20081203232945: Overall reasonably good: at least for a starter wiki and maybe even for a medium-sized wiki, and maybe even for a bigger wiki if further development done on key limiting aspects.
20081218230008: The HTML basis, WYSIWYG editor, basic navigation hiearchy, and global CSS sheet & panels, insure your info is very easy to enter, tailor, and (in HTML & CSS) is largely quite portable (say should you want to later move elsewhere).
20081218230016: The very nice fine-grained access control could be essential for you.
20081221010053: Strengths & Weaknesses (Pros & Cons), from best to worst:
20081203232954: Pig Pro: uses HTML (all HTML tags), not other Wiki script, maxing it maximally easy to import existing content, plus export.
20081206090422: Pro: WYSIWYG editor is fast and generally bug-free, and generates simple & clean HTML (except when using constrain mode, then it adds a few properties to each paragraph element, but the same ones so this would be easy to strip out)
20081218073843: Pro: Google AdSense on Zoho Wiki - GOT IT WORKING! (on 20081219053244) -tricky, but at least the basics doable.
20081218074809: big-con (later solved - was Google AdSense prob): only instance of this I've seen is not working: I've configured 3 panel ads (top, side, & bottom) on every page in this wiki (as on this very page!) but (1) all display blank (reserve the space but no content) except for the top, and (2) the top just a (unpaying?) public service message not a real ad. I've no idea why. So what's going on?
20081218211820: The q[while my account is active] (as ours was and had been) still made me think, just to be sure, to go log into AdSense and indeed that then displayed the pink alert q[Your pages are displaying Public Service Advertisements (PSAs) because you haven't yet verified your PIN and/or phone number. See the 'Required Action' box on the Payment History page for more details.] and indeed on that link I found I needed to do both: * enter your PIN (which must be pmailed, 2 to 4 weeks!) and * verify your phone number (which I did instantly: on request, an automatic dialer called me and verbally read my pin number: I got a call from CID 310-928-7055 where an electronic voice said q[Your code is #####]. Fortunately I found the post card and also completed 20081218232550.)
20081218223557: Ugh, Google AdSense didn't require this in 2007 and before; but I suppose with all those folks posting spamming auto-generated websites no real content then trying to collect for ads on them, AdSense and others haven to crack down.
20081218222058: If Google AdSense is NOT going to display proper paying ads due to some problem with the account as they did here, then what they DO display (including on Public Service Ads) needs to include (by default) an alert of this, as q[This non-standard ad result is due to attention needed in publisher's AdSense account], as, without any warning, this problem wasted me about 4 hours to diagnose!
20081218223616: will thissolve the problem? (Yes(well after just waiting 6 hrs) --read on)
20081218233050: -solve the problem with PSAs instead of real paying ads? It reports so but HASN'T so far (13 min later) - what's wrong?; wait a minute, at 20081219015235 (2hrs22min later) - real paying ads are displayed - that part works now!
And a very useful & relevant ad (Get Document Management software quotes) - I clicked on and filled out the forms just because *I'm* also interested in that!
20081219053244: So apparently this 1st problem was just Google AdSense taking some time to kick in after it re-enabled paid advertising was enabled: Google AdSense should have warned of this delay whenever it re-enables!!
20081218233217: -solve the problem with empty ad blocks - wouldn't seem to and hasn't. What's wrong there? Wait a minute, at 20081219053244(6hrs2min later) -- the side ad and bottom ad also reappear, real paid advertising, too! - so now all is working!
And cool video & animated ads as well, yeah!
20081219054151: So apparently this was the same problem, just even longer.
20081219055628: --and I had (incorrectly) suspected Zoho Wiki (in beta) who was incorrectly at fault; sorry here, Zoho. It shows one the big & established guys (as Google) can still be the ones well at fault! No surprise, I suppose, since Zoho has already across the board beat Google at their own game with Zoho's much superior online office suite, and ironically using Google's technology for the job (Google Gears).
20081203233011: Small Pro: automatic easy support of inline constrained paragraph edits
20081208210306: Small-Pro (would be big pro but not documented nor proven):have a Zoho Wiki appear under a custom domain name, as have this http://CytexIT.Wiki.Zoho.com appear as http://Cytex.com , and not have the numerous problems of Stealth direction. Reportedly possible: Zoho worker Mano claims "We have custom domain feature(hidden) ... under paid version" -see that link for details. -----
20081206091346: Important question: What's the underlying Wiki software Zoho Wiki is using (or based on)? And esp. if written from scratch, then using what software technologies/modules? -----
20081206042449: tiny-con: not obvious how to change the navigation structure (you go to Site Map); say would also add a link under "other actions" such as "change navigation".
