Please forgive me for starting this post by saying that Wikidot is an amazing project1. It started with an idea to build a community - a social-oriented group of websites, using the wiki concept. Wikis for everyone. As advanced and fully-featured as we can deliver.
Later, Wikidot started growing, attracted early users and investors, and that helped to scale Wikidot from merely 20,000 users to the almost half a million we have now. But what is more important, is that we have successfully scaled from a one-man project to a scalable service operated by a small, but smart team, backed by a community of Wikidot users helping us to run the project.
After 4 years of working with Wikidot, it clearly is a successful project to me. I have been watching several attempts to build wiki farms, often backed by large companies or having millions of $$ in investment, that died without getting any reasonable traction. The ones that succeeded, including WetPaint, WikiSpaces and Wikia, are not that far away from us in terms of popularity as a measure of success.
On the business side, we have developed a scalable revenue model, based on subscriptions and advertising, that still needs a lot of work, but gives nice perspectives based on real figures.
We have also overcome most of the technical challenges in hosting and scaling the service, which results in very good reliability, performance and, most importantly, gives us a way to scale to millions of users and wikis.
What is the plan then?
We have identified main areas we want to concentrate on as part of our medium-term strategy, and that we would like to share with you. There will be no large revolution, but rather a shift of focus and evolutionary changes.
User experience, optimization
After talking to designers, UI experts and our users, the conclusion is that our web interface exposes too many options and features, often in an unclear way. As an example, some of the options are almost never used (like "Edit page sections" or "Append" — only 20 times per day), while others are used very often ("Edit page" — almost 20 000 times a day). Having them side-by-side simply hurts the experience. From the very beginning Wikidot was a bit "geeky" — you could do amazing things with it, but you needed to learn how to do it first, and in many cases it was too steep to get the attention of a mass audience.
There are at least a few critical processes we want to optimize:
- Signing up and creating a wiki
- Editing content
- Inviting friends or coworkers
- Joining an existing wiki
- Managing (customizing) wikis
- Communication between users
Those are the most common actions on Wikidot that users are performing, therefore definitely worth optimizing. For new users, we would like to hide the more advanced features, and let them be discovered later.
Social aspect, real-time
Every Wikidot user operates within a certain network, that consists of people and wikis. The goal is to improve visibility of what is going on in the network, in real-time.
If you have been using the Watch feature recently, you either love it or hate it. It is great to get notifications on activity, but many users point out that the idea of sending emails to all followers every time a page is edited, is seriously flawed.
We would like to work on the social (connecting) aspect of Wikidot. Follow not only sites and pages, but also people. Not necessarily by email, but we would rather create an activity stream that could be viewed either through email, RSS, online (not yet possible), or even exported to your Twitter or Facebook accounts so that your friends know what you are doing on Wikidot.
Power under the hood
During the last year we have developed features that have changed the way many people use Wikidot. To name a few: Templates, the ListPages module and data forms. There are still more to come, and those that are available already are still an on-going process.
I can see a great potential in providing such features to our users, because they are the building blocks that help with creating really advanced wiki structures, ranging from simple blogs to issue trackers or large data collections. Those features are very expensive to develop, but it looks like it is worth the effort.
To be honest, those features are not for everyone right now, and there is a steep learning curve to master them. On one hand it is fine, because not every Wikidot user must necessarily be an advanced developer, but on the other hand it would be great to wrap some of those into friendly containers.
Business strategy
The current model gives us a good basis to move forward. Right now I can only say that we would like to make Pro plans more accessible, more clearly marketed, and easier to purchase. Many users are asking for monthly payments, so this is a clear hint.
We also have some plans related to advertising, which we will blog about later.
What is the conclusion?
Wikidot is a mature product, and getting to this point has been our goal so far. By optimizing the user experience we plan to make Wikidot accessible for even more users, but also to make Wikidot a tool people would use every day to take notes, build communities, share documents etc.
So far the "transparent development" model has worked fine for Wikidot, so we will continue sharing designs and ideas related to the improvements we are planning, either through this blog, or at projects.wikidot.com. Stay tuned.
Needless to say, I would love to hear your opinion.
Thanks for using Wikidot!
Michał Frąckowiak, CEO of Wikidot Inc.
