Wiclear

Wiclear is a small and simple wiki software. Its main features are a hierarchical data content system, an integrated translation mechanism (all translations are linked together), easy themability and extensibility. It works with PHP4/PHP5, Apache and MySql. Wiclear is licensed under GPL.

Features

* Hierarchical data content: each page has a parent page. This eases navigation, data finding, site plan creation, ... By construction an orphaned page just does not exist.
* Integrated translation: administrators declare a list of languages and all translations of the same page get automatically linked together. You can browse using your preferred language, the site will revert automatically to the 'default' lang when a translation does not exist and revert back to your preferred lang on the next click if possible.
* Themes
* Plugins allow to modify all existing forms, integrate into the admin panel, into the ACLs system, can intercept all calls, ... (siteplan, UTF8, simpletoolbar, trackbacks, wikiblog, ...)
* Admin panel
* Section editing allows you to edit small parts of a page
* Automatic generation of content tables
* Page revisions
* diff support
* Comments
* Extensible ACLs (read/write/comment and plugins can integrate their own set of rights)
* Metadata
* Syndication of recent changes as RSS Feed
* Uploading and embedding images
* Image caching and resizing
* Multilingual support for the UI as well
* Spam blacklist and CAPTCHA for login
* Conflict detection and resolution

History

The root

Wiclear has started as a toy project to replace an existing home made wiki software. After some experience in it, it was decided some problems existed that needed to be resolved.

First, information was difficult to find. Although several "roots" pages were defined to help categorize information, users were not able to find their way in the site. The reason is usually, wikis are a collection of pages linked together by wiki link, but besides that there is no other way to browse the site.

Secondly, all pages were available in two languages, but as no native mechanism existed to link those pages together, one had to constantly carefully hand craft titles by prefexing each and every title by the lang. Example : fr_Wiclear and en_Wiclear. This was both tedious and error prone.

Early development

Development started in 2004 and it was believed to be a small development and still a toy project because no one would be interested in it. But weirdly, some people started to get interested in the project and the goals from the beginning.

First problem was answered by creating a hierarchical structure. A special page, the "root" page is the parent of all other pages. All other pages needs to be created by declaring a parent page. This allows to list the list of parent pages and the list of children on any pages, enabling to better categorize content and to browse differently.As related content should be considered sibling, it's easier to find related information.It is also very easy to generate a shrinkable site plan out of it so that it is easier browsing the site. See for example [http://uporabnost.info/ this site using Wiclear]

Second problem was answered by providing link in each page to access/create translation of current page. A default language is chosen by the admin and translation pages must be created after the 'default' page is created, ensuring a 'default' page always exist. Each translation pages are linked to the page they are translating so that it's easy to find/switch from one lang to the other.

Current status

Wiclear is quite mature since version 0.7 and is used by several sites with a user base growing. There are more and more wanted features ranging from integration of other technology (Dotclear, dojo, ajax, ...) to the development of corporate features (a, finer grain acls, print support)

External links

* [http://wiclear.free.fr Wiclear Website]