Rick's TikiWiki Blog

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Mon 04 Jan. 2010 17:37 CET

First, Happy New Year! I can't believe it has been nearly 2 months since my last blog post. :-(

A while ago, I blogged about using using the Ratings widget from JS-Kit to easily add a "Rate this Page" widget to Tiki wiki pages (as an alternative to using Polls).

Unfortunately, JS-Kit (now Echo) ended their support of this widget (external link)

in November, 2009. I've been looking for a suitable replacement since then. And now, I think I found it: Spotback.com (external link)

.

Simply by adding a few lines of Javascript into your page (or your template, if you want the widget to appear only all pages), you can get add simple page rating to your Tiki:

The Spotback.com rating widget, as implemented on TikiWiki for Smarties.

The widget is highly configurable and offers lots of options to tinker with. Check it out

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Fri 20 Nov. 2009 04:35 CET

Do you want to have multiple banners appear in the same banner zone? I recently discovered that Tiki will (randomly) rotate banners that are assigned to the same banner zone, if they are all active.

For example, I assigned four different banners to the same banner zone (Top):

Notice that all four banners:

Use the same zone
Do not use dates (meaning that they are always valid)
Do not have a maximum number of impressions or clicks (meaning that they will continue to be shown)

You can see this in action over on TikiWiki for Smarties (external link)

. Reload the page several times and watch the banner at the top.

Pretty cool, eh?

I haven't delved deep enough in the code to figure out exactly how random the rotation is, but so far it seems to work well.

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Fri 30 Oct. 2009 00:22 CET

TikiWiki for Smarties is now on Facebook!

TikiWiki for Smarties: A beginner's guide to using TikiWiki CMS/Groupware. on Facebook

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Wed 26 Aug. 2009 16:36 CEST

Do you want to add one of those super-cool, Web 2.0, feedback widgets to your Tiki site? With the Custom Code areas in the Admin: Look & Feel page, it is a piece of cake.

I recently added a (free) feedback form from http://www.kampyle.com/Kampyle (external link)

to my Tiki:

Feedback form

Check it out: http://www.hawkinsrun.org (external link)

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Tue 18 Aug. 2009 13:39 CEST

I recently completed a full-scale accessibility audit of one of my Tiki sites. If you've never used Accessibility Management Platform (AMP) by SSB BART Group, I highly recommend it. It is quite powerful.

Although TW has many accessibility features built-in, there's still room for improvement. Over then next few weeks, I hope to make some updates and enhancements in Trunk to address these issues.

My ultimate goal is complete WCAG 2.0 AAA (external link)

compliance. Stay tuned...

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Fri 19 June 2009 21:48 CEST

Tiki's Google User Map feature is great. It allows you to create a "mashup" of all your users on a Google Map. But I wanted to be able to embed the map in different wiki pages. Here's how I did it:

Edit tiki-gmap_usermap.php. At the end of the file, change this line:

$smarty->assign('mid','tiki-gmap_usermap.tpl');

to this:

$smarty->display('tiki-gmap_usermap.tpl');

Edit tiki-gmap_usermap.tpl. Remove the {title .... } line. Instead, you'll already have a title on the wiki page in which you embed the map.

Use the IFRAME plugin to embed the map on a wiki page:

{IFRAME(src=>tiki-gmap_usermap.php,width=>510,height=>410,name=>"User_Map",scrolling=>no,frameborder=>0) /}

Pretty neat, eh?

Permalink 2 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Thu 07 May 2009 14:50 CEST

Release 3.0 is nearly ready! I have been working on updating the Smarties (external link)

information. I've also been testing the site upgrade (from 2.x to 3.0) and can report that it went quite smoothly. The biggest issues will be moving from a tables-based layout to (almost) pure CSS.

In the meantime, I've been playing with a custom browser toolbar for Smarties:

TikiWiki for Smarites toolbar.

It provides direct access to the major chapter sections in the guide, the demo videos, search engine, and RSS feeds. Try it out (external link)

and let me know what you think!

Download and install the TikiWiki for Smarties Community toolbar: http://tikiwikiforsmarties.ourtoolbar.com/ (external link)

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Wed 29 Apr. 2009 19:05 CEST

Some students at Duke University's Continuing Education class have created a great introduction to how to use wikis. In it, they mention KeyContent.org (external link)

, one of my Tiki-powered sites. Read more, here (external link)

.

Their project, Wikis for Beginners (external link)

...

: ...serves as an introduction to how to use wikis. It includes a general overview of wikis, actual examples from public and corporate wikis, details about the DukeWiki, and a description of our Technical Communication Wiki... The goal of this project is to apply the principles of information architecture and project management to present our wiki guide as a PDF document, using DukeWiki as a development tool.

