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WikiRefactoring

Questions answered by this recipe

What are the steps and methods to refactor and re-organize a wiki?

Description

Enter your recipe's description here.

Major edits

• keep pages subject to one topic
• keep pages size to one screen full or one A4 printed page

Minor edits

• use links, they are the raison d'etre of wikis
• use headings
• use bulletted and numbered lists

Notes

Some existing recipes that might be useful, if applied in the right way. I haven't tested all of them.

• RenamePage - move pages around easily without breaking links (refactor original pages later); RenamePage preverses page-history, as well!
• BackupPages - always good to backup the wiki periodically, or at least before making major changes; see WikiRefactoring#Overwrite for history-loss issues.
• StringReplace - link or form markup for replacing text strings in pages
• QuickReplace - Quickly define replacement texts in wiki pages, and use them as markup or during page save.
• ROSPatterns - defines a Regulare Expression pattern as key and a text which should replace it when saving an edited text.

Of course, these are automated methods, and don't allow you to retrace your steps. So backup that wiki!

Are there any recipes to revert multiple pages or roll-back the entire wiki to a certain date? Other than a CVS method?

Upgrading pages

Some recipes come with included pages (or _only_ included pages, such as JITS). If you over-write your existing pages (via the filesystem) with the new pages, you lose all internal history. The page now has the change-history of the distributor. If you use a CVS, you can pull the old version, compare sources? But the change history will be discontinuous one way or another.

Is there a best-practices method for this situation? Copy-paste the new versions into the exiting page via wiki edit, so that old-vs-new changes are tracked via diff? Overwrite? Or is this more a matter of personal preference?

Or is there another method of reconciling these pages?

Comments

See Also

• WikiRefactoring

Contributors

• OtherMichael

Category tags

Refactoring