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VaultWiki4
- Thread starter fraggle
- Start date
we_are_borg
New Member
If it continues like this i will be better off using a other solution its been weeks for good solid updates and if they say dates it does not mean anything at all because it seems that every time something happens. Going to see if using a normal wiki is possible almost waiting a year on VaultWiki4 now and still nothing to show for.
I recently switched from mediawiki to vaultwiki, although i have had some major issues converting everything (i wont recomment converting pages if you have a large mediawiki install with loads of extensions) I must say i am pretty happy with vautwiki compared to mediawiki.
the most important thing for me was the flawless integration with vbulletin. VW does that very well.
I dont see a reason why you would "wait" for vw4 while this version is just fine.
The only thing where i am worried about is that in two months i got soo much custom code.. what will happen once it comes
Alfa1
Member
Many features that I really need will be in VW4.
Most of those are integration functions, like reputation for wiki edits, better notifications, suggest post to wiki, etc. Such features would be of great benefit to my community and to wiki use on my site. If VW4 has hit some major roadblock or if it is not coming, then I need to consider alternative options, like custom development.
VaultWiki 4 is still coming. It has not hit a major roadblock or something like that. I've been hesitant about giving dates because I know it is very difficult to judge once all things are considered, and I tend to be wrong.
There are many factors involved, but as I've mentioned in the past, development is slow because it's a completely separate product branch. All the code (so far) is new. We don't have the resources to develop multiple branches at the same time at the rate our customers have become accustomed to, and this is something we've had to deal with for the past year. It's one of the reasons for the upcoming discontinuation of the Standard License with VaultWiki 4.
Whenever we get a lot of bug reports for VaultWiki 3, it takes time away from 4 (and we usually have to spend additional time re-engineering the changes for 4) - we can't just ignore bug reports. This is not to blame anyone for posting bug reports, it's a major part of the formula that keeps the product moving forward, but it's a huge factor.
As I mentioned last time, VaultWiki 4 is close to Alpha release. I'm not sure why, but it seems like people believe there is no activity in the VaultWiki 4 milestones on the site. This is just not true. If you're looking at Active Issues, you may not see much activity, because this is a list of items we haven't gotten to yet. But if you compare that list to Total Issues (https://www.vaultwiki.org/milestones/9/list/), you'll see that we are indeed making headway daily. I feel like I've mentioned this before, but if you're ever in doubt about development activity, just look at that list, or the tracker in general.
We've tried to have more transparency about where we are in the process using the tracker and additionally on the forum home page. There's a widget "VaultWiki 4 Progress" that mentions the feature we're currently focusing on that day, and additionally, how many new files have been added to the product between VaultWiki 3 and VaultWiki 4. If it's hard to comprehend, once you finally see the file system in the /vault, you'll realize that VaultWiki 4 is just immense.
Let me also mention that VaultWiki 4 will probably disappoint some people initially with the Alpha 1 release. It's mainly a back-end update, so you won't notice many visible changes or new features except with some content types that required a new architecture (like redirects or attachments). That doesn't mean new features won't be coming shortly afterward, but we're trying to keep the first release as simple as possible since the code will be almost completely new. You can get an idea of what's in Alpha 1, again by just having a look at the tracker.
Of the ones Alpha1 mentioned, VaultWiki 4.0.0 Alpha 1 does include (already) better notifications - for both moderators and subscribed users.
For users waiting for VaultWiki 4 to switch from vBulletin to XenForo or IPB, keep in mind that you can always run both side-by-side until your platform is supported. It would be akin to running a separate standalone wiki for the time being - you wouldn't have the added difficulty of trying to find a way to export the data without losing your current wiki configuration, or the hassle of reposting everything.
There are many factors involved, but as I've mentioned in the past, development is slow because it's a completely separate product branch. All the code (so far) is new. We don't have the resources to develop multiple branches at the same time at the rate our customers have become accustomed to, and this is something we've had to deal with for the past year. It's one of the reasons for the upcoming discontinuation of the Standard License with VaultWiki 4.
Whenever we get a lot of bug reports for VaultWiki 3, it takes time away from 4 (and we usually have to spend additional time re-engineering the changes for 4) - we can't just ignore bug reports. This is not to blame anyone for posting bug reports, it's a major part of the formula that keeps the product moving forward, but it's a huge factor.
As I mentioned last time, VaultWiki 4 is close to Alpha release. I'm not sure why, but it seems like people believe there is no activity in the VaultWiki 4 milestones on the site. This is just not true. If you're looking at Active Issues, you may not see much activity, because this is a list of items we haven't gotten to yet. But if you compare that list to Total Issues (https://www.vaultwiki.org/milestones/9/list/), you'll see that we are indeed making headway daily. I feel like I've mentioned this before, but if you're ever in doubt about development activity, just look at that list, or the tracker in general.
