The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Thor Hauknes -
Number of replies: 15
Hi.
I've started to use Moodle three months ago for an international project including schools from Wales, Denmark, Ireland and Norway (a Comenius project).
I have very little experience with wikis, but I think it would be a good tool to gather the information and knowledge we put together during our 3-year project. I have a few questions I hope someone can answer:
  • Is the wiki module stable and ready to use?
  • What is dfwiki? Is it standard with Moodle 1.5.2?
  • Would the wiki module be able to handle uploading of images, audio files and small videos?
Thanks,
Thor Hauknes, Norway
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In reply to Thor Hauknes

Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Alexandre Belousov -
as far as I know, the wiki module that comes with the standard moodle distribution hasn't been developped for a while, that's why we are looking forward to including the actively-developed dfwiki module into 1.6.
Concerning the stability issues:
Generally, I do not like the wiki module because it has some problems with non-cyrillic characters, and some code customizations are needed to fix that.
Imho, the dfwiki is now ready-to-use - it comes with a pretty-simple interface and a number of editors, including their own editor and std. html-editor of moodle.
I've set up several modules with dfwiki, they seem to work stable and are easy-to-update and change.

Concerning upload functions:
- upload of images is very easy , you may do that without any problem.
However, I failed to upload some pdfs (get the error "the document contains no data"), but it seems to be a general moodle problem that occurs not only in dfwiki. Also you are not able to upload files more that 2Mb in size. In both cases it's easier to put the file to the server and give the link into the dfwiki module.
- cannot say anything about videos, haven't used that yet.
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In reply to Alexandre Belousov

Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -
Hi Alexandre,
thank you for endorsing our dear dfwiki module guiño.
The pdf error that you report looks like a MIME type error in your apache server, I've been uploading PDF's into moodle since version 1.3 and allways worked fine.
The size limit that you anounce is limeted by the admin in the general upload limit and by the teacher in the course preferences. In our university we are uploading files up to 100MB estupendo.
By the way you can download the lastest stable dfwiki here
Resource dfwiki_1.0_rev2005110201.zip
or in the dfwiki home page http://appserv.lsi.upc.es/palangana/moodle/course/view.php?id=15
Regards
Marc
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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Svar: Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Thor Hauknes -
Thanks, both of you for taking the time to help me.

If i understand this correctly, I would be fine using dfwiki for my project.
This is a three-year project; would I be able to update dfwiki (and moodle) during this timespan without losing my work?

And, most important, how do I install and combine dfwiki with my existing moodle 1.5.2 installation. This is installed on a linux server, my access to this is through Cpanel and ftp.

I would also be happy if you could point me to sites already using dfwiki smile

regards
Thor
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In reply to Thor Hauknes

Re: Svar: Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Alexandre Belousov -
I think you'll be able to update both moodle and dfwiki without losing any data.
The dfwiki course format is rather new, I doubt there exist many courses at the time, but a pretty nice course demonstration is located at the developers' site

Ludo (Marc Alier)
yes, thanks, I know I should dig into apache but for the present moment I'm too lazy for that smile.
I thought I mentioned that those are not dfwiki's problems ;), but my hands' big grin.

>This is installed on a linux server, my access to this is through Cpanel and ftp.
just download wiki and unpack to appropriate folders (instructions are inside the distribution). Then go to the admin page of your moodle installation - you should see the log of successful installation. After that new resource and course will be available. Generally, the process is the same for each module installed
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In reply to Alexandre Belousov

Svar: Re: Svar: Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Thor Hauknes -
I've uploaded and unzipped the file in moodles root directory.
I still can't use it, even after logging in with administrator privileges.
Could the problem be that my moodle directory's name is not moodle, but comenius?
Thor
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In reply to Thor Hauknes

Re: Svar: Re: Svar: Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Alexandre Belousov -
assuming you've downloaded dfwiki_1.0_rev2005110201.zip:
it contains a folder "dfwiki pack" with 3 subfolders:
- course
- lang
- mod.
Unpack "course" to "course" folder of your moodle installation, so that a folder dfwiki appears in the "course" folder, the same with lang and mod.
So if, for example, /var/www/html/ is your moodle root, it should already contain
course, lang, mod.
After you unpack the archive, course/format/dfwiki/, mod/dfwiki/, lang/en/dfwiki.php should appear.
Don't forget to chmod them to your httpd-owner user (not actually necessary, but sometimes useful).
Then go to http://your-moodle-site/admin/ as administrator and you'll see that dfwiki is installed. It will appear in the modules list.
That's all
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In reply to Alexandre Belousov

