Deki CMS combines the strengths of both a wiki and a content management system ensuring ease of use, control, and great presentation for designers, writers and administrators alike. The CMS is a feature add-on to Deki Wiki which essentially transforms the extremely powerful wiki platform into a light weight CMS system. In addition, Deki CMS allows users to leverage a collaborative content management system for greater content growth and governance.
I created the first version of Deki CMS about 10 months ago to power the MindTouch public site. I developed the add-on because I was sick of using other content management systems and being let down. With other content management systems I wasn’t able to version my changes and I couldn’t see who was contributing what. I couldn’t do simple things like easily maintain url aliases or use templates throughout the MindTouch site. I also had problems with file attachments, in particular with storing design files. Oh yeah, and my content backup consisted of me yelling to Roy “Hey, save a copy of the database” and five minutes later “ok, revert the database.” I quickly realized that all these issues had already been solved and were the core competencies of a wiki.
Because Deki Wiki was so powerful and also such a great collaboration platform, I thought I’d try to bend the rules a little. I altered the wiki markup and placed all of the wiki functions in an easily accessible toolbar(create page, recent changes, hierarchical navigation, revision history, etc). I then made some more markup changes and hid the toolbar from anonymous users. Simply put, all site visitors see only the blank canvas of the wiki and all registered wiki users see the canvas and the toolbar.
Download at Sourceforge
Since my first release, I have made many major improvements. Deki CMS currently has revised SEO functionality, increased usability design, and drastically improved page load speeds. I’m going to continue improving the add-on but because it is one of my 20% projects, Deki CMS will not yet be supported or shipped with Deki Wiki. We have, however, decided to make Deki CMS publicly available for download. The files along with the instructions are available on SourceForge.
Simply navigate to the ‘download > browse all files’ tab and you’ll find Deki CMS under MindTouch Deki Wiki Modules.
MindTouch Deki CMS forum
I’ve also created a forum post to address issues, concerns and suggestions. Please use the forum link below for more information.
Thanks for your support
Damien Howley
DamienH[at]mindtouch.com