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There are several ways to organize multiple pages on TWiki and there are advantages and disadvantages to each. This page is to list those ways, list the advantages and disadvantages of each (for various reasons), and then consider which are most appropriate for a given purpose. While on the subject, there will also be some discussion of organization within a page.

See AboutThesePages.

Contents

Organizing Multiple Pages

Page Naming Conventions

As in, adding "ToEryxma" prefix to all new pages related to an existing page, such as TWikiOnEryxma.

Webs and Sub Webs

It's advisable to have as few of these as you can. Better to create hierarchies based on pages.

Page Content Conventions

Either in the visible text or in hidden text (metadata). PeterThoeny has used both:

  • the pages for the FAQ on one of the webs are collected by a formatted search for a specific piece of text (not FAQ, BTW)
  • the pages for "categories" can be collected by a formatted search on the contents of the category/form table
  • See below.

The Bread Crumb Trail

Bread Crumb Trail, as currently implemented, is not very useful. Take the bread crumb trail of this page: "Twiki > Wikilearn > BrowserFormattingIssues > BugTriagerPositions > WaysToOrganizePagesOnTWiki" and note that BrowserFormattingIssues is on the Support web. The bread crumbs give us an abstract hierarchy that is sometimes at odds with the physical structure of our Twiki. But Peter Thoeny counters this criticism: "A bread crumb trail that follows pages visited is of little value since it duplicates the browser history function." (src. BreadCrumbs.)

You might say why is BrowseFormattingIssues is classified under Support web whereas every other page on the breadcrumb trail is located inside the Wikilearn web. This is a bug that has been acknowledged by Thoeny and it hasn't been resolved yet. "The bread crumb trail can cross webs after a topic move. I consider this a bug that needs to be fixed. The trail should stop at the web boundary." -- PeterThoeny - 17 May 2003

The purpose of bread crumb trail in Twiki is to create a conceptual space for the topics independent of the physical. You can manually "reparent" a topic, relocate its abstract location, but that does not change the physical location of the topic. And physically moving a topic elsewhere appears to be a rather tedious process. Better to have the bread crumb trail express the directory structure than to have the directory reflect the topic structure. Of course, you can also:

  • Modify the template to display whatever you want (i.e., not the bread crumb trail)
  • ...(edit this page to add your thoughts about how bread crumb trail can be useful.)

Bread crumb trail in Twiki has been criticized as confusing to new users. Other recommendations to create an alternative navigation system called subpage, as in modiwiki, have not come to anything yet.

Organizing Within a Page

A point of high interest is to create navigable pages that don't require sophisticated scripts to navigate. This is necessary, especially in pages with high amount of content and cross referencing, up or down. Hashmarking within a page, so easy in HTML, is rather cumbersom in Twiki. It requires, from a casual point of view, an AJAX script and form structure to implement.

How do you organize information on a Twiki page?

* Automatic outline based on headings. See, for instance, the Contents section of this page. It generates a menu of links to each heading on this page. BreadCrumbs gives an implementation of another sort, where a script is used instead.

* Includes. (Needs an example.)

*....

Add your thoughts here.

<Currently, no significant content below this line.>

Resources

See ResourceRecommendations. Feel free to add additional resources to these lists, but please follow the guidelines on ResourceRecommendations including ResourceRecommendations#Guidelines_for_Rating_Resources.

Contributors

  • () RandyKramer - 16 Jan 2003
  • () VolkanUnsal - 20 Oct 2006
  • <If you edit this page: add your name here; move this to the next line; and include your comment marker (initials), if you have created one, in parenthesis before your WikiName.>
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Topic revision: r4 - 2006-10-20 - VolkanUnsal
 
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