- Paperback: 464 pages
- Publisher: Addison Wesley; 1 edition (3 April 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 020171499X
- ISBN-13: 978-0201714999
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 18.7 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 370,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Suitable for system administrators or managers seeking an affordable content-management solution, The Wiki Way shows off how to take advantage of Wiki collaborative software, which allows users to post and edit content remotely. This book is all you need to get up and running with this exciting (and free) way to build and manage content.
This text is first and foremost a guide to what Wiki software is and how to install, customise and administer it within your organisation. Early sections discuss the advantages of Wiki Web sites, which allow all users to add and edit content. While it might sound like a free-for-all, the authors suggest such Web sites have been used successfully in research, business and education to document project designs, for brainstorming and for otherwise creating content in a collaborative fashion. Case studies for such organisations as Georgia Tech, New York Times Digital and Motorola give a glimpse of Wiki used in real settings, so you will get a sense of what to expect.
This book is also a guide to the nuts and bolts of downloading and installing Wiki and customising it for your site. Sections on basic tweaks to Wiki's Perl scripts will let you customise your site to match your organisation's needs. Standout material includes almost three-dozen customisation tips. This volume is illustrated with actual screen shots of Wiki, so you can get a sense of what it is like for users to work together in such an unrestricted fashion.
Throughout the text, the authors are suitably upbeat about Wiki's prospects for wider adoption but they are realistic enough to note compromises (such as requiring passwords and restricting edit rights) required in business settings. They also survey the field of Wiki open-source projects and clones, as well as other similar content-management solutions (such as Zope and the emerging WebDAV standard).
While it's hard to judge whether Wiki-based Web sites are for everyone, this book presents the pros and cons of a potentially exciting and useful tool that promotes collaborative content creation. This title can help any organisation get going with a Wiki Web site, from the standpoint of planning, deployment and basic administration. --Richard Dragan
Product Description
Wiki discussion servers offer an exceptionally flexible, open source solution for a wide range of collaborative applications. Wiki offers simplicity, broad compatibility with current technologies and standards, and remarkably low cost. Now, there's a complete guide to deploying and managing Wiki servers, co-authored by Wiki's creator Ward Cunningham. The Wiki Way begins with an overview of discussion servers and their applications, and an introduction to Wiki's capabilities and components. The authors walk through installing Wiki, covering key Apache configuration and security issues; then introduce basic procedures for browsing, editing, content development, markup, and structuring Wiki content for diverse applications. The book also presents numerous case studies showcasing Wiki technology in action. An accompanying CD-ROM and companion web site at http://wiki.org/ provide the latest Wiki source code for multiple platforms.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A very 'tangential' book, never quite hits the mark, attempts to make the Wiki Way approachable but loses the plot as it tries to document lots of Perl 'hacks'. It would have been a lot simpler if the author chose a fully featured Wiki like TWiki and talked through the way the features were achieved rather than make excuses for the more open Wikis out there. Bo Leuf over-does hero worship of joint author Ward Cunningham. There are just too many niggling 'anti-Windows' comments in what should have been a focused O/S agnostic text. The chapter on 'possibilities' is the biggest disappointment, too scrappy to be useful, I need something that helps make Wiki a compelling sell to suits.
Unfortunately the whole book is a bit of a 'hack', way too thick, should be no more than 90 pages. This book needs strong editorial reconstruction, hopefully in a new (improved) edition?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Book called The Wiki Way from Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham is an excellent introductory material for everybody who is interested in wikis. I have already reviewed other book about wikis - Wikis: Tools for Information Work and Collaboration - but The Wiki Way is much more technically oriented. It offers lot of tutorials how to choose the right wiki engine for you, how to install it and use it (including proper introduction of wiki syntax). One part of the book focus only on problem of hacks that can be used in wiki - this part is for more advanced users. The last part is about possible application of wiki (wiki in education, wiki at work etc.). The Wiki Way is basically cookbook for everybody who wants to start own wiki. Since Ward Cunningham, founder of the first wiki, is one of the authors, it is really worth reading.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
10 reviews
48 of 49 people found the following review helpful
What creates the sense of community?
24 July 2002
Format:Paperback
What creates the sense of community that you feel in certain newsgroups, mailing lists, or IRC's? What drives people to gather there? If you find this question interesting, then look at Wiki: it is an example of a strong community on the web.
Wiki (the collaboration tool) can be thought of as a lightweight WebDAV (web Distributed Authoring and Versioning)
without n levels of standards committees. In a Wiki site, every page can be edited by anybody, and new page links 'spring into existence' automatically just by RunningCapitalizedWordsTogether. This simple concept, created by Ward Cunningham, is surprisingly powerful. The technology behind it is also simple, and the wiki code that makes this work is written in perl, so if you want to add a feature or tweak it, then you can 'hack it'.
A visit to the original Wiki web site can be very rewarding, at [1]. At this site, the community includes many experts in Design Patterns and Extreme Programming (XP). You will find literate discussions on software and life in general.
Laird Cameron describes Wiki well in his Open Sources column [2].
