Section 11.2. Managing Wikis

11.2. Managing Wikis

After you've created your wiki, it's available for editing. You and your students can create wiki pages, link them together, and collaboratively create a collection of web pages.

11.2.1. Creating Wiki Pages

After you create the wiki itself, Moodle will take you to the editing screen for the first page, as shown in Figure 11-2.

Figure 11-2. Wiki editing page

In the center of the screen, you'll see the editing area for your wiki page. You can use the HTML editor as you would for any other document. You can add images, tables, and any formatting you need.

To add other pages to your wiki, simply type a word with a capital letter at the beginning and a capital letter somewhere else in the word. This is called CamelCase, as the two capital letters resemble a two-humped camel. Whenever you type a CamelCase word, Moodle will recognize it and look in the database for a page with that name. If you haven't created a page with that name, Moodle will put a question mark next to the word. When you click on the question mark, you will be taken to another editing screen for the new page.

For example, if I create a new wiki and type the word "CamelCase" in the page, Moodle will look to see if a page with the name "CamelCase" has already been created. If it hasn't, I'll see a blue question mark next to the words when I view the page, as shown in Figure 11-3.

Figure 11-3. CamelCase words without link pages

Once I click on the question mark, I'll see an editing screen for the page about CamelCase words. Once I add some content and save the page, it becomes active. Whenever I type the word "CamelCase" using the same capitalization, Moodle will automatically create a link to the CamelCase page and highlight it..

There are four tabs above the editing area: view, edit, links, and history. When you browse a wiki, every page is displayed in view mode. If you want to edit a page, click the edit tab and you'll see the editing area for that page. The links tab will display the pages that have links pointing to the page you are viewing. You can use this to backtrack and see where this page is referenced elsewhere in the wiki.

The history tab gives you access to the version history of the page. Whenever someone clicks the Save button, they create a new version of the wiki page. Moodle tracks all these versions until you strip them out (see the strip tool in the administration menu in the next section). Figure 11-4 shows the history page for our wiki's first page.

Figure 11-4. Wiki history page

Each version has three tools you can use:

Browse

You can view every version of a page.

Fetch-back

Brings back an old version of the page for editing. Once you save your changes, it becomes the newest version of the page.

Diff

Highlights the differences between two consecutive versions of a page. Additions have a + symbol next to them. Deletions have a symbol next to them. A simple diff page is shown in Figure 11-5.

Figure 11-5. Version diff with an addition

As you build your wiki, you and your students can use these very simple tools to create a very sophisticated information space.

11.2.2. Administering a Wiki

Under the Moodle navigation bar, there are three tools: search, links, and administration. The Search Wiki button allows you to search the wiki for key terms. Moodle will return all the pages containing your search term.

The Wiki Links button provides you with tools to view your wiki in different ways. The tools include:

Site map

A hierarchical view of the pages and links in the wiki, starting with the first page.

Page index

An alphabetical list of all the pages in the wiki.

Newest pages

A list of the most recently created pages.

Most visited pages

A list of pages with the most views.

Most often changed pages

A list of most frequently edited pages.

Updated pages

Lists all the pages in the wiki by date and time of last edit.

Orphaned pages

A list of pages that were created and had all the links to them deleted.

Wanted pages

A wiki page where people can list pages they want to see in the collection.

Export pages

You can wrap up all your wiki pages and export them as regular HTML to a zip file for download or to a Moodle directory.

File Download

Download binary files attached to wiki pages.

The administration area gives you tools that keep your wiki running smoothly. As you and your class generate the wiki, pages may become orphaned or you may need to manage a student's contributions.

Set Page Flags

Page flags are properties you can set on a per-page basis. Every page can be set with different permissions:

TXT

Indicates whether the page can contain text.

BIN

Flag for allowing binary (graphics) content.

OFF

Stands for "offline." The page is still there; it just can't be read by someone who doesn't have editing permissions.

HTM

Allows HTML content instead of wiki text.

RO

Stands for "read-only." You and your students can only read the file, not make changes.

WR

The writeable flag allows anyone in the course to make changes to the document.

Remove Pages

The wiki engine automatically tracks pages that aren't linked from anywhere else (they were created and then the link was deleted) and empty pages. This tool allows you to remove these orphaned wiki pages, which can't be reached through the ordinary wiki interface.

Strip Pages

While the wiki engine tracks changes, it stores old versions in the database. To declutter the data, you may occasionally want to delete all the old versions and just keep the new one.

Revert Mass Changes

Use this tool to roll back changes to all pages if a particular author makes a mess of many pages in the wiki.