Illustration by Brendan Davis and Simon Michael

Perhaps the most useful Zope Product ever.

	Product name ZWiki Description Online collaboration tool Release Date 2002/04/16 Version 0.9.9 Rating (all ratings are on scale of 1-5 with 5 sushi being the best) Usability Software Design Documentation Usefulness Categories Intranets What's new New kinds of Wiki pages that support DTML Size 93734 Requirements Zope 2.4.x URL ZWiki.org License General Public License (GPL) Creator Simon Michael Packaged as Python Product

A Wiki lets you and other collaborate by giving users permission to edit any page in a Wiki and to create new pages. Pages are linked to each other by using special "WikiNames". No knowledge of HTML is necessary for users to participate in a Wiki.

Unless you are careful to restrict the permissions of your ZWiki, the default ZWiki security policy (and philosophy) is to let anyone edit any page at any time. This may not be in line with your needs.

The Wiki concept was first pioneered by Ward Cuningham, who is also a featured interviewee in this issue of ZopeMag. After interviewing Ward, I got the idea that he liked simple and straightforward programs, and ZWiki is such a program. I don't usually give products a five sushi rating across the board, but ZWiki has been so useful to me and the Zope community that I can't think of one thing wrong with it that merits it less than a perfect score.

As a straightforward "clone" of the standard Wiki concept, ZWiki has all the necessary features that make it a good wiki. Page editing is done in a plain text markup format called "structured text" that lets you do some simple text markup like italics and bold. When you type in new, special names, called "WikiNames", the Wiki will let you turn those words into links to new pages. Examples of WikiNames are "ProductReviews", "IntranetTodoList" and any other word that is initially capitalized and contains one other capital letter.

ZWiki has other features that extend on the "core" Wiki concept. As Zope allows you to undo changes, ZWiki also lets you undo edited wiki pages. This solves the rare but well-known problem of people putting "graffiti" on your Wiki. ZWiki also lets you "surf" through past revisions of Wiki pages, so you can see what a page looks like as it evolves in time and more people edit it.

A cool feature that ZWiki also offers is the ability to change a pages "backlinks". Backlinks are automatic links that point "back" to the page that first spawned the current wiki page. This creates a "tree" like structure of pages, with new pages having backlinks that point "up", eventually reaching the "FrontPage" Wiki page which is the root of the tree. ZWiki backlinks can be edited, so that you can "re-parent" a Wiki page and change the tree after pages have been added.

ZWiki installation is straightforward and nicely documented. When you add a new ZWiki to your Zope, it looks and acts like a standard Zope folder. Once a ZWiki is added you can click on it in the managment interface and then click on "View" to begin using the Wiki immediately.

One of ZWiki's best features is it's home page, zwiki.org. On this site you will find lots and lots of information on how to install, use, and extend ZWiki, as well as many links to the global Wiki community. Resources to be found include the most current CVS version of ZWiki, ZWiki discussion, ZWiki documentation, a "tracker" of recent changes to ZWiki, and lots more.

Above I mentioned in the "Cons" section that you might want to concern yourself a bit with ZWiki security. The ZWiki philosophy advocates totally open Wikis, but clearly some people are going to be uncomfortable with that. By clicking on the "Security" tab of your ZWiki objects, you can customize who can add new Wiki pages and edit existing ones. You can also customize other security features, like who can "re-parent" Wiki backlinks.

In terms of risk, using ZWiki scores very low on my personal risk scale. Simon has been very keen on keeping ZWiki up to date with the latest Wiki and Zope features. Simon has been the very actiber maintainer of ZWiki for years, and a look at some of the issue resolutions on ZWiki.org also show how conscientious he is about improving ZWiki and fixing bugs. We look forward to seeing a continuing effort from Simon keeping Wiki alive and well on Zope.