[pmwiki-users] Looking for articles/reviews about PmWiki

a.sonderhoff at gassi-tv.de a.sonderhoff at gassi-tv.de
Sun Oct 2 13:33:22 CDT 2011


>> I see many webdesigners using wordpress as a basis for their work
> ...
>> Maybe PmWiki, if it would have been visually
>> more attractive at first sight, could have suit their need too.
> 
> Maybe. But those people are curiuos and educated so I think they know what 
> they're doing.
> 
> They may also be just young and/or not part of the wiki culture: 
> collaboration, evolving articles, blank text area, a wiki markup as an 
> additional layer of punctuation, fist add a link then click on it to create a 
> page etc...

Dear PmWiki developer community,

I studied media design and I am currently employed as a creative director in a small advertising agency. Obviously I am the brand manager of GASSI TV® as well. As such I would like to comment on PmWiki and maybe even give some inspiration. I am also aware, that some of the stuff I am going to write is not really in line with Pm's original philosophy on PmWiki.

I have been using PmWiki quite a lot for small business websites and as of this year even for a professional more complex, content centered site. I started playing around with PmWiki in 2003 or 2004 when I was looking for an alternative to Mediawiki, which would not run on my shared webhosting account. I found PmWiki and was both intrigued and disappointed. The simplicity meant it would run on the shared webhosting account. But the lack of an mysql db was somewhat of an administration and file rights nightmare (for backup on a shared webhosting account without ssh login). So basically I used for several years as a Wiki for small collaboration communities.

In 2006 I had to design a website as a college project in Webdesign class. Not wanting to put much effort in setting up a complex cms, I realized the heavily design centered site (mootools animations, large pictures, multiple templates etc.) within a short time with PmWiki. In fact my initial technical presentation on PmWiki made another project group of media designers to go with PmWiki as well. That's when I realized, that PmWiki is much more than a Wiki. It's in fact a simple cms framework which is easy to extend and where you can design the backend to the needs of your clients.

It's a great wiki (I currently use it for two private collaboration projects), but it's only one of the few available cms which offer maximum flexibility with minimum configuration and setup time (another being pixie). For us designers PmWiki is nearly invisible, because the pmwiki.org site looks visually outdated and the content centers around the wiki functionality. Just have look on the Pixie or Wordpress sites. They are much more visually appealing.

These lines are just my two cents. But just think about this: When GASSI TV® was relaunched this year, we were planning to use Drupal as the new CMS. But when I played around with PmWiki, it soon became clear, that I could actually realize the same functionality and design faster with PmWiki. If I didn't play around with PmWiki for a long time and figured out, that it can be easily configured as a cms, I would never even have considered using it. From a brand management point of view, the brand name PmWiki is not really a benefit, as it reduces the cms to a wiki. The visual appearance of both site and brand are plainly speaking not adding to the brand value at all. It's a great product, but it ships in an unappealing packaging.

Take care, Josh

-- 
ALJOSCHA SONDERHOFF
brand & marketing

office +49 2238 4629519
mobile +49 1511 5794189
fax    +49 2238 963023
email  <a.sonderhoff at gassi-tv.de>

GASSI-TV
Aurikelweg 22
50259 Pulheim, NRW
GERMANY

http://gassi-tv.de

On Oct/02, 2011, at 1900 , pmwiki-users-request at pmichaud.com wrote:

> Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 14:28:46 +0200
> From: Petko Yotov <5ko at 5ko.fr>
> To: pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com
> Subject: Re: [pmwiki-users] Looking for articles/reviews about PmWiki
> Message-ID: <201110021428.46790.5ko at 5ko.fr>
> Content-Type: Text/Plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> On Sunday 02 October 2011 10:26:12, Eric Forgeot wrote :
>>> PmWiki was very popular in the past because it was one of the first
>>> wikis/CMSs written in PHP at a moment when cheaper hosting providers
>>> started providing PHP in addition to static HTML,
>> 
>> I didn't know PmWiki was that old. It would worth mentionning it on the
>> wiki (date of creation or first release)
> 
> The very first version 0.1 was released January 8, 2002, that is almost 10 
> years ago. We should think about the birthday party, and what we should have 
> done before that date: improving the homepage and the documentation, updating 
> the translations...?
> 
>> About the {{notability}} and {{primary sources}} tags added on the
>> PmWiki page on WP, I see they were added by an unregistered user from
>> Poland. Don't you think it could be a kind of vandalism? Wouldn't it be
>> possible to revert this random and non justified action?
> 
> It is not vandalism. BTW, on Wikipedia like on all open wikis, it is 
> recommended to assume good faith. This is some regular editor who didn't 
> notice that he/she had been logged out.
> 
> For someone who doens't know about PmWiki and only visits the Wikipedia 
> article and the pmwiki.org homepage, the notability of PmWiki may look 
> unclear. And yes, the article cites mostly primary sources, but theese claims 
> are non-controversial technical details about the software and are best 
> described by its developer community.
> 
> I see this as an opportunity, we can greatly improve the Wikipedia article 
> which will present PmWiki much better than now. :-)
> 
> This effort is in the same direction as the discussions about improving the 
> content and the appearance of the pmwiki.org homepage. (Just in time!)
> 
>> With 5 books mentionning PmWiki and hundreds of websites using it, the
>> PmWiki's notability couldn't be seriously questionned.
> 
> There are at about 30 books and research papers in Google Scholar mentioning 
> "pmwiki.org", which means that they have reviewed PmWiki. (Thanks to Carlos.)
> 
>  http://scholar.google.fr/scholar?q=%22pmwiki.org%22
> 
> (A search just for "pmwiki" will return hundreds more papers, but they only 
> cite other publications on pmwiki installations, they don't talk about 
> PmWiki.)
> 
> A funny thing is that in two random papers which I opened, the authors 
> regretted a "missing" functionality which PmWiki actually has but obviously 
> they didn't find it. :-)
> 
>> It could also be interesting to copy the whole PmWiki article on
>> pmwiki.org, "just in case".
> 
> Don't worry, we'll fix it sooner than that. A complete overwrite is also 
> possible.
> 
>> I see many webdesigners using wordpress as a basis for their work
> ...
>> Maybe PmWiki, if it would have been visually
>> more attractive at first sight, could have suit their need too.
> 
> Maybe. But those people are curiuos and educated so I think they know what 
> they're doing.
> 
> They may also be just young and/or not part of the wiki culture: 
> collaboration, evolving articles, blank text area, a wiki markup as an 
> additional layer of punctuation, fist add a link then click on it to create a 
> page etc...
> 
> Petko
> 
> 
> 
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