[pmwiki-users] timing of PmWiki blogging module

[The Editor]

I'm not familiar with WordPress but my guess is FAST Data will do most
anything it does and probably more, though it might require a bit of
ingenuity setting up certain applications.  My goal was to make this
recipe like PmWiki itself--as flexible and powerful as possible,
enabling you to do anything you could imagine with a form.

You have to think about this recipe a bit differently though.  It is
almost like a mini programming language which allows you to do
(multiple) data saves, logs (comments), send emails, edit while
retrieving, and transforming data programatically, mixed with all
kinds of other features (authentication, new page generation, uploads,
etc.).  It even has conditionals of sorts, multiple choice action
buttons, etc.  I'm using it on my site now that all but the log
editing is complete and it's performing every task I put to it, with
considerable ease.  Some do take a bit of cleverness.

If you want a list of the features, take a look at my preview of the
features list for 2.0 I just  posted at
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Caveman/DataDocs.  The engine has been
significantly rewritten to use more PmWiki functions directly and to
greatly extend how it works.  In fact this is probably the only recipe
I'm going to need to enable on my entire site.

If you have a question about whether or not it can do something
specific let me know, and I'll give you an answer.  If there's
something you want to do with a form it can't do, I'll try and add a
way to get it done.  My goal is *unlimited* forms processing.  But I
suspect you'll be hardpressed to find something it can't do already in
2.0.

I used Drupal and Moodle for quite a while before discovering and
switching to PmWiki and enjoyed their capabilities.  But much
preferred PmWiki's flexibility, power, and ease of use.  My goal in
writing FAST Data was to find ways to do all the things in those
systems I had to leave behind, such as full-featured instant
messaging, dynamic site modification based on member preferences,
classes, quizzes, etc.  With FAST Data there's not one feature in
either I can think of that I can't do now in PmWiki.

One of my next projects is to give individual members the ability to
create complete  mini-websites (without ever having to learn wiki
markup)--right within my site. The plans look like a snap to
impIement.  In fact I no longer have any need to have a single page in
my site editable to members.  It's ALL done through FAST Data.

Well, thanks for letting me rave. I'm hoping others will get excited
about the possibilities of this recipe, and it will attract the genius
of others who might be able to find ways to improve it even more.  Or
even find some feature it can't do.  That's the idea behind open
source, isn't it?

Cheers,
Caveman



On 15 Sep 2006 10:57:52 +1200, John Rankin <john.rankin at affinity.co.nz> wrote:
>
> I hear the user's voice in my head asking, "Will it do everything that
> WordPress does? If not, what features would I lose?"
>
> Is such a use case documented anywhere that I can read?
>
>
> --
> JR
> --
> John Rankin

>
>
>