20081203233219: small-con: doesn't allow optional notes of change edits
20081203233423: small-con: a wiki can have only one owner.
20081221031837: bread-crums only display 3 levels (small-con): instead bread crums should display at least 1 full window worth, and only be truncated after 2 lines. After all, they have a full window-worth of line space allocated to them.
20081206042342: small-con: not obvious how to rename the Wiki title! (was "med-big con" when it at first seemed impossible). The (un-obvious) way to rename the title is do wiki's settings (as http://cytexit.wiki.zoho.com/WikiSettings.do ) ->Customizations ->Top Panel ->Edit.
20081218193216: small-con (as now fixed but mysterious): (was) very-big con/prob: suddenly & w/o any explanation, can only add blank & unlisted pages to Wiki. "Create page" reports it succeeds and sure enough a blank page is added (for instance, http://cytexit.wiki.zoho.com/panel.html (when it first happened) or mobile-phone.html or wiki.html) but the page isn't added to the Sitemap and when I try to edit the new page (only way to add some content) the page saving it reports "Saving..." which never completes and indeed nothing saved. I CAN still edit existing pages (as this one). What's wrong? Have I run against some undocumented storage or page count quota?
2008.12.18pst1555: not hearing back on that, called Zoho (at std 888 900 9646): got a vmail box and left a msg for a call back. Then called Zoho at other std # 925-924-9500: lady answered and xfered me to support where I got another vmail box, again left msg for a call back.
2008.12.18 22:47: not hearing back on any of the above, emailed support@ZohoWiki.com alerting them of these and other Forum.Zoho.com posts awaiting their reply.
20081219221143: 27 hours later and still no response on all the above! However, the problem is now gone. That's good news but, since it was serious: Why did it happen? And how was it fixed? And why no responses esp. from Zoho? Downgrade this from[very-big con] to [small-con]
20081208200720: small?-con: http://wiki.zoho.com was un-usably slow for about 1 of ~ my 20 uses so far. Specifically at this timestamp it became incredibly slow (110 sec to refresh this page) for about 1hr of my use (2008.12.08pst1130 and it lasted until about 1240), while the rest of http://zoho.com seemed unaffected.
20081221024245: Incoming Links.
20081221024343: never displayed any Incoming Iinks(med-big-con): for example, Zoho should list Zoho Wiki but is empty.
20081208205058: med-con: The constrained paragraph editor opens a fixed size edit window (and only 8 lines) and does not size itself to the paragraph, so can easily be too small (as it is for this List items here); workaround is to copy & paste everything into an external editor (which one may not have and/or translation woes) else not use it and instead edit the whole page.
20081206090537- med-con (big con for advanced users): editor reformats all HTML into 1 line, stripping virtually-all linebreaks & spaces; your HTML becomes formatted into one big blob.
20081223222915- This destroys any clean-formatting of HTML, so makes any serious editing (including future editing) of the HTML virtually impossible: you'd have to put it thru some HTML pretty-printer first to restore some sense of editable layout.
20081223222915- Rather the editor should
20081223222941-(1)Just ignore existing white space & leave it alone (unless the user requests the editor to reformat it somehow)
20081223223040-(2) Generate HTML code which has a chance of being read by some human! For instance, put each paragraph & <LI>, <BR/> and <div> on its own line, as it would appear.
20081203232908: med-con: edit history dates and times display absolute (not just relative): no.
20081203232935: med-big con: does NOT display edit history as a table (as MediaWiki does)
20081203233732: med-big con: version history diff fails to spot 2nd addition: in at least this Wiki page, version 2 adds 2 items but the diff only spots one)
20081203233343: med-con: transfer ownership of Wiki? Seems no.
20081221021338: move/copy page from one Zoho Wiki to another: cannot move history (med-big con)
20081221023316: Need exist? Aboslutely. Zoho encourages users to have multiple Wiki's, so this need is bound to soon occur.
20081221020733: rename X.Wiki.Zoho.com URL:
20081221023433: Needed? Absolutely. As Wiki grows, the name X may no longer be appropriate (as inclusive enough).
20081221021041: simple rename X.Wiki.Zoho.com to Y.Wiki.Zoho.com: cannot (else no control for it). This needs to be fixed.
