Wagn: A Revolutionary Open Source Wiki on Rails
Everyone knows how wikis work by now - but when was the last time you saw a wiki that struck you as advancing the state of the art? Despite scores of implementations, most wikis are similar to the original. But the Wagn project is trying to change this - and using Rails as its infrastructure.
The basic innovation with Wagn is that instead of the editable units being pages, they're cards - and cards come in many different types, each with their own properties. So there are basic cards with a rich-text editor, HTML cards, plain text cards, image cards, executable Ruby cards, user account cards, and more. In addition, it supports "plus cards" - linkages between other cards that let you assign tags or attributes or indicate how other cards combine into tuples. The effect is a sort of cross between a wiki and a database.
Other features include the ability to nest cards within other cards, dynamic form building, a permissions model, and WQL - the wiki query language - which lets you build up flexible cards through searching for other cards.
The source for Wagn is available on GitHub, and it's under active development. If you've got a reasonably sophisticated user base, it would be a great alternative to a more structured CMS for many sites.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:26 am
I tried this one out. The code on GitHub is in a state of flux and I had to do a few tricks to get it to work (including making it use Rails 2.1 rather than Rails 2.2). It seems promising, though.
December 18th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Wow, thanks for the positive review! It's especially meaningful to us since we feel like you get most of what we're trying to do (tuples, cross between a wiki and a database, WQL, nesting/inclusion). Another design principle (with much work ahead) is to keep smoothing the ramp from reader to editor to site-builder. Anyway, we hope it's cool with you that we've quoted you on http://wagn.org/wagn/praise
December 21st, 2008 at 3:06 am
We recently decided to use Wagn as the basis for RecentChangesCamp, an international wiki-oriented conference that will take place in Portland, Oregon in February 2009. It's a great tool. Many of us have experience using it on connectipedia.org, an Oregon-based project that serves non-profits and charitable foundations.
December 21st, 2008 at 7:38 pm
To learn more about RecentChangesCamp, see http://2009rcc.org/ - lots of great wiki folks, and other tech and non-tech people will be there.
December 25th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Check out Ward Cunningham's talk at the launch of Connectipedia a major wiki based on Wagn - video