the URL Rewriting worked properly. Talk about a frustrating day.
As it turns out, however, the one application that I was able to get the URL clean on was also the one that I liked the best for customizing the template. We'll see, though, since I still have a lot of work to do. I suppose the moral of this story for end users is be prepared. It would seem that the realm of Wiki application development is still in it's infancy. The moral for the developers is to look towards applications like WordPress for inspiration. If everyday, ordinary people can't install and use the application, then it won't be successful and what is the point?
Please note that I will not be naming names. Most of these are open source projects, and my goal is just to convey my experiences. Hopefully things will improve as the popularity of Wiki's grows. Until then, at least people are out there working on them.
