Flexwiki's features and much more

If you are new to wiki, begin with OneWiki.

Compare FlexWiki with other wikis at wikimatrix

Why do we really like it?

• User friendly
• Edit by doubleclick - no need to scroll to the edit link, just click twice where you are
• Summary - just hover a link, and you'll see everything, no need for click'n'back. ie: FlexWikiFeatures
• Admin friendly
• Easy to install, just copy contents to a new IIS virtual folder
• Flexible
• Customise the layout by editing the _NormalBorders topic
• Insert metainformation easily with WikiPageProperties
• Create dynamic content with inline WikiTalk scripts
• Customise look and colors using CSS ds

Why do we dislike it?

• No WYSIWYG editor * Cryptic and silly character requirements (double apostrophes for Italics, double exclamations for bold, etc. I think it is the poor point...
• Poor layout. The design of a typical FlexWiki page is very inefficient - no tabs for various sections, significant space taken on left and right sides for unimportant information.
• Very poor choice of colors. In fact, unbelievable that anybody would use these colors. They are disgusting.
• It doesn't look professional
• For those critics of the FlexWiki look please submit a suggested CSS. See NewTestCSS for resources to create a new css in 30 minutes.

Basic Features

• Easy editing; quick hyperlinking, tables, etc. - use simple FormattingRules to make editing easy and to convert simple text to HTML
• Get email when the wiki changes - A WikiNewsletter is a collection of topics and people interested in those topics; email is automatically generated to subscribers of a WikiNewsletter telling them about the changes to the associated topics. You can create a WikiNewsletter.
• RSS feeds - if you like RSS feeds for getting updated on information from various newsfeeds, you can track this wiki using an !!RssAggregator.
• Full topic history - anytime somebody changes a page, the old version is saved; by using the 'highlight changes' option, you can see all of the old versions; you can even link to them to get a stable reference. Selecting a simple checkbox is all it takes to visually show what changed in a topic from version to version.
• Topic search - type in a search string (using regular expression if you want); see all the wiki topics that match your search -- including content fragments from those topics
• Back links - you can click on Find References in the left column and you'll automatically perform a search to find all topics that reference the current topic

Advanced Features

• WikiTalk - a dynamic language for processing and inserting dynamic content into Wiki
• Federation and namespaces - When there are many somewhat related Wiki sites, it's often hard to get them to link together smoothly. FlexWiki has some very cool features to support this scenario. Specifically, a single installation of FlexWiki (called a WikiFederation) can bind together multiple WikiBases. All topics in a WikiBase live in a TopicNamespace. See WikiFederationOverview.
• Page properties - WikiPageProperties are fields on a page like Keywords, Summary, etc. are recognized as properties of the page and can be used for various things including IndexingWikiContent, ExtractingWikiContent, building WikiNewsletters, etc. To use a page property on a page, see PropertyBehavior.
• Easy integration with search engines - all content on this wiki is indexable by search engines. For details, see IndexingWikiContent
• Optimistic locking - If you're editing a wiki topic and somebody else saves a change to the same topic, you'll be told; you won't be able to overwrite their changes
• Automatic plurals support - If you define a wiki topic using the singular form (e.g., BigCat), plural forms (e.g., BigCats) will automatically link to the singular form (unless somebody explicitly creates a topic with the plural name too!)
• Dynamic content - A number of WikiBehaviors allow you to add dynamically-generated content to a wiki topic.
• Rights management - v2.0 has WikiPageProperty based rights management.

Deficiencies

• Files and images -
• If you run your own version of FlexWiki you have the option of allowing file upload to the wiki.
• You cannot upload files and images to FlexWiki.com, you have to upload them to an own web share, and place the url into the WikiPage.
• Uploaded files are not automatically versioned
• Optimistic locking - If you are editing a wiki topic and somebody else saves a change to the same topic, you will lose your changes instead of being offered to resolve conflicts. You have to use your browser's back button to retrieve your text (which does not work because the editing window loses the changes you've made when you click Back), and then you have to start the editing again.
• No syntax highlighting for code snippets..