“DR_Wiki” is the Typo3 Wiki Engine Extension that has been developed for the FIDIS project to implement the FIDIS Wiki. This extension is used in the project both as a standard Wiki, and to facilitate the work of the individual Workpackages. “DR_Wiki” itself is based on another Typo3 Wiki Engine[1], which was customised to meet all of the FIDIS requirements (e.g. advanced editing, MediaWiki compliance, etc.)
The decision to develop a customised Typo3 extension, rather than using one of many freely available Wiki engines[2], was motivated by the need to provide an integrated information infrastructure for the FIDIS NoE.
Looking at the FIDIS Communication Infrastructure (FCI), the system resides on a Typo3[3] content management system (CMS), being installed on the FIDIS servers at[4]:
The FIDIS project public web site: www.fidis.net and
The FIDIS project intranet: internal.fidis.net
[1] DR_Wiki is based on the “a1_wiki” extension, available at www.typo3.org.
[2] See c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines for a list of Wiki engines.
[3] Read more at www.typo3.org.
[4] The details of the FIDIS Communication Infrastructure can be found in deliverable “D1.2: An Information structure to provide categories and subcategories relevant for FIDIS”.
Typo3 itself is a very modular application server based on PHP and the MySQL database, allowing a developer to extend its functionality using a standardised application programming interface (API). These so called Typo3 extensions are pieces of PHP code which add certain functionalities to a Typo3 installation without changing the original Typo3 code (“core”).[1] Figure 1 illustrates the API and the general design of Typo3 in more detail.
Therefore, in order to seamlessly integrate the Wiki system into the existing CMS, the extension is based on this API, using the mechanisms of Typo3, such as intelligent caching, user authentication and handling and its security features. Furthermore, this also enables the system to have several instances of the “DR_Wiki” extension, serving different Workpackages, etc.
[1] Typo3 core documentation: http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/doc_core_inside/