Images come from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HNL_Wiki_Wiki_Bus.jpg and http://www.flickr.com/photos/7362334@N08/2347357002/
Hi Michal,
When does wikidot plans to implement full backup of a website, so that I can host a copy of my site on my personal server?
Right now, the backup ZIP file does not contain the forums, which is where I posted most of my data.
Furthermore, I have noticed that, despite being an open source projet, there is not a great community of developers around the open source version. Do you maintain 2 trees, the running version and the open source one?
Best,
Benjamin
The Open Source version at Wikidot.org is horribly out-of-date. As far as I understand it, Wikidot plans to clean up their backend code a bit, then re-release an updated version at Wikidot.org. That might take a while though.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
A workaround to the backup is the clone module…
The clone module is great unless you have more than 100 pages :(
I wish it were higher. I'm not sure what a reasonable page count is is, but it doesn't take long to get to 100 pages. Maybe the limits could be increased based on Pro account levels?
-Ed
Community Admin
Ed: 1 point.
This is only because we found a few serious technical problems with cloning sites, and we need to move the cloning process to the background, away from the web server. It is a resource-consuming process, and occasionally fail for large sites due to their complexity and process timeout.
Anyway, the limit is temporary, and I think will be removed (at least for Pro sites, good point) once we solve the difficulty.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
I personally like the direction you outlined. I always felt that the user experience was under-developed and lacking a bit, since a lot of it is as you said "geeky" and not for the novice user. The pro-plans are a bit hard to purchase with the current set up. I know I had a bit of a problem when I chose to upgrade to my pro account. I personally have enjoyed watching Wiki grow and develop in what ever direction those at the wheel guided us. I have learned a lot along the way and I look forward to seeing what is in store for the future.
PS.. the data form.. love them! I have it implemented on my site and all my members are amazed with how easy it is to keep our data organized using it. Big Thank You to the developers and community members who worked on that project.
………… Apple ………… Email Me
I use them a lot, and I am sure that all sites that have pages with lot of text, too…
Pleeeeease, dont remove Edit page sections!!!!!
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
I use it regularly for my Admin themes page, where I have 5 code blocks separated by Level 1 headings. But not for the rest of my pages.
From reading the blog post, I got the impression that it would be hidden from new users, to make the UI simpler, but it can be re-enabled through site manager. I'm hoping that is what Michal meant, anyway.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Maybe you don't have such long pages as I do, so there is no need to use it. But sites like mine (recently we created the third monstrum that cannot be edited entire, but only per sections), this feature edit sections is indispensable… Please don't remove it, and don't change it because I adore it just as it is now… Pleeeeeeeaaaaaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…………………… :)
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
I've long thought it would be nice if edit sections could be permanently enabled for specific pages and/or categories. So far (at least that I can tell!), you have to go down and turn edit sections on essentially every time you want to use it, then go back up to the section you want to edit. I think it would see a lot more use if it could be made to default on for selected portions of the wiki; I know I'd use it!
I like the idea of edit sections, particularly for pages that have different pieces of code on them (e.g. a tabview and a table), or for long pages like tutorials; sometimes you just want to fix a typo or update a field, without sifting through all of the wiki code for the whole page to find that one spot. But I think people tend to take the route that involves fewer successive clicks — right now, that's the standard 'edit' button.
I agree exactly with Ashe. Edit-Section feature is very useful.
The reason most people are not using is not because they are not useful, but it is difficult to use them in its current position at the bottom. If you look at Wikipedia, the edit-section link is present for every section of the page at right. I am an editor in Wikipedia since 2006 and I use / used edit-section feature there very frequently. But in wiki-dot, one need to scroll down, click on 'Options' then move right to click 'Edit-Section' then move up to the section and click the 'Edit-Section' link. Because of the number of steps needed I am often discouraged to use it.
Instead of keeping Edit-Section still more conspicuous, keep it visible for every section (like in Wikipedia) and I think more people will start using it.
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I agree, but that doesn't suit every site. For example, I know one Wikidot site of mine that would definitely not look too good with edit links all over the place, as will the several business websites hosted by Wikidot.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
You can put an "edit-sections standalone button" onto the side bar or into an extra-div …
Beat me to it. Jijith, the syntax is just [[button edit-sections]] which you can put at the top of the page or into your live templates so it is on every page in a category.
