Features of Foswiki

Features for editors and content-creators

• Create new content
  • Use a graphical, office-like editor ( WYSIWYG ). If you don't like WYSIWIG, use simple, powerful, and easy to learn text formatting rules. Basically you write text like you would write an e-mail.
  • Pictures, tables, lists, and more are supported
  • To edit a page, simply click on the Edit link at the bottom of every page.
• Link between topics in a easy way
  • No broken links: renaming a topic will update all links pointing to that topic
  • Auto links: Web pages are linked automatically. You do not need to learn HTML commands to link pages.
• Save time
  • Tables of contents are automatically generated
  • You want to know if and when something changed? Just subscribe to changes and you will be notified by mail automatically.
  • All changes to pages and attachments are tracked. Retrieve previous page revisions and differences thereof. Find out who changed what and when.
  • See the recent changes of Foswiki webs. The change log can also be exported in XML RSS format for news syndication.
• Save effort
  • You can easily restore topics to older revisions if needed
  • No double-writing: Include the content of topics or sections of topics in other places ( Topics )
  • Edit existing pages or create new pages using any web browser. There is no need for ftp or http put to upload pages.
  • Individual pages can be renamed, moved, and deleted through the browser.
  • Find all back-links to a page.
  • Upload and download any file as an attachment to a page using your browser. This is similar to file attachments in an e-mail, but it happens on web pages.
• Collaborate
  • Let people comment on you content on every section you like, not only global
  • Content is merged automatically if more than one user edits a page at the same time. In rare cases where a conflict cannot be resolved automatically, users are warned and guided to resolve the conflict manually.
• Exchange
  • Attach files of every art to the content
  • Link them - share them - use them
• Discussions

Features to help organize and find content

• Notifications and updates
  • E-mail notification: Be notified automatically when something has changed in a Foswiki web. Subscribe in WebNotify.
• Wiki Webs as Workspaces
  • Webs: Pages are grouped into Wiki webs (or collections). This allows you to set up separate collaboration groups.
  • Statistics: Create Statistics of Wiki webs. Find out which pages are most popular and who are the top contributors.
• Topic hierarchies, linking, index, and referencing
• Tagging
• Support for attachments and their integration
• Search
  • Standard (Full text search with/without regular expressions) / Javascript Sorting / Kinosearch & Lucene / Google Search Appliance
• Good usability
• News and weblogs

Features for administrators and programmers

• Easy administration
  • Web-based user registration and change of password.
  • Define groups and impose fine-grained read and write access restrictions based on groups and users.
  • Four levels of preferences: TWikiPreferences for site-level; WebPreferences for each web; user-level preferences; and page-level preferences.
• Customization
  • Templates and skins: A flexible templating system separates program logic and presentation. Skins overwrite template headers and footers; page content is unaffected.
  • Use Foswiki Forms to classify and categorize unstructured web pages and to create simple workflow systems.
• Foswiki Plugins: Enhance Foswiki functionality with server-side Plugin modules. Developers can create Perl Plugins using the Foswiki Plugin API. Some example Plugins:
  • ActionTrackerPlugin: Keep track of action items in meeting minutes and notify assignees by e-mail.
  • CalendarPlugin: Show a monthly calendar with highlighted events.
  • ChartPlugin: Create charts to visualize Foswiki tables.
  • DatabasePlugin: Access data from a database.
  • HeadlinesPlugin: Build news portals that show headline news based on RSS news feeds from news sites.
  • SlideShowPlugin: Turn Foswiki pages into web-based presentations.
  • SpreadSheetPlugin: Add spreadsheet formulae like $SUM($ABOVE()) to Foswiki tables.
  • XpTrackerPlugin: Track Extreme Programming (XP) projects.
  • more...
• Application Wiki: Contributors use the Foswiki platform to create web applications. The Foswiki Variables, Plugins and sample applications offer a rich environment where domain-specific applications can be built efficiently by contributors with moderate skill sets. Developers can create new Plugins to enhance the functionality of Foswiki even further. Some example applications:
  • Call Center Status Board: Simple status board where time and person can be picked from a list.
  • Change Request: Generic change request application.
  • Meeting Minutes: Keep track of meeting minutes with action items.
  • Search Book Titles: Simple application to search a library of books.
  • Simple FAQ: FAQ with all questions on one page and an automatic TOC.
• Variables: Use variables to dynamically compose your pages. This allows you, for example, to dynamically build a table of contents, include other pages, or show a search result embedded in a page.
• Integration with other tools
• High security

Non-feature-based advantages

• You can get out of Foswiki whenever you want. Every other Wiki offers an Interface to take over our data, because TWiki and Foswiki are so widely spread.