Major Additions - VaultWiki Lite 4.x: Wiki for vBulletin Forums

VaultWiki allows your existing forum users to work together on creating and managing a site's content pages, rather than competing to make popular threads. VaultWiki is a fully-featured and fully-supported wiki add-on solution for vBulletin.

Encourage Users to Work Together
VaultWiki allows your community to collaborate to create and publish content pages for your site. Multiple users can edit the same page, and your staff can moderate changes as they are made. VaultWiki maintains a detailed history of every page, making it just as easy to reverse unwanted changes.

Create All Kinds of Content
With VaultWiki, you can create general site content, user manuals for your products, wikis, eBooks, eCommerce product pages, and more. With a little imagination, VaultWiki can be purposed to do almost anything.

Seamlessly Integrates With Your Community
At its core, VaultWiki is an add-on product for your vBulletin forum platform. Its pages all meld with the forum's existing style. Users write new content with the same editor and BB-Codes they are already familiar with. The content is indexed by your forum's built-in search engine. And each user's contributions are acknowledged on his or her profile.

Attract New Membership
VaultWiki creates content and content URLs that are designed to drive new traffic to your site. With guides for search engines embedded in every page, each page preserves its value when it comes to generating traffic.

Fast, Responsive Support
Subscriptions come with free support in our forums and bug tracker system, and documentation is available online at all times. Paid installation and upgrade services can be ordered via our web site.

Active Development
The team at VaultWiki.org are actively involved in the development process. VaultWiki is constantly updated to be compatible with the newest forum software releases, to meet web standards, and to incorporate new technologies. Bugs are fixed promptly and new features come out all the time.

Demo
Demo link: https://www.vaultwiki.org/pages/
Depending on our mood each day, the demo may be the full version or the Lite version.

License
For licensing details, please see the relevant "VaultWiki Lite" sections of the VaultWiki License Agreement here: https://www.vaultwiki.org/pages/Info...ense-Agreement

Features the Full Version
The find out more about VaultWiki Lite's features or to purchase the full commercial version, see the comparison here: https://www.vaultwiki.org/features/

Requirements
The following requirements are based on the full version. The Lite version has fewer MySQL tables, fewer files, and takes up less disk space.

PHP: 5.3+ (5.4+ recommended, 5.5+ recommended for big boards)
MySQL: 4.4.1+ (5.1+ recommended)
MySQL tables: 75+ (for some shared hosts)
MySQL max_allowed_packet: ?M+ (500K + expected language row length)
Disk Space: 12M+ (1G+ recommended)
iNodes: 5000+ (for some shared hosts)
Memory limit: 32M+ (128M+ recommended for vBulletin)

Copyright Info
VaultWiki Lite places a copyright notice in your forum's footer on any page where wiki functions are used. It also places a few nag screens that admin users can see. You are not allowed to modify the source code or phrases to remove this copyright or the nag screens.

You can purchase an Ad Removal and/or Branding Removal license for VaultWiki Lite from the official VaultWiki support site. Simply register an account there to access VaultWiki Lite downloads and extras such as these.

Technical Support
You will probably receive faster responses to support questions if you post at the official support site: https://www.vaultwiki.org/support/4X/

Using an old version? You should check here periodically to make sure there are no known security issues affecting that version: https://www.vaultwiki.org/pages/Book...rable-Versions

[EliasAlucard]

Originally Posted by Zachery

Then don't, and get out of the topic?

I'm definitely interested in VaultWiki, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have any shortcomings. I'm posting in this thread because I want answers and possibly a discussion, if the developer(s) is active enough.

Originally Posted by Alan_SP

You have your needs, I have mine. And, they are different (it's obvious, but I think this fact needed to be said).

If you want completely integrated wiki product for your vBulletin forum, there's only one wiki product you can use: VaultWiki. Others, in best case scenario, has bridges that help a bit integrating two different software platforms.

About features I like very much in VW4, it's thread headers, based on forum headers, but just in threads, then handling languages. There are of course more new features, but these two are my favorites. And yes, there would be more new features, as developer listens to community. I know that for a fact, thread headers was my suggestion.

VaultWiki's vBulletin integration makes it a serious alternative to MediaWiki. That's its strongest point. Had it not been for that, I wouldn't even care about VaultWiki. That VaultWiki is cross platform too (XenForo and IPBoard) makes it even better. But other than that, I don't see any other major pros, and it's mostly cons aside from its forum integration.

VaultWiki would have been a lot more stable, mature, feature rich and powerful, had it been open source. What happens if the main author/developer dies in a car accident tomorrow, for example? Who will maintain the proprietary source code? VaultWiki will die out in such a scenario.

VW's vBulletin integration is very compelling, but I think the best thing thincom/pegasus can do, is go GNU GPL v3 and ask for donations. I and many others would happily and much rather, fund VaultWiki with such an approach.

[thincom2000]

Originally Posted by EliasAlucard

I'm definitely interested in VaultWiki, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have any shortcomings. I'm posting in this thread because I want answers and possibly a discussion, if the developer(s) is active enough.

VaultWiki's vBulletin integration makes it a serious alternative to MediaWiki. That's its strongest point. Had it not been for that, I wouldn't even care about VaultWiki. That VaultWiki is cross platform too (XenForo and IPBoard) makes it even better. But other than that, I don't see any other major pros, and it's mostly cons aside from its forum integration.

VaultWiki would have been a lot more stable, mature, feature rich and powerful, had it been open source. What happens if the main author/developer dies in a car accident tomorrow, for example? Who will maintain the proprietary source code? VaultWiki will die out in such a scenario.

VW's vBulletin integration is very compelling, but I think the best thing thincom/pegasus can do, is go GNU GPL v3 and ask for donations. I and many others would happily and much rather, fund VaultWiki with such an approach.

The parent company (Cracked Egg Studios) is currently in charge of licensing, and I doubt they are considering a public license for the full product anymore. It was originally released in late 2007 as a public license, and was changed to a proprietary EULA in summer 2008, because a significant outcry of its user base said that it should NOT be offered for free. In 2010, VaultWiki was given a little more autonomy as VaultWiki Team was formed, but we still have to answer to CES. Throughout that entire time, the product, its image, and feature set have only improved. It tends to be a rule with VaultWiki: if something changes, it doesn't change back.

If there are features that MediaWiki has (vanilla or not) that VaultWiki doesn't have, you are welcomed to make feature requests. We recognize MediaWiki as competition, know it sets the standard, and that we have to exceed that standard when we can. VaultWiki was created by CES in 2007 after they used MediaWiki for a year and decided it didn't have the features they needed (granted that was MW 1.4 versus MW 1.22 or whatever it's up to now). Ignoring the forum integrations, there are many aspects VaultWiki (full) now has over MediaWiki: BB-Code, better permissions, language/translation management, book/chapter management, easier media insertion.

I'm currently compiling a list of feature comparison between MediaWiki and VaultWiki. This is what I have so far (for MediaWiki, these are all "Yes" for VaultWiki). If I'm incorrect on any of these points, please let me know. If an Extension lets you do it, let me know, but the final list would only include popular and active extensions (e.g. Extension:AutoLink is no longer maintained).

Here's the MediaWiki list:

New Licenses: FREE
Free updates: Yes
Pages indexed by forum search: No
Automatically create links: No
Store link data: Yes
Syntax uses BB-Code: No

Pages use tabs: Yes
Post comments: No (a talk page isn't the same as individual user comments)
Show comments below: No
Multiple Discussions: No
Collapsible sections: No
Split content: No
Auto-TOC: Yes
Fully parsed preview: No

Editable by multiple users: Yes
Edit paragraphs: Yes
Protect pages: Yes
Blacklist titles: Yes
Pages show list of contributors: No
Create categories: Yes
BB-Code variables: Yes