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
But Rob, the difference is that at Wikipedia, you don't even need to do that. The "edit" links are next to the headings without the need to click on the edit sections button (regardless of where it is on the page). I think that's what Jijith is asking for here.
Though I didn't think about putting the button up there, otherwise I would've suggested it already (even if it's not perfect). So good thinking :)
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
A few points.
1. One of the (many) reasons that Wikidot pages tend to look nicer than MediaWiki pages is the absence of the edit page section links. I can understand why having them makes editing long pages easier, but I think having them as a default would be a mistake.
2. I'm pretty sure there is a "wiki auto-detection" add-on for Firefox that gives you an edit button at the top of any wiki page - I think there was a blog post about it a year or so ago.
3. I don't use section edits, but I do occasionally include a particular section in multiple pages, and I use the code below (or something similar) to make it easier to find and edit.
[[include :index:test-page]]
To edit the above click [http://index.wikidot.com/test-page/edit/true here]
Wayne Eddy
Melbourne, Australia
LGAM Knowledge Base
Contact via Google+
I wouldn't want edit sections always-on for all of my sites either — but having it default on for chosen categories would be nice.
Since there are different requirements depending on the nature of the site, can we make the position and nature of the edit-section a customizable feature? It can be left to the site-admin whether they need a permanent edit section at right-side or not or it to be hidden somewhere or to be totally absent. It can also be a category based feature like Ash mentioned.
I guess for the time being (for my sites) the solution suggested by Rob is enough, which I can use on some selected long pages. But any manual edit activity is ineffective in sites with more than 10000 pages.
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As you mention here. the thing that distinguishes Wikidot is the ability all users have to use and customize Wikidot modules like ListPages, New Page, etc., customize CSS, and generally have the ability to develop and control fairly complex wiki sites.
I sometimes feel that Wikidot could best improve itself by giving users a WYSIWYG interface and features such as drag and drop as platforms such as PBWorks and Wordpress use. This would certainly make Wikidot a more approachable place for newcomers. It would most likely lead to increased participation which could in turn only lead to superior wikis.
Unfortunately, there is often a trade-off between user control and user friendliness. Software that is easy to use often limits the ability of users to control what's going on under the hood. That's true of PBWorks, for instance. They too have a limited number of modules, but an individual user can customize almost nothing about them. They are not very powerful.
I am hoping that as Wikidot rightly turns its attention to making Wikidot easier and more pleasant to use, it will not sacrifice the incredible amount of customization and control it gives its users.
Many, many thanks for running this fantastic site!
Thanks for this post. It all sounds good.
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
Allowing for customization of the UI is as important as optimizing the UI that is used by default, I think. I'd like to keep the math edit buttons in the editor and drop most of the rest, for example.
Building containers around complex features like data forms would be nice, but I imagine such containers would be much costlier to keep up-to-date (especially the documentation) than the features themselves. Also, it's questionable if making these features more accessible would actually lead many non-advanced users to adopt them. (I would, though.)
if you ever do give wikidot a WSYIWYG editor, PLEASE make there be some way to switch back to the normal one. this is one of the things i like about wikidot is that it feels like you actually coding the webpage, and you have so much control over it
I agree with rhombus here. WYSIWYG would be useful for comments, to help the anonymous contributors on my main site, but for page editing I would always want to edit the code directly. At the moment I can enable/disable the editor buttons for pages/comments individually using CSS. Please ensure that flexibility is kept for any WYSIWYG editors, if they are planned. I'd like to decide exactly where that option is available and where it is not.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
I definitely second this. It's a must to make sure we have an option to use the current editor that lets us play in the code directly. From my experience, WYSIWYG editors introduced on sites tend to be clunky, heavy, and so laggy they hardly run with all the fancy script to just make it look pretty. I'm not saying this is what would happen, i'm just afraid that it could! D: I much prefer to see the code, though the only exception would be with tables. Making large complicated tables in wikidot syntax just makes things explode when I try. :)
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.
Hey Naomi, even a better editor for tables could end up not being used very often if it is poorly designed.
Is there any particular websites, or applications (like Microsoft Office Word) that you'd say have good table creation / editing tools? That way Wikidot could base their editor on that design, instead of trying to start from scratch.
