Tiki Wiki Features & Options Explained

Bernard Sfez - 2018-11-12 22:42

Tiki packs an enormous feature set of options and features (most are off by default). As an admin, you choose what to enable and how to configure it. In this Tiki Express tutorial OpenSource Solutions walks you through the administration panels and help you to discover features, options and the key places to adjust settings.

Enable features from the Control Panels
Turn on Global Features from the Features panel
Enable Interface features
Get a quick overview of Programmer features
Find and fine-tune feature options

Start fresh: enable features from Control Panels

Let’s begin with a fresh Tiki “out of the box” and see how to enable a feature from the Control Panels.
There is in Tiki an impressive number of features, and only a few are enabled by default. It’s up to the Tiki Admin to switch on what’s needed and configure it.

Control Panels + Advanced mode

Open the Control Panels page—you’ll see a tile for each feature that’s already active. Enable Advanced mode and save it as your default.
If you’re new to this, check my Tiki Express Tutorial: Administration Tips in Tiki.

You’ll now see more tiles; some are dimmed because those features aren’t enabled yet. These tiles cover the main features; we’ll see more places to enable features in a moment.

Support the UI progress
Tiki’s user interface has improved with a Unified Admin Backend introduced in Tiki 26, thanks to the community and sponsored work. You can contribute developer time by joining the Tiki Community—or help with a donation.

Enable a major feature (example: Blogs)

Click the tile of the feature you want; its preferences page opens where you can activate it.
Watch me enable Blogs in two clicks—done.

The Features Control Panel (all the toggles!)

Back to the main Control Panels page I want to show now the Features control panel where you can find not only the main features' in Tiki but also the secondary, administration and other features. I click on the Features tile and land on a long feature page. The page is divided in several sections and the features are grouped in four group:

Global Feature
Interface
Programmer
Add-ons

On the Global Feature tab you’ll see several sections:

Main features 
Secondary features
Administrative features
Additional features
Interaction with online services or other software

Administration and inline help

On each feature line you usually find near the checkbox a "Question Mark" that reveal a tool tip that summarize what does it activate and lead to the corresponding page at Tiki Documentation.
A "Go" button that open the main control panel or admin page for this feature.
If you changed a setting from the default that came with the installation you’ll find also a "Roll-back" button to reset the parameter.
We just enabled the Blog feature and so you can see there the reset button.

Note that some feature or options in the admin pages can have a child menu that will be displayed only if the feature or the option is activated. See what happen when I click on "Daily reports for user watches".

In some case you will see a "Warning" icon.
Move the cursor over the icon to display a tooltip that will give explanations about the reason for the warning.

The Interface feature

Again an impressive list of feature ready to run.  We can see an a new icon, a green check.
You will see this in any Admin parameter or options that require something else to be activated.
The Ajax-Auto save require "Ajax", and it is activated and also require that the "Warn on edit conflict".

In case something is missing you’ll see a warning and a way to solve this.
Let’s find "Warn on edit conflict" and disable it to see what happen. I’ll use the search field preferences.
Search the word "warn" and from the result section disable it and save.
If you need more information about this tool, please look at my previous video about Administration Tips in Tiki.

Now back to the Interface features preferences page and I can see a very bold warning "You need to set Warn on edit conflict" and a link to solve the issue. I follow and enable the missing preferences. Back to the Interface features preferences page: all green !

Great.

The programmer tools

The Programmer tab display a lot of tools, settings and options that are for… programmers or developpers. Just a quick overview because to use them you are already supposed to know what does what ? Right ?

I think we’ve seen about everything on how to enable a feature in Tiki.
Now once a feature is enabled you have access to its Admin page.

Back to the main page the blogs tile is active. Remember, that is was muted when we started this video till we activated the feature.
I click on the tile and so open the blogs Admin page.

This is just an example but most of the pages look the same.
Again the question mark lead to the Tiki Documentation.
A link to the items or the objects from this feature.
In this case a link to a page that displays a list of the Blogs on this Tiki

If necessary tabs to avoid to be confused by too much information on a page.
Here we have the general setting and blog listing where you can configure the way the blog listing will look like.

As we’ve just learned we have again checkboxes, input fields, information icons, warning, checks and requirements. Also you know now that some preferences have child options (click on share this). To apply your changes you have an Apply button.

Blog Listing tab

Let’s look at the content of the tab Blog Listing.
Nothing really mysterious… You can add, remove re order, etc.

This structure is almost the same for all features. There are some differences but that the way it work in Tiki. So once you got it for one feature it’s the same for all the others.

Goodbye

That’s it for today and now you can start to explore Tiki and add more and more features. I would like to thanks Bassirou, TheRastrick, MarKo and many other Tikiers that send me a note about my work to share my knowledge.  I’m happy to help and it’s a great reward for me to read your comments.
 I hope you’ve enjoyed this one Tiki Express Tutorial too.

Guys, I’m sure you found that video useful so please like, share and subscribe to my youtube channel.
The next video will be about Tiki Banners and how you can setup all kinds of banners using the Banners feature. We also explore an alternative using the Module feature.

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Thanks again for watching and may the power of Tiki be with you !

OpenSource Solutions provides Tiki setup, upgrades, performance, security hardening, SEO services, and ongoing support.

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