Svar: Re: Svar: Re: Svar: Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Thor Hauknes -
Thank you for your patient instructions.
I've tried to follow them.. that is, I unzipped to the moodle root folder; got the dfwiki pack, then I copied dfwiki from the course subfolder to the course folder of moodleroot, and did the same thing with lang and mod.

When I log in to moodle as admin, I get the possibility to set up a course in dfwiki format, but no option as an activity (editing turned on).
When I try to access my new course with the dfwiki format, I get this message:
bject(stdClass)(6) { ["course"]=> string(2) "10" ["module"]=> NULL ["name"]=> string(12) "nom temporal" ["modulename"]=> string(6) "dfwiki" ["editable"]=> int(1) ["visible"]=> int(0) }

Could not add a new instance of dfwiki

Anyone know what went wrong?

Thor
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In reply to Thor Hauknes

: Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -
Ouchojo amoratado!
I don'pt kwno what could go wrong but here are two questions that can lead us to the key to solve this:
- does dfwiki work as a activity?
- your server uses mysql or postgresql ? we have'nt updated yet the postgresql scripts... (we'll try to heva it ready this very week)
Regards
Marc
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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Svar: : Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Thor Hauknes -
Yes!!
It works now..
I think it was the zipfile that extracted to the dfwiki pack instead of the root folder that caused the problem..
I've uploaded the dfwiki_1.0_rev2005111501.zip, and it worked straight away.

Stort glis Thor
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In reply to Thor Hauknes

Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Jason Cole -
I've tried to create the postgres scripts for this module. The database is created now and the first inserts run.

Everything looks like it's working until I hit submit on the wiki creation page. Then I get an error in a language I don't understand.
ha passat un error al accedir al m�xim

Can someone translate please?
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In reply to Jason Cole

Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -
"error hapened accessing to maximum" ... I'll send copy to the team,
somebody is working with postgresql and maybe your script will be very helpfull...
thank you Jason :D
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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Jason Cole -
Thanks Ludo. It appears the error is thrown in lines 110 - 120 of dfwikilib.

//mirem quina és la última versió de la pàgina (això ho passarem a una funció)

	if (!$max = get_record_sql('SELECT MAX(`version`) AS maxim
					FROM '. $CFG->prefix.'dfwiki_pages
					WHERE `pagename`=\''.$pagename.'\' AND `dfwiki`='.$dfwiki->id)){
		error ('ha passat un error al accedir al màxim');	
	}
	//echo $quer;
	
	//carreguem les dades de la pàgina
I have a sneaking suspicion that either this query is mysql specific, or the first page is not created when the config form is submitted. When I look at the db after attempting to create the wiki, mdl_dfwiki has one row and looks right. mdl_dfwiki_pages, is still empty, however. I haven't had time to look through the code to see if there is supposed to be a page created for the wiki when it is first initialized.

Jason
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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Jason Cole -
I've found the cause of the error. Postgres doesn't like the ` characters around the column names. These don't appear in all of the queries, just the two max queries. I've taken them out in my copy and it's started working.
I've changed the query to read:
if (!$max = get_record_sql('SELECT MAX(version) AS maxim
                    FROM '. $CFG->prefix.'dfwiki_pages
                    WHERE pagename=\''.$pagename.'\' AND dfwiki='.$dfwiki->id)){
        error ('ha passat un error al accedir al màxim in english');   
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In reply to Jason Cole

but how about adodb??

by Ne Nashev -
dfwiki doesn't using AdoDB query constructor and have build-in selects?? yahhh! sad(
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In reply to Jason Cole

Re: The Wiki module - stable and ready to use?

by Jason Cole -
Using the existing architecture, I've created a patch which makes the system work with postgres. I've removed all the ` characters from the queries and adjusted some of escape quotes.
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