We've tried to have more transparency about where we are in the process using the tracker and additionally on the forum home page. There's a widget "VaultWiki 4 Progress" that mentions the feature we're currently focusing on that day, and additionally, how many new files have been added to the product between VaultWiki 3 and VaultWiki 4. If it's hard to comprehend, once you finally see the file system in the /vault, you'll realize that VaultWiki 4 is just immense.
Let me also mention that VaultWiki 4 will probably disappoint some people initially with the Alpha 1 release. It's mainly a back-end update, so you won't notice many visible changes or new features except with some content types that required a new architecture (like redirects or attachments). That doesn't mean new features won't be coming shortly afterward, but we're trying to keep the first release as simple as possible since the code will be almost completely new. You can get an idea of what's in Alpha 1, again by just having a look at the tracker.
Of the ones Alpha1 mentioned, VaultWiki 4.0.0 Alpha 1 does include (already) better notifications - for both moderators and subscribed users.
For users waiting for VaultWiki 4 to switch from vBulletin to XenForo or IPB, keep in mind that you can always run both side-by-side until your platform is supported. It would be akin to running a separate standalone wiki for the time being - you wouldn't have the added difficulty of trying to find a way to export the data without losing your current wiki configuration, or the hassle of reposting everything.
Well, as you know (and you are active on vb.org as well) no solution is per se 100% of your "needs" and alsway need some kind of modification. And the strong part of vbulletin is the whole vb.org community.
I also think VW lacks of some functionality and flexibility, but that doesnt hold me back on using it, or indeed what you say: custom development (MODS!) .. i have rewritten lots of stuff in VW to fill my needs
One thing i really miss here on VW is the "vb.org" community.. other VW users creating mods for VW.. share your cutom VW code or ideas with the rest of the users.
Thats why i asked for Modwriting guidelines recently.
I believe the power lies in the community with mods using the VW framework
Alfa1
Member
That would indeed be beneficial.
Alan_SP
New Member
It's very big project and I know that many of us are impatient. But, on the other hand, I think that it is more important that project is done well than fast.
I have working VW3, it works fine and I could wait for VW4.
If only you could post more news, what's happening, things like that? I mean, more things in words that would mean more to us all. I know that tracker shows updates, daily activity, but news updates would be probably appreciated from all.
And yes, I'll stick with VW, it's best wiki for vB there is.
Now that you mention it, I remember that about a year ago I started a blog series about "what's new in VaultWiki 4", but I guess I forgot about it. I can agree that probably didn't inspire confidence. Well, right now I'm testing migrating a bunch of dummy data. When I'm done with that I can get back to the blogs, before rolling the changes out here.
we_are_borg
New Member
Some things are worth waiting for i agree, but we are no waiting almost a year and still nothing to show for it. Take in account what Pegasus said:
It started very good but stuff slipped and its still not happening at this time. Also there dates in the tracker but its not set so we can see when something is done. Where waiting for the beta release of VW for almost 9 months but still nothing has been released. In the mean time i am on hold i do not want to use the old framework because i want to run under IPB or XF, so i am dead in the water. After the beta release it will take time before its going to be RC quality and then gold so take that in account and it will second season next year before we see anything remotely as gold.
p.s. If you look at Cracked Egg Studios, LLC. its almost dead nothing seems to be happening there.
InformationNirvana
Member
vaultwiki 4 - wouldn't that be sweet !
I'm sure it's hard making a major addon to the monster that is vB4.
I'm sure it's hard making a major addon to the monster that is vB4.
Alfa1
Member
Can we please have an update?
I still think that VW should be priced higher, as well as the BFO should. There should be paid addons to VW as well.
You should be able to pay 1-2 full time devs from the income. This should especially be possible considering that VW is going to open up to XF and IPB. Customers are waiting and unlike with vbulletin; your product can be advertised on both marketplaces.
More and more people are moving away from vbulletin towards IPB and XF. This must have had a significant impact on VW sales. Both platform have a large demand for a native wiki. This demand will be filled by someone else if VW does not arrive within a reasonable time frame. Initiatives like XenCarta are developing on XF.
I still think that VW should be priced higher, as well as the BFO should. There should be paid addons to VW as well.
You should be able to pay 1-2 full time devs from the income. This should especially be possible considering that VW is going to open up to XF and IPB. Customers are waiting and unlike with vbulletin; your product can be advertised on both marketplaces.
