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TWiki - a tool for collaborative Web documentation

A WiKi (pronounced "WeeKee") is a Web collaboration platform, web-based post-it, "Blogging" tool, or document collection. In a Wiki, web-pages can be edited directly and thus corrected and updated easlily. The original Wiki is the WikiWikiWeb. (Wiki wiki is Hawaiian for "super quick".) Wikis have become extremely popular over the last years and a number of Wiki implementations are available. Wikis are used in corporate intranets, on the internet for software development projects and all kinds of forums. You may participate in Wiki-powered forums on subjects ranging from AutoCAD development to how to stop spam. There is also a shared Encyclopedia, the WikiPedia.

Our SDT users requested a Wiki for software development projects last year. Looking at different Wiki implementations, we have chosen TWiki that is also used by a Finnish team involved in Grid activities at CERN. TWiki is a flexible, powerful, secure, yet simple web-based collaboration platform. This is an Open source WIKI using RCS, Perl and Apache. You can use TWiki to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base or any other groupware tool on either on an intranet or on the Internet.

TWiki.PSgroup is a web-based collaboration area for IT PS, using our TWiki installation. Users may log in with their AFS username and password. This Wiki also houses a project collaboration area for users of the CERN Software Development Tools service. The use within a small team of programmers at CERN has since evolved into wider use for the Atlas Computing community. Following the footsteps of ATLAS, TWiki is now taken up by CMS and LCG SPI.

Advantages of TWiki

  • Shared Web portal and document workspace
  • Allows for direct editing of web-pages with revision control
  • Really easy to set up, can run on standard Web-servers
  • Powerful for writing documentation "as you go along"
  • Simple and unbureaucratic tool for e.g. "How-to"s, developer notes and discussions
  • Possible to use knowledge database for FAQs

If you want to try out TWiki, take a look here first. You may also try out some of the Wikis on the Web, starting from the WikiPedia. Or take a look at the Astrogrid Virtual Observatory.

Please note that a Wiki is complementary to structured document archiving tools such as CDS, as well as EDMS that is intended for configuration management of bills of materials, CAD and Engineering data.

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NjH 2004.

TWiki - a tool for collaborative web documentation

 
CERN logo
 
 
Nils Høimyr, IT/CS
Peter Jones, IT/DES
 
http://cern.ch/product-support

What is a Wiki?

A WiKi (pronounced "WeeKee") is a Web collaboration platform, web-based post-it, "Blogging" tool, or web document collection. In a Wiki, you can directly edit web-pages from the browser.

Wikis have become extremely popular over the last years. On the Internet, you may participate in Wiki-powered forums on subjects ranging from AutoCAD development to how to stop spam. There is also a shared Encyclopedia, the WikiPedia.

Wiki - Motivation

User request from the Software Development tools (SDT) community for a "Wiki" documentation tool.

Need for an internal area for quick documentation in PS/DTS.

Finnish Grid team using TWiki to document Nordic Grid activities.

TWiki - Open source Wiki

TWiki is a widely used Wiki implementation mainly targeting corporate Intranets.

We have set up Twiki with AFS username and password and encrypted Kerberos authentication.

TWiki editing

Hyperlinked documents are created directly on the server

Simple markup syntax

Access control possible with groups, but think twice!

TWiki experience

You can edit and correct notes without bothering your colleagues. Thanks to revision control, you can work on a shared document without messing up the changes made by others.

 

TWiki is to be considered as a collaboration tool for web documentation and not as document management or Web-site publishing system.

The use of Twiki may also be extended to other areas, e.g. it can be used as a shared knowledge database for FAQs.

TWiki use in Atlas

TWiki use in the SDT community has evolved into wider use within the Atlas experiment.

 

December 2004: 302 topic saves and 10079 topic views in the Atlas Computing web.

"The major advantage of the wiki over our conventional web pages, is that users can fix mistakes as they find them, whereas 'normal' web pages can only be modified by a few selected people (who are usually too busy), and thus quickly become out-of-date."

TWiki use - elsewhere

TWiki is used by a number of industrial companies as well as academia. Some examples of TWiki installations are:

TWiki@CERN - outlook

At CERN, TWiki is used to complement CVS and Savannah for Web documentation of code and installation notes.

Following the successful use of TWiki by the Atlas Computing team, TWiki has been taken up by other groups at CERN as well:

Wiki service

TWiki is becoming a popular tool for web-documentation in software projects and thus requires a stable service. The following service definition is proposed:

TWiki server hosting

TWiki support

Setup and customisation 2 FTE months. On-going support estimated to 0.10 FTE based on the current setup done by IT/PS.

More information

Motivation and Wiki presentation: http://cern.ch/product-support/wiki.html

TWiki

Other links on the Web (use Google), as well as articles in the press (The Economist, Wall Street Journal, BBC News etc)

Questions?

  • Nils.Hoimyr@cern.ch, Peter.Jones@cern.ch