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GAEWiki is a simple wiki engine which written in Python runs in Google App Engine. It does not have as many features as some other wikis have, but it's sufficient to run a personal or a small community web site. But it is very easy to set up (requires no server).
The wiki is customizable with user style sheets and scripts, has some access control, labels to organize pages in categories, history of edits, RSS feeds and other features, described below. Customization does not require any code changes; all settings are stored in special wiki pages.
To have your own GAEWiki you need to create a new application, fetch the source code and upload it to your new application. That's it, you can start using your new wiki. You can use a custom domain name to access your application, if you want.
If you don't want to install the application, you can use the demo installation. It has the latest code and a separate database for every domain name. Find GAEWiki in Google Apps.
The default GAEWiki theme displays tabs in the top of the page. Use the "Edit" tab to edit the page you're viewing. You will be prompted to log in if the wiki requires so. If you have a Universal Edit Button extension in your browser, you can use it.
The best way to create a page is to edit an existing one, add a link, then follow that link. This prevents creation of orphan pages which are hard to find, thus useless. However, you can just type whatever you want in the URL bar, you'll be prompted to create a new page.
To delete a page, start editing it, then check the checkbox below the text field.
GAEWiki uses the Markdown syntax, which means good readability even when the page is unprocessed. You format your text as you would in a plain text email message. If you need something more complex, you can use HTML.
To understand Markdown in details, refer to the official documentation. Here's an example that will cover most features:
Page title ========== Long lines can be wrapped. Multiple lines are combined to one paragraph. An empty line separates different paragraphs. You can write *bold* and _italic_ text easily. List formatting (this is a subheader btw) ----------------------------------------- Here is a simple bullet list: - Hello, world. - Goodbye, world. Here is a numbered list: 1. Hello, world. 2. Goodbye, world. Links can be internal or [external](http://example.com/). Long links can be added [this way][1], to prevent text pollution. And here's how you embed an image:  [1]: http://www.example.com/
This is rather simple, but for your convenience GAEWiki has a built-in WYSIWYG editor.
In addition to the text, pages can have special headers (properties) which are added this way:
key1: value key2: value --- Your regular page contents goes here...
The following properties are supported:
You can comment out properties by starting a line with the pound sign, e.g.:
#key1: value key1: a different value key2: value
Labels are usually used to organize pages in categories. They are edited this way:
labels: People, Writers --- # Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov was ...
After you save the page, in the bottom of it there'll be a block with links: "Labels: People, Writers." Links will follow to pages "Label:People" and "Label:Writers", where you can describe the purpose of the label. You can also list all pages that have a label using this syntax:
Pages about writers:Know more? Create a new page!
If you don't like the "Label:Writers" page name, you can redirect somewhere else or just change the display name (see above).
There is an RSS feed for each label, which can be accessed at /w/pages.rss?label=xyz.
Another way to organize pages is to use slashes in their names. Most people understand the concept of folders, and pages with slashes in their names look like folders.
GAEWiki lets you list immediate children (think of subfolders) using this syntax:
Time zones for Europe:
This would produce a linked list of pages which names start with "Europe/", e.g.:
If you want to list subpages of the current page, you can use a shorter version:
Remember that even though this looks like folders, this is only a visual trick. Normally, if you delete what looks like a parent page, subpages are not deleted; a page "Europe/TZ1" can exist even when there's no page named "Europe".
To forbid adding subpages to pages that don't exist, set the "parent-must-exist" setting to "yes" (this does not apply to admins). This option only controls page creation, it doesn't prevent deletion of pages that have parents.
Users that don't want to show their email address to others can set a custom nickname and public email address to whatever they want. This can be done at the /w/profile page (the first link in the top right page corner after you log in):
You can add files to pages and describe them using properties file, file_type (will be guessed if not set) and file_length (not used if not set). These properties will be used to add enclosures to RSS feeds. Example:
file: http://example.com/ep42.mp3 file_type: audio/mpeg file_size: 1024 display_title: Episode 42 --- # podcast/42 ...
You can redirect one page to another using the redirect property, e.g.:
redirect: page2 --- # page1 This page will only be shown if page2 does not exist.
In this situation the user will see page2 when page1 was accessed. If page1 is a label page, then page2 will be linked to in the lists. Example:
redirect: List of examples --- # Label:example
To embed an MP3 player use the following syntax:
file: http://example.com/test.mp3 --- # Test page
This page will have a player which will play the file specified in the "file" property. To play a different file the following syntax could be used:
In this section "settings" are often mentioned. Settings are properties of the page named "gaewiki:settings". To change settings you need to open that page for editing and add the values to the page header, e.g.:
favicon: http://example.com/favicon.ico --- # Edit me.