More and more people are moving away from vbulletin towards IPB and XF. This must have had a significant impact on VW sales. Both platform have a large demand for a native wiki. This demand will be filled by someone else if VW does not arrive within a reasonable time frame. Initiatives like XenCarta are developing on XF.
Hi,
Like most people, we did close down for the recent holidays.
We have completed our first pass testing the upgrade process to VaultWiki 4. We have seen that most data has been migrated and is translated correctly to the new database format. However, the process was very unstable.
There were some issues with some data that needs to be addressed - hence we are now on pass #2, where we will look more closely at specific data and how it interacts during the upgrade process.
The most notable issue we encountered was that articles were imported, but without any URL information, which had a similar end result to the "There is no text in this page" error some users are already familiar with. A number of the changes in VaultWiki 4 were designed to eliminate that error, but this was more related to data not being analyzed correctly than with synchronization between tables.
We also noted that there was data loss where we ignored some features like polls. While polls are intended to be a supported feature again in a later Alpha build, they were not prioritized in Alpha 1, and were not imported in Alpha 1. This could potentially be an issue if someone upgraded and deleted their old data, unaware that some wouldn't be imported until a later version. So we had to go back and add import scripts for data we won't be using right away, but don't want to lose.
I should also mention that we did remove a VaultWiki 3 feature for now - the ability to translate custom area (i.e. forum) paths. The routing system we have implemented only allows for 1 route per node, regardless of language. For most nodes, translations are separate nodes (think an article in English, and its translation in German), but this is not true of the Area node-type. We have also removed the ability to make multiple translations of special page URLs for the nearly the same reason. It should still be possible to translate the special page itself and its title. Of course you can always create redirects to these types that have the desired URL translation.
Speaking of routing, we do need to look at it a little more before launching VaultWiki 4. Because of the 1 route per node design, existing URLs and slight URL variations that used to work may not work any more. To prevent loss of SEO following the upgrade, we do need to add some leniency for unmatched URLs before considering them 404.
We are currently in the process of combining a feature from VaultWiki 3 that's redundant with a new one. Forum headers are used by some, but we will soon be adding a way to push more than just header-pages to other parts of your site. Thus, we are removing header functionality as it currently exists. The new Content Integration Manager will be much more powerful (use full articles as headers, or other wiki components).
Alfa1, yes prices are low, and we will be increasing prices across the board, but only AFTER VaultWiki 4 is released. And yes, we plan to re-evaluate the size of the development team this year as well.
Like most people, we did close down for the recent holidays.
We have completed our first pass testing the upgrade process to VaultWiki 4. We have seen that most data has been migrated and is translated correctly to the new database format. However, the process was very unstable.
There were some issues with some data that needs to be addressed - hence we are now on pass #2, where we will look more closely at specific data and how it interacts during the upgrade process.
The most notable issue we encountered was that articles were imported, but without any URL information, which had a similar end result to the "There is no text in this page" error some users are already familiar with. A number of the changes in VaultWiki 4 were designed to eliminate that error, but this was more related to data not being analyzed correctly than with synchronization between tables.
We also noted that there was data loss where we ignored some features like polls. While polls are intended to be a supported feature again in a later Alpha build, they were not prioritized in Alpha 1, and were not imported in Alpha 1. This could potentially be an issue if someone upgraded and deleted their old data, unaware that some wouldn't be imported until a later version. So we had to go back and add import scripts for data we won't be using right away, but don't want to lose.
I should also mention that we did remove a VaultWiki 3 feature for now - the ability to translate custom area (i.e. forum) paths. The routing system we have implemented only allows for 1 route per node, regardless of language. For most nodes, translations are separate nodes (think an article in English, and its translation in German), but this is not true of the Area node-type. We have also removed the ability to make multiple translations of special page URLs for the nearly the same reason. It should still be possible to translate the special page itself and its title. Of course you can always create redirects to these types that have the desired URL translation.
Speaking of routing, we do need to look at it a little more before launching VaultWiki 4. Because of the 1 route per node design, existing URLs and slight URL variations that used to work may not work any more. To prevent loss of SEO following the upgrade, we do need to add some leniency for unmatched URLs before considering them 404.
We are currently in the process of combining a feature from VaultWiki 3 that's redundant with a new one. Forum headers are used by some, but we will soon be adding a way to push more than just header-pages to other parts of your site. Thus, we are removing header functionality as it currently exists. The new Content Integration Manager will be much more powerful (use full articles as headers, or other wiki components).
Alfa1, yes prices are low, and we will be increasing prices across the board, but only AFTER VaultWiki 4 is released. And yes, we plan to re-evaluate the size of the development team this year as well.