Glossary
This page is to explain terms used in Tiki, especially those that are used differently than in other open source or commercial web applications.
| Term | Definition | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| addon | An addon is a way of packaging Profiles, Smarty Templates and other building blocks of application functionality that can be used to better manage different Tiki configurations by developers and also for developers to offer these as independently maintained “apps” to others. | Addons |
| module | Content container typically in a right or left column (but can be in any module zone or wiki text area) that perform various functions. A full Tiki installation includes more than 100 pre-defined modules. You can also create custom ("user") modules. | Module |
| content template | A page template created using wiki syntax that can be used to pre-populate a wiki page or article. | link |
| category | Tiki uses categories to organize different objects (such as wiki pages, blogs, and forums). Each Tiki category can have permissions that override the global/group permissions. | Category |
| CMS | Content Management System. Tiki overall can be called a CMS, but the Tiki Article feature is sometimes labeled as the CMS feature. So there are a few places in the User Interface and in the source code where the term is still used. Ex.: tiki-admin.php?page=cms or in the permission listing. | Articles |
| mod | Abbreviation for "modification" and, in Tiki, a deprecated feature that enabled installation of an extension not included with the Tiki package (for example, due to licensing restrictions). Please see: http://mods.tiki.org for historical purposes and Packages for a more modern approach. | Mods |
| plugin | With plugins, you include complex elements on a wiki page, such as videos, database queries, and more. Tiki includes more than 150 plugins with a full installation. Tiki's plugins are native code, not third-party software. | Plugin |
| section | 1. A feature such as forums, wiki, blog, etc. 2. A part of a wiki page, which can be edited separately. |
1. Sections 2. Edit by Section |
| structure | A hierarchical arrangement of wiki pages that provides navigation, categorization and access tools, etc. Use case: making a book from wiki pages. | link |
| admin | The admin user account is the Tiki system administrator. The admin is automatically part of the Admins group and has all permissions. | link |
| backlink | Incoming links to a wiki page, from another wiki page. Tiki automatically maintains the list of a page's backlinks, even if you change the name of one of the pages. | link |
| CAPTCHA | Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart - A test, typically consisting of distorted numbers and letters, to determine if the respondent is a human or a machine. Tiki supports two CAPTCHA systems: Zend_Captcha (default) and ReCaptcha. | link |
| encoding | By default, Tiki uses UTF-8 encoding for the database. If you find odd characters in wiki pages, check your database encoding. | link |
| group | Website user accounts are organized into groups. Each user can belong to multiple groups and groups can include/inherit other groups. Permissions applied to specific groups are global (but can be overridden on a category- or object-level. | link |
| H5P | H5P allows the creation, sharing and reusing of interactive HTML5 content in your browser. New in Tiki17, H5P enables the display of this content, as well as an editor to create or modify it. | H5P |
| IRC | Internet Relay Chat - Real-time Internet text-messaging system (old school technology these days, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it). The Tiki Community maintains the #tikiwiki IRC chatroom on the Freenode.net network. | link |
| local.php | The Tiki configuration file that contains the database connection information. Normally, Tiki creates or updates this file as part of the installation process. | link |
| orphan | A wiki page with no incoming links from other pages. An orphaned page has no backlinks. | link |
| package | Also called the Composer Web Installer, and introduced in Tiki18, this feature is for the installation and management of external software packages using Composer. | Packages |
| php.ini | The configuration file used to customize PHP (the language used by Tiki). See http://php.net for details. The location of your php.ini file may vary, depending on your web server configuration. | link |
| polom | A greeting often used by Tiki developers on the #tikiwiki IRC channel. Geeky responses include bolow (upside-down), qolom (backwards), or wolod (upside-down and backwards). | link |
| profile | Tiki profiles allow you to apply a pre-defined configuration to your website. In Tiki terminology, a “profile” is a set of site configuration preferences and website item creation instructions that are applied as a group. Profiles don’t contain or create files. They only add or edit content in the site’s database. | Profile |
| Smarty | The template engine used by Tiki. Smarty template files are identified by the TPL file extension. | link |
| t.o | An abbreviation for the Tiki Community sites (*.tiki.org), such as dev.t.o. A list of all Tiki Community sites appears in the footer of each site. | link |
| template | 1. A Smarty template file (TPL) used to define the layout of a Tiki feature or page (HTML and CSS) For example, the tiki-register.tpl template controls the layout of the Registration page. 2. A content template is user-defined content that can be used when creating specific Tiki objects (such as wiki page or article). 3 A website's visual theme or skin may be called a template but, in Tiki's documentation and discussions, the word "theme" is used most. |
link |
| theme | The visual "skin" on a Tiki website. Unlike themes of some web software, Tiki's themes are solely for visual appearance; they don't have functional aspects such as via wigits. A Tiki theme may be only a CSS stylesheet, or it might have customized versions of the Smarty template files Tiki uses for laying out pages. A theme can also include its own icon font or JavaScript for page animation, etc. | Themes.t.o |
| Tiki | Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware (formerly known as "Tikiwiki CMS Groupware" or "Tikiwiki"). May also refer to the Tiki Software Community Association or the Tiki Community, in general. The "official" backronym for Tiki is "Tightly Integrated Knowledge Infrastructure" | link |
| TikiFest | A tradition in the Tiki community, a TikiFest is a meeting between Tiki community members (who usually only meet online). This is an opportunity to socialize, code and discuss wiki technology and culture, etc. | TikiFest |
| topic | In Tiki's articles feature, topics are types of categories of articles. Each topic can an identifying icon or image. | link |
| .tpl | The filename extension for Smarty template files. | link |
| WikiWord | A Tiki option that automatically converts all words with mixed upper- and lower-case letters into wiki links {representing page names). | link |
| WYSIWYG | What You See Is What You Get - An editing system in which content displayed during editing appears very similar to the final output. Tiki uses a WYSIWYG implementation by CKEditor. | link |
Some terms and definitions in this glossary are adapted from Tiki for Smarties, which is CCA Share Alike licensed.