Using Drupal

Chapter 5. Wiki

The collaborative nature of wikis has given rise to new and exciting methods of online knowledge management. Wikipedia, the most famous example of a wiki, is an online encyclopedia consisting of millions of articles, constantly written and updated by thousands of volunteers from around the world. By combining a few add-on modules, Drupal can also harness this sort of power and combine it with the other great features that Drupal already provides.

But what is a wiki? A wiki is a collection of web pages that visitors may contribute to by adding and editing content through their browser. Wikis keep track of changes made and have the ability to revert to earlier versions when needed. Wikis often use a simplified text markup to allow quick and easy formatting. A key technical feature is the ability to create links to pages that don’t yet exist, allowing the structure of the site to grow organically. What all of that means is that a wiki is a great tool for a group to use to collaborate when writing documents. Many people can work together on a “living” document that gets changed and updated as needed.

In this chapter, we will build a wiki with Drupal and cover some really cool things that Drupal can do—wiki or not.

This chapter introduces the following modules:

Freelinking (http://drupal.org/project/freelinking)

Provides the ability to easily link between pages

Markdown filter (http://drupal.org/project/markdown)

Provides an easy, human-readable way to enter HTML formatting ...