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Rise of the PHX

My favorite page of the moment… and the angst of the Apple WikiServer

Posted by Gregg on July 30, 2008 in Web 2.0 |

So the new Apple wiki server is hot of the presses, feature rich, and really slick overall.  The problem is that there are very few steps to walk in and those using it are more like explorers hacking at jungle vines that tourists enjoying a well marked, scenic drive.  I’ve been charged with building a new wiki page for the Arizona State Mac Users group so the new WikiServer was an obvious choice.  Also obvious is the fact that we wanted to have our own look and feel and branding.  There is a very good document out called Extending Your Wiki Server, but it falls short in walking one through some of the hurdles in branding the wiki.  One wall I recently ran into was customizing the XSL files.  The wiki uses XSL files to format the xml data the server renders as the page loads. There are the default XSL files, and based on the PDF mentioned above, one could copy the XSL files to a new them directory and the wiki would read those over the defaults.  If only it were that easy.

Many times I’d copy the files and instead of showing the updates it either

• Still used the defaults, if I was lucky
• After a small delay ignore my custom theme all together and change the site to use the next in the list.  (Note: if your theme has error, or files within the theme have permissions issues then the Wiki Server appears to ignore your them and used the next working theme.)

There were a few gems I found after 3 or  4 dayst of WikiServer enduced torture.  First, hidden files were sometimes introduced to my theme folder by my editor, Coda, which was causing the theme to be deemed unworthy and ignored.  Secondly, thanks to this thread I found the XSL files were loaded with include statements, all of which weere hard cdoed to the defaults.  It did not matter how many times I changed the deault.xsl file, when the other XSL files on the playground were ignoring him.  Poor little default.

I changed the includes, cleaned up the hidded files and all seems(for the moment) gravy.  Now onto the 15 different hieracical based CSS files.