The concept of "interwikis" simplifies linking to sites that users are linking to frequently, if the target URLs are of a known form (long URLs that only differ in one parameter).
Interwikis are configured by adding "interwiki-*" headers to the gaewiki:settings page, e.g.:
interwiki-g: http://www.google.ru/search?ie=UTF-8&q=%s interwiki-wp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s interwiki-issue: http://code.google.com/p/gaewiki/issues/detail?id=%s
You can then use this syntax to link:
- Search for "robots" with Google - See what Wikipedia has to say about robots - Issue 36 in the GAEWiki issue tracker
When a user opens a new page for editing, some built-in text is offered for editing. This text can be changed to better suit your needs. This text can also be different for admins, authenticated users and anonymous ones. To use templates, create pages with these names:
The "anon" template applies to all users, "user" applies to registered users and admins, "admin" applies to admins only.
Templates support two special keywords:
To make pages created by admins only editable by them, you would create a page named "gaewiki:admin page template" with the following contents:
locked: yes --- # gaewiki:admin page template This page is locked by default.
To make pages created by registered users only editable by themselves, you would create a page named "gaewiki:user page template" with the following contents:
editors: USER_EMAIL --- # gaewiki:user page templateThis page belongs to USER_EMAIL, only (s)he can edit it.
If you need to let users edit only certain pages, or restrict pages by name, you can use page name black- and white-listing. For example, if you want to only let users edit pages which are named like "Usa/Fl/Orlando/Something", but "Something" must not be "Foobar", you need to add these properties to the "gaewiki:settings" page:
page-whitelist: ^Usa/Fl/Orlando/[^/]+$ page-blacklist: /Foobar$
Note:
If you don't like the built-in style of GAEWiki, you can change it by adding the following settings:
You can have custom pages for errors 400, 403, 404 and 500 by creating pages named "gaewiki:error-400" etc. To have pretty page titles, use the display_title property, e.g.:
display_title: Forbidden
gaewiki:error-403
You have no access to this page, try logging in.
There are two special settings to help integrate your web site with Google:
You can enhance the Markdown syntax by enabling additional extensions. List them in the "markdown-extensions" settings. Available options are: abbr, codehilite, def_list, extra, fenced_code, footnotes, headerid, html_tidy, imagelinks, meta, rss, tables, toc, wikilinks (see the official documentation for detailed description).
If you intend to use the fenced_code extension, you might also want some syntax highlighting. The easiest way would be to use the CDN version of the Highlight.js. It can be enabled by the following settings:
markdown-extensions: fenced_code extra_styles: http://yandex.st/highlightjs/5.14/styles/default.min.css extra_scripts: http://yandex.st/highlightjs/5.14/highlight.min.js extra_init_script: hljs.initHighlightingOnLoad();
By default everybody can read all pages, and most pages can be edited by everybody after they log in. The following settings can be used to change this situation:
Depending on the site-wide access settings, you can use these properties on individual pages:
To use an external comment system, such as Disqus or IntenseDebate, add its code to the "comments_code" setting (make sure it's one line), then add the "comments: yes" property to pages that you want your visitors to be able to comment.
Example gaewiki:settings:
title: GAEWiki Sandbox
comments_code: <div id="disqus_thread"></div>(function() { var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = 'http://example.disqus.com/embed.js'; document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(dsq); })();</script>
Example Some_page:
comments: yes
Some page
To download current versions of all pages as one big JSON file, go to the /w/data/export page. To upload that file back, go to the /w/data/import page. You can import only new pages, i.e. the ones that don't exist already.
These pages are only accessible by admins. Useful for merging wikis, moving data between SDK and the cloud, when domain names change and your wikis look empty because of multitenancy.
Conversion from Markdown to HTML takes CPU cycles. Caching saves these cycles. Pages are cached individually, cache is updated when you edit the page. In case anything goes wrong, admins can add ?nocache to page address to force cache update.
If you plan to interact with the wiki in non-standard ways, here's the list of all special pages:
| URI | Description |
| /w/backlinks?page=name | Shows a list of pages that link to the specified one. |
| /w/changes | Shows a list of recently changed pages. Most recent changes are at the top. |
| /w/changes.rss | A feed for recently changed pages. |
| /w/edit?page=name | Shows a page edit form. |
| /w/data/export | Used to download current versions of all articles in JSON for backup purposes. |
| /w/data/import | Adds back what was exported with /w/data/export. |
| /w/history?page=name | Shows revisions of a page. |
| /w/index.rss | A feed for all pages. |
| /w/users | Shows a list of users who were editing the wiki. |
| /robots.txt | A special page for robots. |
| /sitemap.xml | A standard site map. Only works when the wiki is public. |
If you didn't like GAEWiki, here's some links: