[pmwiki-users] Link to Pmwiki from Wordpress

Lars Eighner surname at larseighner.com
Sat Dec 17 06:48:53 CST 2011


On Sat, 17 Dec 2011, Peter Bowers wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 3:17 AM, Lars Eighner <surname at larseighner.com> wrote:
>> These are some remarks about putting wiki-like links to a Pmwiki in a
>> Wordpress blog.
>
> Could you explain a little more in detail what problem this solves?
> I'm a total beginner in Wordpress (just did the 5-minute install a
> couple weeks ago and just now clicked the "edit post" for the 2nd
> time) but links seem to be pretty standard...

It makes links to your Pmwiki look different when the Pmwiki page does not
exist. Inside Pmwiki, a link to a page that does not exist has the little
raised question mark (out of the box -- you can change it if you wish). So
if read a Pmwiki article and do not want to (or don't have permission to)
create the new page you know (or soon learn) to ignore the links to
non-exitant pages.

But when you create a link to your Pmwiki in your WP blog, WP ordinarily
doesn't know whether the Pmwiki page exists or not.  All the links look the
same.  This can be frustrating to users.  If a user encounters a high
percentage of links to non-existent pages, the user may give up following
the links at all--which will include links to Pmwiki pages that do exist.

For example, you may have a timeline, a glossary, and your references in
your Pmwiki--kinds of things Pmwiki handles better any blog could.  As you
blog, you make links to your Pmwiki for every date, unusual term, and
citation in your blog text.  Now, you could go create a Pmwiki page for each
of those links as you blog, but that will certainly interrupt the flow of
the blog.  Some of your links to Pmwiki will be to pages that exist and some
will be to pages that do not exist.  Readers of the blog won't be able to
tell which is which.  And when you are ready to create pages for Pmwiki
links, you won't be able to tell which are already done and which need to be
created.  So teaching WP to do something different in two different cases is
what I was writing about.

Now there are some wiki-like extensions for WP and some blog like
extensions for Pmwiki. If you are starting from scratch and plan a fairly
simple site, you might look into WP with wiki-like plugins or Pmwiki with
blog-like recipes.  If one of those hybrids suits your needs, go for.

However, with two fairly mature pieces of software like WP and PMwiki, it
only to be expected one does a given task better than the other.  For
example, the best ad manager for Pmwiki seems to be Adit, and it really
sucks.  So I have taught Pmwiki to use a WordPress ad rotate plugin and I
manage all the ads from WordPress.  Now I am teaching WordPress to do wiki
links -- and the first step was to teach it to handle links to Pmwiki.


> I created 4 different links as follows::
> * in the default editor (selected my text, clicked on the chain link
> icon, pasted the standard pmwiki link, clicked Add Link)
> * in the default editor (same - just included ?action=edit to make an
> admin type of link)
> * choosing the HTML editor tab (used the standard <a
> href="http://www.qdk.org/pmwiki/index.php?n=GDQCS.GDQCS">link</a>)
> * HTML for admin links (used the standard <a
> href="http://www.qdk.org/pmwiki/index.php?n=GDQCS.GDQCS?action=edit">link</a>)

Don't all of these links in Wordpress look exactly the same whether the
Pmwiki page exists or not?  Making the links look different for non-existent
targets is my point (where 'look different' might mean looking exactly like
ordinary text except when the cursor is over the link or might mean being a
different color).

> All seemed to work just as expected "out of the box"...  So obviously
> I'm not understanding what the problem is that you were solving...
> Can you give me that big picture?
>
> -Peter
>
>

-- 
Lars Eighner
http://www.larseighner.com/index.html
8800 N IH35 APT 1191 AUSTIN TX 78753-5266




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