Read about KeyContent (external link)

(and TikiWiki) in Chapter 2, Public Wikis: Sharing Knowledge over the Internet (external link)

.

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Sun 26 Apr. 2009 14:58 CEST

TikiWiki for ~~Dummies~~ Smarties? is now on Twitter! Just start following @twbasics (external link)

to stay up-to-date!

Not much yet, but more coming as I update for 3.0! Please feel free to contribute to the Smarties project. I'm especially looking for translation help.

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Thu 23 Apr. 2009 14:52 CEST

TikiWiki 3.0 is nearly here! (woo-hoo)

If you want to take a sneak peak, here's your chance. I have begun updating the Smarty Demo Videos (external link)

for the 3.0 release. Additionally, much of TikiWiki for ~~Dummies~~ Smarties has already been updated too.

As always, comments and feedback (external link)

is appreciated.

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Tue 10 Mar. 2009 21:28 CET

Marc Laporte recently passed along a query (external link)

about adding a Twitter to Tiki.... here's how.

As I've demonstrated in previous posts, with Flash and/or Javascript anything is possible.

Here (external link)

is a nice Twitter widget (from Widgetbox (external link)

) that you can use to embed into your Tiki by using either the JS or Flash plugins.

Complete the widget. You'll need the Twitter ID.
With JS:
1. Grab the generated JS code and paste it into your Tiki. Look for the two script elements.
2. Take the first script element and create a JS plugin:
```
{JS(file="http://cdn.widgetserver.com/syndication/subscriber/InsertWidget.js") /}
```
3. Now take the second script element and create another JS plugin:
```
{JS()}if (WIDGETBOX) WIDGETBOX.renderWidget('12423500-af3e-493e-beb8-3e2ba2b0877b');{JS}
```
That's it! You should now see your Twitter widget:
With Flash:
1. Grab the generated Flash code and paste it into your Tiki.
2. Create a Flash Plugin:
```
{FLASH(movie="http://widgetserver.com/syndication/flash/wrapper/InsertWidget.swf",width="180",height="230",quality="high") /}
```
3. Look at the Flash code (that you copied from Widget box) and find the value that looks similar to r=2&appId=12423500-af3e-493e-beb8-3e2ba2b0877b.
  Your actual codes will differ, based on the Twitter ID you're using.
4. Copy the complete value and append it to the movie URL, using ?.
```
{FLASH(movie="http://widgetserver.com/syndication/flash/wrapper/InsertWidget.swf?r=2&appId=12423500-af3e-493e-beb8-3e2ba2b0877b",width="180",height="230",quality="high") /}
```
That's it! You should now see your Twitter widget:

Permalink 1 comment

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Thu 19 Feb. 2009 17:49 CET

According to Google, which we all know is the final authority on everything.. ;-) , TikiWiki for ~~Dummies~~ Smarties is the best guide to TikiWiki:

Permalink 0 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Tue 20 Jan. 2009 16:02 CET

This just in... Another horn-tooting announcement.

TikiWiki for ~~Dummies~~ Smarties has won a Merit Award in the STC Carolina Online Communication.

Read more, Rhere (external link)

.

Woo-hoo!

Permalink 1 comment

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Fri 10 Oct. 2008 14:52 CEST

I recently stumbled upon the Codeswarm (external link)

project. It is a pretty cool project that provides:

: Organic software visualization of project repositories.

Why read Tiki's SVN commit messages or subscribe to the RSS feed, when you can watch it! This code swarm shows the commits from July 13, 2008 through October 6, 2008:

Having problems with the embedded SWF file? Here's a direct link to the TikiWiki Code Swarm (external link)

(hosted on KeyContent.org (external link)

).

Permalink 3 comments

**ricks99** · By **ricks99** on Thu 11 Sep. 2008 17:24 CEST

Sure, Tiki does tags and can create a tag cloud... and now Tiki can create wordles (external link)

. You can create a wordle from any Tiki page or RSS feed. Here's a worlde for my blog:

Wordle of this blog.

And it is a snap to embed a wordle into a Tiki page. Just use the IMG wiki tag.

Permalink 0 comments

Rick's TikiWiki Blog

Rating pages, take two

Random(ish) Rotating Banners

Smarties now on Facebook!

Feedback 2.0

Tiki + Accessibility

Embedding a Google User Map

Smart Toolbar

KeyContent and TikiWiki

Smart Tweets

New "Smarty" videos

A Tiki Twit

It is official.....

Award-winning documentation

Tiki Code Swarm

TikiWiki Worlde

Sidebar

Last changes

Sidebar

Search by Page Name

Shoutbox

TikiWiki Tweets