List of all edits: Yes
Fully parsed versions: Yes
Compare two edits: Yes
Approve edits: No
Revert a page: Yes

Post reusable attachments: Yes
Easily find, insert, upload: No
View, compare, undo: Yes

Write pages in any language: Extension required
Translate pages: Extension required
Easily switch between translations: No

Keep your pages organized in multiple areas: No
Use prefixes to keep similar pages unique: Yes
Icons show new articles, comments, edits: No
Place wiki content on other forum pages: No
Moderation tools for handling multiple pages simultaneously: No
Anonymous pages allow stand-alone pages: No

Create synonyms: Yes (VaultWiki also lets you create them in reverse, and set expiration)
Create templates: Yes
Integrate templates with content using arguments: Yes

Customize keyword-rich URLs: Yes
Makes use of canonical URLs and 301 redirects: Yes
Use RSS syndication to keep users informed: Extension required
Promote wiki content with Facebook: No

Add pages to Books: No
Read book collections with simple navigation: No
Place chapters in any order: No

View statistics: Yes
Look up recent edits: Yes
Pages meeting various criteria: Yes

List of edits made by any user: Yes
User contributions in user's profile: No
User can have wiki preferences: Yes
Utilize wiki usage data for trophies or other promotions: No

Users can subscribe to pages or discussions: Yes
Users can organize their subscriptions: Yes
Notifications can be sent instantly, daily, weekly: Yes

Pages maintained by group members: No
Private pages for group members: No

Control CSS for each forum style: No
Change image paths for each style: No

Quickly jump to other wiki pages: Yes
Watch recent wiki activity live: No
View technical analysis of each page: No
Find similar or related wiki content: No
Customize the sidebar: No
Use wiki sidebar in forum sidebar: No

Specify which Special pages each usergroup can access: No
Allow usergroups to edit, protect, and undo edits: Not forum usergroups
Define moderators to manage new and existing content: Yes

Import wiki information seamlessly: Yes
Various settings let you fine-tune look and feel: Yes

Fully phrased using the forum language system: separate system used
Developer hooks through forum plugin system: separate system used

[thincom2000]

A note on the MIN_PACKET (minimum max_allowed_packet value). vBulletin support has in the past recommended at least 32M, and sometimes as much as 128M, to prevent MySQL gone away and other packet-related database errors.

Some users are still using default or host-restricted packet values of 1M, 2M, or even 500K. VaultWiki now uses a dynamic minimum, calculated based on your current forum and expected query size.

The most packet-expensive query in vBulletin is the one that caches phrase translations in columns on the language table. Rather than do this one column at a time, it updates all the columns at once, which quickly uses up all available packet space.

To determine the requirement, VaultWiki builds this query without executing it, and calculates how many bytes it will transfer. If the current max_packet is exceeded, or only has a small margin, then VaultWiki will refuse to install.

If this happens, your only option is to upgrade your max_allowed_packet. There is nothing VaultWiki can do to improve this - as I describe above, max_allowed_packet errors are due to a design flaw in the vBulletin language system.

[thincom2000]

The first post is now updated: you can purchase Ad Removal and Branding Removal for VaultWiki Lite from the official site. If you need help installing or upgrading, you can also purchase install or upgrade services from the main site. Previously these options were only available for licensed users, but now they are available to anyone, including Lite users.

If you do purchase one of these extras, you would have to always download it from there in the future, because the Members area will automatically remove those elements for you, and the ZIP attached to this thread will not.

[thincom2000]

Originally Posted by EliasAlucard

I'm trying to install VaultWiki Lite, but I get a blank page after I sign in.

Make sure your PHP version is at least 5.3. VaultWiki's source code won't parse on lower versions.

A blank page is usually due to a PHP error, but you have errors hidden. You will have to turn on 'display_errors' in your php.ini file to see them. But I suspect that the error you see is due to your PHP version being too low.

If it is, we need to create a bug report, because you should AT LEAST be able to reach the screen that says your site doesn't meet the PHP requirement.

