New search for Wikidot's gonna rock!
tags: dev lucene search wikicomplete wikidot
09 Dec 2008 21:53
New search module is on its way to Wikidot (I described this before). Now it's actively tested at Wiki Complete.
I must say it's gonna absolutely rock!
First of all it'll give much more relevant results than before:
- title and tags are much important than pure page content for the indexer
- only 1-3 minutes delay of indexing/searching after an edit (compare to Google's a few days)
- searches for given phrase in all public sites plus all the sites you are member of (including private)!
- results from wikis you are member of appear generally higher in the result list, because the indexer gives them more relevance factor than to similar results from other sites.
More features:
- really fast (typically search is done in just 2 seconds or even less if the result is cached)
- thumbnails of sites (feature to come)
- short activity of site information (feature to come)
- supply the sites to search through in the query with special keyword: site:X,Y,Z — searches for given phrase in three sites: X, Y, Z
- supply the sites to search through as the param to SearchSites module (feature and module to come yet)
Are you convinced yet?
Comments: 6
Pro Accounts For Testers Launched
tags: pro wikidot
09 Dec 2008 18:04
As MichaĆ announced on Pro testers Wikidot wiki, we have launched the option to buy account upgrades on Wikidot for Pro account testers. We decided, that for their support, they should get a special discount — and yet they get! $45 instead of $60 after the test period seems a good option :).
Premium features include:
- more wikis and more storage
- storage is limited at the user level (i.e. there is only a limit on total size occupied by files on all your wikis — you can use all your storage on one of wikis)
- you can also set storage quota on each wiki — to divide the storage as you wish
- HTTPs
- unlimited number of users on private wikis
- web statistics
Additionally there are number of settings that are available only for Pro Users.
And — nobody surprised — we're working on even more cool features — like FTP access (read/write) to wiki files (imagine uploading 20 files using and FTP program vs uploading them one-by-one with your browser).
Keep tuned!
Comments: 0
Is Wikidot Open Source Stable?
tags: dev lighttpd lucene opensource search stable wikidot
07 Dec 2008 10:03
Many of you ask about the development of Wikidot Open Source Edition. Is it stable? Can we safely use it.
The thing that needs to be said is the Wikidot Source changes. It is not meant to be solid stable yet. The development of .com and OS version is quite separate, although there is a flow in code in two ways:
- fixes for bugs in .com having the way to OS
- many future improvements in .com are first tested and introduced in OS
The latter introduces not-working revisions into the OS repository from time to time, but this is a product in creation (pre-1.0), so this just can happen.
Stability
The current version (revision 317) of Wikidot Open Source is used on Wiki Complete.
It's rather stable, but you have to know the following:
Lighttpd only
It's for lighttpd only (we want support for Apache back in 1.0).
INI file for configuration
File conf/GlobalProperties.php is no longer needed and needs to be deleted. But first have a look at conf/wikidot.ini and try to migrate any custom settings you had in conf/GlobalProperties.php.
The full-blown verbose example of wikidot.ini is stored in conf/full-example-of-wikidot.ini. This is not meant to even work, it's just every possible option listed and described. If the option has an default value it is also mentioned. Use the file as the reference for your wikidot.ini file.
HTML user-uploaded files hosting disabled by default
Since it could be dangerous in certain cases, we have disabled serving of HTML files with the default Wikidot installation. However Internet Explorer (6 and 7) ignores the hint to display HTML files as source, so it's not really a solution.
The solution that really works is having a totally separate domain for hosting uploaded files only (at wikidot it is wdfiles.com). The settings for this would be:
[security]
upload_separate_domain = true
upload_domain = your-different-domain.com
; having different domain for uploads we can safely enable user-uploaded HTML files serving
upload_restrict_html = false
Search All Wikis module
The SearchAllModule (allowing to search all wikis) is very experimental now. If you have already any content, that needs to be searched, don't upgrade (or you can restore the previous php/modules/search/SearchAllModule.php file after the upgrade).
The module is being migrated to Zend_Search_Lucene and require doing an initial indexing of all sites.
Also it's very probable the search mechanisms changes any time soon, so I just don't recommend using the new version of module.
Search This Wiki feature is unaffected!
Search Highlight
In the meantime of developing new search engine for Wikidot, we came into an idea to highlight phrases user searches for (using internal Wikidot search or Google/Yahoo search engine).
You can enable it in the wikidot.ini file appending:
[search]
highlight = true
Search features (the new SearchAllModule and Search Highlighting) is already tested on Wiki Complete, however there are some known limitations it the search module, that need to be improved yet.
Upgrading
As a matter of fact, we don't supply any "upgrade" script. This unfortunately doesn't mean that there are no problems with that.
Once we release the first stable version, we'll supply upgrade scripts for each incremental upgrade i.e. 1.0 -> 1.1 -> 1.2 and so.
This is because it would be really easier if we know what version EXACTLY we're moving from to what EXACT version. Otherwise we would end up with scripts that can work but can break something. If you're in trouble with upgrading, ask on our dev-list.
Comments: 4
New Search For Wikidot First Preview
tags: dev search wikicomplete wikidot
05 Dec 2008 22:15
New search for Wikidot is almost ready. It's using the Zend_Search_Lucene solution (check the previous post for details).
Active testing is done on the Wiki Complete wiki farm based on Wikidot software. The same one, that you can test experimental search phrase highlighter at.
You can check the result at the search all wikis page on Wiki Complete.
I look forward any bug reports.