Edit: I've been meaning to start work on http://editor.wikidot.com for some time. At the very least, I could create an editor that just helps you to make tables in wikidot, and add the rest in sometime later.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Naomi,
If you haven't seen it, Gerdami's outstanding Import Simple Excel Tables Into Wikidot howto/utility is a great way to deal with complex table layout. I highly recommend it unless or until something better comes along…
-Ed
Community Admin
Yeah !
You can also consider embedding Zoho or Google spreadsheets…
I use Confluence at work (sorry for me).
However, I can switch from wysiwyg to wiki syntax at wish. Moreover, it remembers my preference.
Thanks for the comments so far!
Regarding the editor, we already had 2 WYSIWYG prototypes, but it became obvious that if we wanted them to work well with modules, templates etc. - it would be really challenging and painful. Moreover, WYSIWYG mode in browser is much better now than it was a while ago (compatibility between browsers), but still it has major problems.
So the first choice is: source-based or WYSIWYG. Or something between, that has support for basic formatting (bold, italic etc.), but leaves more advanced stuff as wiki source.
And there is one more interesting way we could follow, which is IMHO the most tempting one:
Etherpad has a really simple interface (which is good), provides a chat for collaborative editing (might be interesting). Moreover, we could add support for adding our wiki source snippets. But the real power is unveiled when several people edit the same content. No more page locking.
We have been looking at the technology involved and it looks this is within our powers to implement such a thing.
So this is just an idea, but for me it looks much better than wysiwyg editing, is not that much different from our current editing, and adds really nice collaboration options. And removes edit locks, which in many cases are a nightmare, also internally for us.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
Edit secion button?
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Etherpad is great (see also http://typewith.me/).
Anyway, wherever you go, don't use Flash.
MacTutorial Subtitles, Wik-iPad, HTML5 App, FreeSMUG
agreed, flash is slow and very heavy.
I would like to have more possibilities of listing members of my site. Like I would like to have at least a number in front of each of them so I can know how many of them are, but it would be appreciated if i could count them, too. I would also like to be able to determine various levels for them, and to list each of this levels but not including the admins or moderators, like now. There are admins, mods, and members, but both admins and mods appear also in the list of members. I don't like it. I would also like to be possible to create automatic user page in the site, as soon as someone becomes a member…
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
This is already possible… but it's a Pro feature. It's part of the "Site Branding" options, which lets a Pro user hide the Wikidot Community completely and make a self-contained website (e.g. local karma, and ability to add own logo to create account screen, etc)
See here: http://projects.wikidot.com/thread:132
I agree, there should be a way to count users. At the moment in my site I am using these member pages, and using CountPages to count how many there are. There should be a way to count members for free users, who don't have the member pages.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
You mean, pro+++++++++…. feature? Well, I guess then user pages should be made manually… I am only pro-lite… :( with no chances to be more in the future…
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Hmm I thought it was Pro Lite as well that had that. I suppose not.
If you go into Site Manager -> Site branding (after "Members" and before "Blocks") - you do not see it?
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Nope. I don't have that. It goes Members, and then Blocks. :(
I don't want to hide Wikidot. But I don't see how making automatic userpages can be making Wikidot invisible. On the other hand, Wikidot user page is very limited. If there is a user page as in Wikipedia, the user can use it for notes, write about himself, whatever… I don't see such possibilities in current Wikidot user pages…
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
It's almost there.
This would give you a page that referenced a page for every user.
(maybe with some options that limited exactly which users had pages.)
The user would have to create the page from scratch, and of course the listusers module doesn't work like that yet.
Good idea! That would be a good replacement, once the module itself works.
Maybe this, to show a different colour for pages not yet created:
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
It hides Wikidot because every single username then points to a page on the same site, instead of to the pop-up wikidot profile.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Hello, I was absent from here for a while… I tried this
And it does not work. See here:
http://istorijska-biblioteka.wikidot.com/sandbox:sandbox4
It is under this table…
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
As rurwin does not match any existing user name said:
Not yet implemented ;-)
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Ah…. :D
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
I would also really like that when I get a notificaton email on comment, that this links leads me to this comment, and not to the page to which the comment belongs. It is so boring, annoying, etc… and it can't be so hard to do something about it, can it?
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney