TWiki is a Perl-based structured wiki application, typically used to run a collaboration platform, knowledge or document management system, a knowledge base, or team portal. Users can create wiki pages using the TWiki Markup Language, and developers can extend wiki application functionality with

plugins Plug-in, plug in or plugin may refer to: * Plug-in (computing) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. ** Audio plug-in, adds audio signal processing features ** Photoshop plugin, a piece of software t ...

. The TWiki project was founded by Peter Thoeny in 1998 as an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

wiki-based application platform. In October 2008, the company TWiki.net, created by Thoeny, assumed full control over the TWiki project while much of the developer community forked off to join the Foswiki project.

Major features

* Revision control - complete audit trail, also for meta data such as attachments and access control settings * Fine-grained access control - restrict read/write/rename on site level, web level, page level based on user groups * Extensible TWiki

markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...

TinyMCE TinyMCE is an online rich-text editor released as open-source software under the MIT License. It has the ability to convert HTML text area fields or other HTML elements to editor instances. TinyMCE is designed to easily integrate with JavaScript l ...

based WYSIWYG editor * Dynamic content generation with TWiki variables * Forms and reporting - capture structured content, report on it with searches embedded in pages * Built in database - users can create wiki applications using the TWiki Markup Language * Skinnable user interface *

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

/ Atom feeds and e-mail notification * Over 400 Extensions and 200 Plugins

TWiki extensions

TWiki has a plugin API that has spawned over 300 extensions to link into databases, create

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...

s, tags, sort tables, write spreadsheets, create image gallery and slideshows, make

drawing Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...

s, write blogs, plot

graphs Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties *Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discre ...

, interface to many different authentication schemes, track Extreme Programming projects and so on.

TWiki application platform

TWiki as a structured wiki provides database-like manipulation of fields stored on pages, and offers a SQL-like query language to embed reports in wiki pages. Wiki applications are also called situational applications because they are created ''ad hoc'' by the users for very specific needs. Users have built TWiki applications that include call center status boards, to-do lists,

inventory Inventory (American English) or stock (British English) refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation. Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying the shap ...

systems,

employee handbook An employee handbook, sometimes also known as an employee manual, staff handbook, or company policy manual, is a book given to employees by an employer. The employee handbook can be used to bring together employment and job-related information wh ...

s, bug trackers, blog applications, discussion forums, status reports with rollups and more.

User interface

The interface of TWiki is completely skinnable in templates, themes and (per user)

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

. It includes support for internationalization ('

I18N In computing, internationalization and localization (American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional peculiarities and ...

'), with support for multiple character sets, UTF-8 URLs, and the user interface has been translated into Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

TWiki deployment

TWiki is primarily used at the workplace as a

corporate wiki Wiki software (also known as a wiki engine or a wiki application), is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application ...

to coordinate team activities, track projects, implement workflows and as an

Intranet Wiki Wiki software (also known as a wiki engine or a wiki application), is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application ...

. The TWiki community estimates 40,000 corporate wiki sites as of March 2007, and 20,000 public TWiki sites. TWiki customers include

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...

such as Disney, Motorola, Nokia,

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

and Yahoo!, as well as

small and medium enterprise Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Bank ...

s, such as

ARM Holdings Arm is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England. Its primary business is in the design of ARM processors (CPUs). It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView an ...

and

DHL DHL is an American founded, German logistics company providing courier, package delivery and express mail service, which is a division of the German logistics firm Deutsche Post. The company group delivers over 1.8 billion parcels per year. DHL ...

. TWiki has also been used to create collaborative internet sites, such as the

City of Melbourne The City of Melbourne is a local government area in Victoria, Australia, located in the central city area of Melbourne. In 2018, the city has an area of and had a population of 169,961. Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. The ci ...

's ''FutureMelbourne'' wiki where citizens can collaborate on the future plan.

Realization

TWiki is implemented in Perl. Wiki pages are stored in plain text files. Everything, including meta such as access control settings, are version controlled using

RCS RCS may refer to: Organisations *Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace * Radio Corporation of Singapore *Radcliffe Choral Society * Rawmarsh Community School *Red Crescent Society *Red Cross Society * Representation of Czechs and Slovaks, a football t ...

. RCS is optional since an all-Perl version control system is provided. TWiki scales reasonably well even though it uses plain text files and no

relational database A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

to store page data. Many corporate TWiki installations have several hundred thousand pages and tens of thousands of users. Load balancing and caching can be used to improve performance on high traffic sites. TWiki has database features built into the engine. A TWiki Form is attached to a page as meta data. This represents a database record. A set of pages that share the same type of form build a database table. A formatted search with a SQL-like query can be embedded into a page to construct dynamic presentation of data from multiple pages. This allows for building wiki applications and constitutes the TWiki's notion of a structured wiki.

TWiki release history

* 1998-07-23: Initial version, based on

JosWiki The history of wikis began in 1994, when Ward Cunningham gave the name "WikiWikiWeb" to the knowledge base, which ran on his company's website at c2.com, and the wiki software that powered it. The wiki went public in March 1995, the date used i ...

, an application created by Markus Peter and Dave Harris * 2000-05-01: TWiki Release 1 May 2000 * 2000-12-01: TWiki Release 1 December 2000 * 2001-09-01: TWiki Release 1 September 2001 * 2001-12-01: TWiki Release 1 December 2001 ("Athens") * 2003-02-01: TWiki Release 1 February 2003 ("Beijing") * 2004-09-01: TWiki Release 1 September 2004 ("Cairo") * 2006-02-01: TWiki Release 4.0.0 ("Dakar") * 2007-01-16: TWiki Release 4.1.0 ("Edinburgh") * 2008-01-22: TWiki Release 4.2.0 ("Freetown") * 2009-09-02: TWiki Release 4.3.2 ("Georgetown") * 2010-06-10: TWiki Release 5.0 ("Helsinki") * 2011-08-20: TWiki Release 5.1 ("Istanbul") * 2013-10-14: TWiki Release 6.0.0 ("Jerusalem") * 2018-07-16: TWiki Release 6.1.0 ("Kampala")

Forks of TWiki

Forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...

of TWiki include: * 2001: Spinner Wiki (abandoned) * 2003: O'Wiki fork (abandoned) * 2008: Foswiki, launched in October 2008 when a dispute about the future guidance of the project could not be settled, resulting in the departure of much of the TWiki community including the core developer team

Gallery

Image:twiki_screen_4_0_a.png, Sample page layout. Image:twiki_screen_4_0_b.png, Page edit with wiki markup, SmartEditAddOn toolbar installed. Image:twiki_screen_4_0_c.png, Page edit with WYSIWYG editor. Image:twiki_screen_4_0_d.png, Edit tables with EditTablePlugin.

References

External links

TWiki.org - Open source community site

Comparison between TWiki and MediaWiki

TWIKI.NET - company providing commercial installation, support and hosting solutions for TWiki

WikiMatrix description of TWiki

Foswiki.org - The Free and Open Source Wiki site
{{Perl Free software programmed in Perl Free wiki software Free content management systems Groupware Perl software Cross-platform software