Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware

I'm a developer on Tikiwiki. I did mainly the Maps part. It is now extended with google maps, ka-map and cartoweb integration.

Why did I choose Tikiwiki? Because the developing community is vribant and very open. It takes 5mn to become a developer and start contribute code.

Sure you are watched by your pairs, and you get comments about your code, but where else can you become part of such project?

You don't need to contribute patches, modules, you just start to hack the code base. Never seen something like that.

Also, no foundation, no commercial company is behind tikiwiki, only volunteers from around the world.

While Tikiwiki is a big software, is main advantage is that everything integrates with everything with the same quality level.

It is a little bit the grand daddy of all CMS, but it gets rejuvenated at each development cycle.

Also, the developers takes security seriously, still some improvements are needed on this front, but you rest assure to fast response to security threats.

Finally, Tikiwiki is truly multi-lingual.

Hello kozuch82,

I am saddened that you take the time to say only negative things. You are of course entitled to your opinion, but many people will come to this page to evaluate if they want to use TikiWiki. Your comments can IMHO, turn away some potential users that would have been very happy with TikiWiki.

TikiWiki is the collective work of hundreds of people over 5 years, and used for tens of thousands of sites. I have a very different outlook than you and will comment the words you used.

"Dead" -> TikiWiki is far from dead. In fact, it's thriving. There is a code commit via CVS every two hours on average.

"Bloated" -> TikiWiki is full-featured. It has most features built-in whereas other on CMS systems, you have to download & install third party add-ons, which may or not be supported.

"not modular" -> Tiki has a tight integration of all its features. That's one of the reasons it's so powerful.

There are various schools of thought about modularity. It is not a magic bullet.

"In later discussions Torvalds explained the reasons for its choice: a fully modular architecture, like the one adopted for HURD, would have posed problems to a degree of complexity that it could have compromised the accomplishment of the project. To avoid such risks and keep the degree of complexity of the project as low as possible, Torvalds decided to design a monolith and he actually wrote all the architectural specs himself, avoiding all the problems related to collective projects (e.g. division of labor, coordination, communication). On the other hand, the HURD micro–kernel, a project in direct competition with the Linux kernel, has paid for the choice of pursuing a fully modular approach from the beginning in terms of the continuous delays that have plagued its development. Nowadays, it is still under active development and still lacks the stability and performance assured by the Linux kernel."

Source:
Modular Design and the Development of Complex Artifacts: Lessons from Free/Open Source Software by A. Narduzzo & A. Rossi
http://oss2005.case.unibz.it/Papers/25.pdf

I would have preferred to read a more balanced judgment. Ex.: TikiWiki can be useful for this type of project or this type of user, but for this other type of user or project, it's better to use Bitweaver.

Of course, TikiWiki is not perfect. Like many tools, it's very useful for some people and not so useful for others.

A response to common questions / concerns about TikiWiki CMS/Groupware
http://marclaporte.com/TikiSucks

Best regards,

M ;-)

Marc Laporte
Project admin
http://TikiWiki.org/marclaporte

Ignore the two silly and aggressive reviews from people trying to advertise Bitweaver.

I have successfully used TikiWiki for many projects now. It has several massive advantages 1) The community of developers is very open and friendly, if you have good ideas you are encouraged to commit them back to the core code, so everyone can benefit. 2) This software has a lot of functionality it is covers so many features it makes an ideal "Swiss Army Knife", the multi-lingual wiki is just one of its powerful features.

All the features are in the core project so you do not end up having to manage the interaction between lots of different plug-ins.

I recommend it.

I have been using TikiWiki for some years now, and have found it to be an excellent package for driving my web site. It can be a little intimidating at first, in that there are a ton of options. The hardest part is deciding what to turn on and then assigning the proper permissions so that specific classes of users have only specific rights. Once that is done it is fairly clear sailing.

What I like about TikiWiki is that it has all the features I want under one roof. That means a consistent user experience when using different parts of the system.

I am a writer, so I use the Blog, Wiki Pages, Articles for most of my content, add pictures to them via the Image Gallery, and track my submissions via the Tracker. There a few things that need improvement, but over all I am very satisfied.

I will be launching a new website come January 2009, and at which time I will be using TikiWiki 2.2. Very happy with its development thus far.

The only reason I don't give it 5 stars is that there is still room for improvement. It's really a terrific product, and so darned affordable!
~jon

So far, it's the best CMS I've used. And I've used a lot! The only thing it needs to work on a bit is its search engine friendly URLs which are slowly improving with each version.

It is a bit big, yes, but it's 100% worth the hours of upload time (I have a pretty slow SFTP connection) you may need to get it running.