pegasus

While some users are already a little privy to this if they were part of the Alpha Team that contributed to private testing of VaultWiki 4, other users have asked, so here's a bit more about what's new in VaultWiki 4. Even though it's possible to get a sense of some things in my earlier blog "What's Changing About VaultWiki (Re-post)," that was written over 2 years ago, and a lot can change in such time.

As shown in "VaultWiki 4: Intro to the New Admin Control Panel:"

• Rearranged the admin pages that relate to VaultWiki and put them in one place
• New admin panel style
• Some admin tools use AJAX
• Index compares your installed version to the public download and shows minor updates even if the version number was not changed
• Namespaces are gone

In my blog "VaultWiki 4: Articles, Comments, and Attachments, we announced the following:

• Each wiki page can have more than one thread for comments
• Admins can mass-create thread topics for entire groups of pages at once
• Image uploads/attachments maintain a record of file changes

The first two items are shown briefly in Claw Snuff's blog video "VaultWiki 4 Comments Sneak Peek."

As highlighted in Claw Snuff's blog and video "VaultWiki 4 Admin Panel Tour:"

• The admin panel shows the wiki hierarchy in a graphical way
• Instead of namespaces, you can use Prefixes freely, no matter where the wiki page is saved or what function the wiki page has
• Wiki languages are separate from forum languages, so you can have more translations for wiki pages than your forum has
• Finally use Access Masks to set wiki permissions for an individual user
• More options, so greater flexibility, for wiki permissions

In her next (and last) video "VaultWiki 4 Changes to Pages Part 1," Claw Snuff talks about how certain wiki page types have changed in VaultWiki 4:

• New style for wiki pages
• Wiki index is now a content page that can be edited directly without doing roundabout setting modifications
• Wiki areas are now content pages that can be edited directly without doing roundabout setting modifications
• Wiki areas show a summary of sub-areas and a shortened page list, full page list just a click away
• Wiki social groups now have an embedded landing page that can be edited
• Create/Add page to a category from the category's index page
• Collapsible wiki sidebar
• Live-search sidebar block
• Wiki activity feed sidebar block shows new changes and posts across the wiki as they are made
• A series of "About This Page" sidebar blocks automatically analyzes page text and at a glance helps editors determine if they need work. They may not be as accurate as user analysis of a page, but they don't rely on your users taking the time to rate pages on various points. While there is merit in both types, to be honest, most users won't bother, so we focused on automated analysis for VaultWiki 4
• Similar content sidebar block shows other (non-wiki) forum content that might be related
• VaultWiki 4 makes frequent use of caching to reduce load
• Sidebar blocks can be individually turned on/off depending on your community's needs
• Use permissions to hide individual sidebar blocks from certain groups

Some other changes in VaultWiki 4 that haven't been highlighted in videos:

• Requires PHP 5.3+, regardless of your forum software version
• Supports installation on multiple forum softwares, if appropriate sub-classes are installed
• A variant of MVC architecture, more organized and object-oriented than VaultWiki 3
• Native IPv6 support
• Deeper URL customization
• Forces UTF-8 encoding on wiki pages
• One-click install, upgrade, import (not counting user input for setting values)
• Embed wiki pages above a forum thread using an update to good old forum headers
• Add pages to categories, select wiki pages for headers, find pages for books, etc using a filtered search tool
• Added links to wiki items awaiting moderation from the ModCP, UserCP, and navbar notifications
• Users can report wiki pages to moderators (they could only report edits in VaultWiki 3)
• Integration with vBulletin 4.2's Activity Stream
• Set a level depth limit for the sub-chapters on a wiki book's Table of Contents
• Redirects can be created, maintained using a page's Synonyms tab
• Allowed file types and file limits for wiki uploads can be different from forum rules
• Options for users' wiki subscriptions and other preferences in their UserCP
• Both Edit and Source tabs can be viewed (Edit superceded Source in VaultWiki 3)
• Option to use parentheses in page titles
• No more periods in file URLs (unless regular URLs can have them too)
• Control of language choices in each wiki area
• Option for changing the threshold for the "Contents" block in pages with multiple headlines
• Custom BB-Codes can contain positive integers
• Option to PM users after their moderated content is approved or denied
• Competitive Special:MostContributions page
• UserCP now orders subscribed wiki pages by last update, rather than last post

And other stuff that isn't done yet but will make it before VaultWiki 4 finishes Beta...