[EliasAlucard]

Originally Posted by thincom2000

Make sure your PHP version is at least 5.3. VaultWiki's source code won't parse on lower versions.

A blank page is usually due to a PHP error, but you have errors hidden. You will have to turn on 'display_errors' in your php.ini file to see them. But I suspect that the error you see is due to your PHP version being too low.

If it is, we need to create a bug report, because you should AT LEAST be able to reach the screen that says your site doesn't meet the PHP requirement.

I'm on PHP 5.4... and no, I didn't get that far. Just the sign in and then blank.

By the way, is it possible to export VaultWiki's article database to MediaWiki? You know, if I'd change my mind later.

[thincom2000]

Any VaultWiki > MediaWiki tool would be a lossy conversion, since there is a lot of functionality and page types that simply don't exist in MediaWiki. We have not written something like this, but we do plan to eventually have a generic export tool that would export XML or something like that. It is not high on the priority list right now, as it's not one of those every-day features that our users ask for.

Even so, we still have to do some research to see if there is a mostly loss-less format that other wiki software might be able to import.

From what I have seen, it's rare for any software to provide an export function to a competing software. For example, if you search online for a MediaWiki exporter to Dokuwiki, what you will find is:
- a Dokuwiki function that imports MediaWiki
- third parties that wrote scripts to do this
However there is not a script within MediaWiki itself to do this.

If we expect that most software and VaultWiki continues to follow this model, I am not aware if MediaWiki or other potentially intermediate software currently includes a function to import VaultWiki data.

As far as the blank page, it really sounds like a PHP error. You will need to track down the error message by enabling 'display_errors' or viewing your error logs. Once you have the error you can report it here or the VaultWiki site. The VaultWiki site has faster response time.

[thincom2000]

Just wanted to note that I uploaded a new ZIP today. Technically it's the same version, but a lot of issues getting the installation/un-installation process to run smoothly are fixed.

For example, previous versions of the ZIP could not be extracted using the WinZIP client, and there were fatal errors whenever cron jobs tried to run. These are now resolved.

Also, starting with the new upload, the Javascript will be minified from now on. If you want access to the un-minified Javascript, please download VaultWiki Lite from the main support site since you can choose your download settings there.

[thincom2000]

Originally Posted by EliasAlucard

What happens if the main author/developer dies in a car accident tomorrow, for example? Who will maintain the proprietary source code? VaultWiki will die out in such a scenario.

VW's vBulletin integration is very compelling, but I think the best thing thincom/pegasus can do, is go GNU GPL v3 and ask for donations. I and many others would happily and much rather, fund VaultWiki with such an approach.

We have heard your concerns and there is now a sub-section in the current EULA to cover this:

In the event of compulsory liquidation of ownership, currently Cracked Egg Studios, LLC, on the grounds that the number of members falls below the minimum prescribed by statute, the Software shall thereafter be released to the community under the GNU General Public License version 3 to continue the project and do with as they please.

This has also been a serious concern of ours, because VaultWiki was created under similar circumstances to what you describe. The owner of a software called NuWiki mysteriously disappeared, and because of a proprietary EULA, myself and a few other users of that software pooled our resources to create VaultWiki from scratch. We don't want VaultWiki to die out, even if we do.

But of course, while we are alive we would like to profit from it if we can.

Cracked Egg Studios, LLC is a publicly registered company, so you can with a little research find out if all of ownership suddenly dropped dead at once, like during a suspicious period of inactivity.

[thincom2000]

The Lite version of Gamma 6 has been posted today, above.

(released June 8, 2014)

• Status Icons are now Font-Based
• Serious error fixed: removing old revisions deletes the entire page
• Fixed Bug: race condition - AJAX requests occur before AJAX params are ready
• Fixed Bug: bbcode does not have options field in Lite version
• Fixed Bug: index URL caches with guest session attached
• Fixed Bug: invalid index URL for guests with cookies disabled
• About 30 other bugs that weren't limited to vBulletin are fixed