This book is an overview of Wiki, and a detailed how-to look at the code. The book is casual and informal, well suited to the wiki culture. It explains the thought processes which went into the design of wiki planning, deployment, and basic administration. The book contains case studies from academia and the corporate world. The accompanying CD will get you going quickly.
You will want to read this book, if:
- In the corporate world, you want your group to pull together and create a knowledge base.
- For the design of your software product, you want to understand group dynamics.
- In the academic world, you want an online meeting place for course work or peer review.
- You are studying the design and implementation of collaborative tools.
- For your personal use, you need a notebook that goes with you wherever there is a web browser.
Wiki's perl source can be hard to read,
and you will be wanting to change it.
Maybe Wiki is an entertainment for your spare time,
and then you can just play around with it.
However, you probably need this book if you are
deploying a wiki at work.
This book presents a relaxed, 'democratic' approach to Information Architecture. It encourages you to provide minimal structure: the inclusion of a search function, a recent changes page, users' mini-bios, and links to return to the top. The wiki users are encouraged to structure the content, and this book suggests how they might be encouraged to do so.
For counterpoint see Rosenfeld [3] who describes how to structure a conventional web site: organize information, help navigation, label the content, configure the search system, and manage the process.
I was interested by the discussion of the many Wiki clones, in Perl, SmallTalk, Java, and others. Everyone has different preferences for UI features and implementation.
Also interesting was part 3, which discusses the Wiki culture.
Wiki has fostered strong community spirit among those who have
contributed to its design and implementation.
People express diverse opinions yet work together well.
Compare this 'atmosphere' with that of of some news groups where
flames are common. When you set up a Wiki for use by your colleagues or students, you need to understand the group dynamics of a successful collaboration site, and this part of the book will help you to encourage people to take roles and get involved, thereby extending the community.
I have a few quibbles about the book and CD.
- Readers will want to visit the book's errata page [4] before using the CD.
- There is a 64 page subsection, with one contents entry, which is hard to navigate other than to read it sequentially (it spans pages 143 to 207).
- The source code examples in the book have an indentation width of one space (though the source on CD is formatted correctly).
- The book and CD are intended for users of MS Windows, which is unusual when discussing open source. This quibble is very minor, as the book and CD are platform neutral in most ways.
The book gets five stars at Amazon and a good review at Fatbrain. Recommended! At your bookstore, look for the cover drawing by M.C. Escher of two drawing hands, with nifty reflection effects.
By the way, you will have already heard of the untimely demise of Douglas Adams. His Guide to the Galaxy, similar to a Wiki, lives on at www.h2g2.com.
[1] www.c2.com/cgi/wiki
[2] Server/Workstation Expert Magazine, March 2001:
swexpert.com/CC/SE.C12.MAR.01.pdf
[3] Rosenfeld and Morville _Information Architecture_, O'Reilly
[4] the errata page: wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WikiWayErrata
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful
The bible for the wiki community
2 May 2001
Format:Paperback
This book describes the technology and culture of the wiki open web authoring system. The CD-ROM contains all the necessary software to install a wiki and one third of the book explains how the software does it's magic and how it might be expanded to do even more. The first part contains a step-by-step introduction to the wiki ideas and culture and the last part tells about the wiki experiences in the corporate world and at universities.
The book is written extremely well and easy to follow, sometimes even entertaining. It touches all important aspects of installing and maintaining a wiki server and of running a wiki community. During the last 8 months I did many of the things described based on my own explorations and using a different software. This books would have saved me many weeks of labour. I may lack objectivity, but this book is bound to become the bible for the wiki world.
What's to criticize? First: there is almost no hype in this book, too little for the lots of enthusiastic users out there. Second: the book offers a baseline system, some clones and lots of optional extensions and invites to experiment. I think that most readers would prefer a full-featured proven standard system out of the box. Third: it's conservative approach about some features - like edit conflict resolution or page deletion - shows how quickly things are moving.
Is this criticism correct? I don't know, you decide. To me, it's an excellent book. It's the important, long awaited reference. It's the landmark showing that the wiki is about to change from an insider tip to an established technology. It clearly deserves 5 (*****) stars. If you are interested in wiki, online communities or knowledge management at all, you must know this book.
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
good introduction to wiki concepts but assumes perl
9 Sep 2003
Format:Paperback
A "Wiki" is a web site, where every page is editable, by anybody with a browser. It may seem wierd, but it's a very powerful, and successful, idea. The most well-known Wiki has been running since 1994 with thousands of users.
This book covers how and why Wiki works, case studies of use, and installing, configuring, and customizing an open-source Wiki supplied on CD. If you know a little about Wiki, and want more, this is a great book. It's sprinkled with practical advice and gives real code examples for enhancements. It can also be inspirational and has got me buzzing with ideas. It has a fine index and all the "tips" are listed for easy reference.
Wiki's obscurity is its greatest weakness, though. If you have never heard the term "Wiki", you would never think to pick up this book. I also found that the assumption of Perl in the example software sections clashed with the language independent nature of the theory and case-study sections. And beware that the book ignores or glosses over a few things which require more effort than in other systems.
If you find it clumsy or slow to get things on a web site, if you are looking for an easy way to let people collaborate, or if you just want to make sense of all your scattered notes, read this book.
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