20081221021308: One could create a new Zoho Wiki in hopes of copying/moving the content to it, but (1) the pages would have to be manually moved and (2) impossible to move/copy history.
20081221021845: use another domain name (which can be any domain you own) which is CNAME'd to here:
20081221022806: the original X.Wiki.Zoho.com might still be accessible (which in my case wouldn't be desirable) and
20081221022817: this new domain couldn't be a Y.Wiki.Zoho.com domain (unless Zoho did some tricks)
20081206091053: med-big con: backup is notably incomplete: Even a generic website archive program would capture more!. As the backup of each page is lacking
20081218193528: prior versions of the page,
20081218193539: comments
20081218193549: attachments.
20081203233107: med-big con: unlike say MediWiki page History, doesn't allow easy review of WHO made recent changes (must look at each change individually). Easy review is key to see if someone else changed it or are all the changes yours. However, IF one sets to watch the page or wiki, AND one notices the email sent in response to this (which one might easily overlook if one is making all the changes himself), then one would see that a change was made which wasn't his/hers. Note making the edit history a table (as the leader MediaWiki does) would go a long way towards solving this.
20081203233002: fairly-big con (would be big but workarounds): JavaScript (and thus ads as Google AdSense) is impossible without knowing certain workarounds which are so tricky they are also limiting.
20081217214440: med-big con: when editor containing JavaScript displays the page in WYSIWYG, certain substitutions are made messing up the JavaScript code:
20081217215436: big con: in this edit mode, JavaScript is not only evaluated & displayed (questionable if no way to turn it off) but the results are inserted after the <script /> tag.
20081217230300: Workaround of manual undo of corruption to JavaScript: on any page containing JavaScript, don't save if it hasn't been edited, and if it needs to be edited, then make your last changes in the HTML source mode and be sure there to remove all these insertions.
20081223223435: med-big con: all function & variable declarations within the <script ...> tag is stripped out!
20081223223647: Workaround (untested): put the code into a separate (as *.js) file and have the <script ...> tag source it in. This has the advantage of more modular code but attached files are probably not versioned.
20081217215312: med-con: quote[<!--] is replaced with the HTML codes for these special characters. A workaround is to remove this and hope that you don't have any browser without JavaScript.
20081217215232: med-con: quote["] is replaced with quote["]; workaround: use quote['] instead.
20081218014231: med-con: quote[&] is replaced with quote[&] even if within a string; workaround: avoid the use of quote[&] - this can be tricky. For instance, use quote[and] or have JavaScript generate the character from it's ASCII numeric number.
20081217220314: small-con: quote[<script stuff></script>] gets replaced with quote[<script stuff> </script>]
A workaround (fails badly): before that happens, replace it with quote[<script stuff />]. Unfortunately the tag is apparently not terminated then and all subsequent HTML is treated as if has been entered into the WYSIWYG mode and so is quoted, corrupting all of it. Moreover, even in MS Expression Web (latest: 12.0.6320.5000) the <script> will not be terminated and so messes up the remainder of the HTML.
20081217215958: Here's a real example of the result generated by the problems above.
Insert the JavaScript: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">document.write("time local:",new Date);</script>
And it will get transformed to the corrupt code: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">document.write(&quot;time local:&quot;,new Date);</script>time local:Wed Dec 17 2008 13:30:46 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
20081219063239: med-con: So tricky it's also notably limiting. These tricks to fix the JavaScript are so complex & time consuming it is probably impractical to put any JavaScript (and thus ads as Google AdSense) within the standard wiki text (content panel) unless that doesn't change much and (at every edit) one can & will do these fixes.
20081219063907: this is rather sad given ads embedded in the main content give some of the highest returns (says Google).
20090101042851- According www.Dynarch.com/projects/htmlarea, 3.0 is the last version of the editor (released 2007.10.25) because q[[1] the code is really old—I improved my coding style a lot in the past few years, [2] it is huge, [3] it no longer generates revenue but [4] generates a lot of support requests, [5] we can't use the name any longer (as requested by InteractiveTools)].InteractiveTools.com has also discontinued support saying quote[htmlArea was discontinued many years ago, and is very, very out of date. Not only do we not support it, but it doesn't actually work in Firefox. We'd recommend going with a newer WYSIWYG editor that is more crossbrowser.] Their CMS Builder now uses TinyMCE . They also say q[look at htmlarea.com, which has been relaunched as a directory of WYSIWYG editors.]
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