Some Questions

[Webbstre]

Hello everyone. I recently purchased the VB Suite, and I am impressed with it. I want to integrate/replace as many parts of my site together as possible to try to simplify things. My current site is set up like this:
Wordpress - News
Wordpress Plugins - Media Gallery
phpbb3 - Forum
Drupal - Game Mod Database
Mediawiki - Multiple wikis in different languages on different subdomains

Right now the VB Suite can replace the News, Media Gallery, and Forum functions, which is great. Drupal is tough to touch because of the big part it plays in my site, but I hope to be able to integrate the user database to it in the future. That just leaves the wikis.

I have something like 10 wikis on different subdomains, all connected together to provide areas for different languages. To be honest, only the English wiki is used very much, but sometimes people will come and add content to the other language portions.

So here are my questions:
1 - Can VaultWiki handle multiple languages? They don't need to be on different subdomains, but just existing somewhere would help.
2 - Does VaultWiki work together with vbSEO?
3 - Can VaultWiki import data from multiple mediawiki installations and merge them into one?
4 - Can VaultWiki import a mediawiki user database in VB?
5 - How long do you intend to continue updating/upgrading/producing VaultWiki? I would prefer not to have to make another switch in a year or two.

Thanks for your time!

[pegasus]

1. VaultWiki can handle multiple languages - in that you can write articles in any language you want. There currently aren't any tools to "Translate a page" and the pages aren't linked to the board's language in any way. These are aspects we intend to change in the near future, but as of yet they have not been implemented. You can feel free to set up an English sub-forum, German sub-forum, etc. This should encourage a storage method that will make it easier to update when support is fully implemented. However, during the import of so many MediaWiki installations, you may need to come up with something clever or all the pages will be saved in VaultWiki's root. VaultWiki supports UTF-8 URLs.

2. VaultWiki doesn't necessarily "work together" with vbSEO. It will co-exist with vbSEO just fine. VaultWiki has its own SEO options and only makes use of certain features of vbSEO like Linkbacks. Just make sure your vbSEO is up-to-date - bugs in early versions of vbSEO prevented VaultWiki's SEO options from working properly.

3. VaultWiki can import data from multiple MediaWiki installations - but not at the same time. One by one, you would need to copy the databases to VaultWiki, then import them individually. All the pages would then be under one VaultWiki installation.

4. VaultWiki does not bridge the MediaWiki user database to vBulletin. If you know of an existing bridge (other than vbWiki Pro), we can try to add support for it, but otherwise I'm pretty sure all existing pages will be attributed to the admin.

5. We do not have a planned EOL for VaultWiki.

[InformationNirvana]

2. VaultWiki doesn't necessarily "work together" with vbSEO. It will co-exist with vbSEO just fine. VaultWiki has its own SEO options and only makes use of certain features of vbSEO like Linkbacks. Just make sure your vbSEO is up-to-date - bugs in early versions of vbSEO prevented VaultWiki's SEO options from working properly.

Vaultwiki is the only Wiki that works well with vB and vBSEO.

[Webbstre]

I thought I'd come back here and say that I will definitely be purchasing Vaultwiki in the future. I have to wait for enough ad money to come in, but this is a great product and it will be wonderful at helping me simplify my website. Since purchasing vbulletin I've been really happy with the products and support I have found for it.

vbSEO is another necessary purchase, but it'll probably have to come after essentials like this.

[InformationNirvana]

as much as vBSEO could help you. It's still not exactly 100% proven to help your site. I know people feel either 100% or 100% against it but now is not the time to debate it ! Smarter webmasters will tell you this ...

CONTENT is KING.

A wiki helps you create content, by forum regulars and site owners.

A well running wiki will make your site more money than vBSEO ever will.

Of course, creating content takes TIME !

And a wiki help you "offload" that task (somewhat) to your users/community.

Great wikis like Mediawiki suffer because creating content is too hard for the "average joe" site user.

Vaultwiki excels here ... almost any forum user who can post can edit the wiki.

I of course would like to see it made *EVEN* easier to use. I myself love the full featured aspects of vaultwiki, but I think most sites would happily sacrifice the features for a DEAD SIMPLE WIKI. Regardless, there is only one wiki for vB and it's vaultwiki. I've researched wikis extensively and the only I chose vBulletin was because of vaultwiki. I probably would have gone with phpBB3 but there is no vaultwiki type equivalent for it. The power of wiki/forum integration is what makes me love vaultwiki. Forums don't really accomplish much ... wikis can be useful collections of information. Using a forum to drive interest and participation in the wiki is why vaultwiki is great. As my time permits ... and I actually get vaultwiki going, I hope to give some good suggestions to make vW even more useful.

Good luck.
I'm not sure I am going to get vBSEO. I am still researching it. So far, to me, it seems the people who brag about it are the people who vBSEO gave it to for free ! I know some webmasters who own big sites .. and they got vBSEO free. heh.

[Webbstre]

What makes VaultWiki less simple than mediawiki? I find mediawiki has a pretty difficult learning curve just due to the lack of a decent WYSIWYG editor, or something equally simple.

[pegasus]

I don't think he meant that VaultWiki is more complicated than MediaWiki in terms of its learning curve or anything. I understand his post to mean that VaultWiki has a lot of features that many sites probably won't use. As a result, any software with more features than another would inherently have a higher learning curve because it would take more time to learn them all. Even when you're not using some features, you still have to get used to options being there that you never turn on. While those sites might have opted for a cheaper or a free solution that ONLY had what they need, VaultWiki is the only of its kind.

[Webbstre]

Ok, that makes sense then.

I notice that you are the lead developer? Just out of curiosity, when do you think you will have the feature to have different languages be separate available?

[pegasus]

This is something we are working on for Beta 5 (the next release), provided there aren't any show-stopper bugs that necessitate an early release. We typically release a new beta every 2 - 3 weeks (Beta 4 was released 3 days ago).

[Webbstre]

Excellent! It may be a month or two before I can purchase it, but if you have that working by that time then it means no time lost

[InformationNirvana]

What makes VaultWiki less simple than mediawiki? I find mediawiki has a pretty difficult learning curve just due to the lack of a decent WYSIWYG editor, or something equally simple.

vaultWiki is much easier to use than Mediawiki. That's a big strength.

[Webbstre]

Just thought I'd stop by to say my next batch of ad money just arrived in my bank account, and once the transfer to paypal finishes I'll be purchasing.

Any progress on those multi-language options?

[pegasus]

We are still on track to release some form of multi-language options for Premium users for the next release. However, at this point it looks like the implementation will be relatively basic for another couple of weeks - the build needs to be made available sooner rather than later to address other compatibility issues.

We were delayed in working on multi-language directly because of implications the changes were having on other features that needed to be updated or rewritten entirely (for example, forum headers).

It looks like for the next build, the following multi-language options will be available:

• Creating pages in the language of your choice
• Translating existing pages via creating a new page in another language - this will link both versions
• Translating namespace titles and paths

We may have to put off:

• Making an existing page the translation of another existing page
• Moving an existing page to another language
• Filtering forum display and Special page lists by language

[Webbstre]

Thanks for the quick response! I'll only be installing it on my test subdomain for the next couple months as we continue to develop the site. If you need any help testing stuff I am willing to help out.

[pegasus]

If you haven't found out already, there is now a new beta with the language features. You can read up on what's possible here: http://www.vaultwiki.org/articles/49/