HOUR 12
Using Wikis and Blogs
What You’ll Learn in This Hour
Definition of wikis and blogs
Which site types are based on the wiki page type
How best to create and use wiki functionality
How to create a simple blog site
Wikis and blogs were introduced to the SharePoint range in 2007. Whereas blog functionality hasn’t changed much for SPF 2010, wiki functionality has improved a lot, so the emphasis in this hour is on wiki functionality. Basic blog functionality is still covered, but look out (in Codeplex) for an “Extended Blog Edition” for SPF 2010 and SPS 2010 (at the time of writing only available in a 2007 version) as a way of improving on the basic blog functionality.
Wikis and Blogs in SPF 2010
To most of you, the terms blogs and wikis are already familiar. Blogs are a way for people to write an open letter to (potentially) the world. Wikis don’t get as much attention as blogs, so we discuss them first.
An example of a wiki is Wikipedia, which is an online encyclopedia that depends on the contributions of the masses to produce quality entries. For example, someone describes a pop artist’s background and posts it. This description can then be amended and expanded on by anyone who knows more about the subject. Wikipedia defines a wiki as follows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki):
“A wiki is software that allows users to collaboratively create, edit, link, and organize the content of a website, usually for reference material. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.”
In the v3 products, both wikis and blogs had only basic functionality built-in, and quickly two CodePlex projects arose to try to improve on that functionality. The wiki project never made it past the beta stage, but the blog project quickly provided useful and stable additional functionality to blog functionality.
Despite the basic functionality available, people still used the wiki functionality unless they required much more, in which case they went to third-party products. However, here we look at wiki functionality in the SPF 2010 product, and it—to say the least—is confusing. So how it was before is briefly described and then we go on from that (clear) starting point to describe how it is in SPF 2010.
In the v3 SharePoint products there was the choice of selecting a Wiki Site Template when creating a site or of creating any kind of site and then in that site specifying a Wiki Library. When you created a Wiki Site, your first page was “Welcome to Your Wiki Site,” and you could click How to Use This Wiki Site to see some explanatory text on how to add (wiki) content. That How to Use page was stored in a Wiki Library!
In other words, the only main difference between creating a Wiki Site and creating a Wiki Library was that if you created a Wiki Site, it already contained a Wiki Library (in fact it contained only a Wiki Library), and by going the Wiki Site route you in effect “forced” yourself to have a separate site that contained all your wiki information. If you created a Wiki Library you could have (it was your choice) included that in another kind of site that contained other things beside wiki pages.
This, to my mind, wasn’t as good an administration solution, so I therefore recommended in my earlier book that a wiki site should be created so that all the wiki information was stored in the same site.
In the v4 products (SPF 2010 and SPS 2010), there no longer is a Wiki Site Template in the list of Site Templates you can choose from. There is still a Wiki Library (now called a Wiki Page Library) List/Library type you can choose. So you can still decide whether to create a site just for wikis or to add a Wiki (Page) Library to an existing site.
Later in this hour, we learn how to do that. We add a Wiki Page Library to a site we previously created for convenience, but it’s best in production to create a new site just for wikis.
The pages of a Wiki Page Library look just like the pages of a Wiki Library in the v3 product. So at first glance there is little difference between wiki pages in SPF 2010 and those in WSS 3.0—basic wiki functionality, looking very much like a Wikipedia page with mainly text and links.
Let’s start this hour by creating a Wiki Page Library and using it to create a simple Wikipedia type set of pages. When that is done we look at what Microsoft in this version of SharePoint has added to that basic concept.
Creating a Basic Wiki in SPF 2010
Start creating a basic wiki by going to the WebPartsTest site:
1. Go to Site Actions > More Options.
2. Click Wiki Page Library.
3. Name the library Wiki Library Test. Figure 12.1 is standard for the creation of any type of Library.
FIGURE 12.1 Creating a Wiki Library
4. Click Create.
The Home web page of a Wiki Page Library contains a brief description of what a wiki is (see Figure 12.2).
At this point, you can click How to Use This Wiki Library to see a page with all the things you can do with your wiki (see Figure 12.3). (We concentrate on a few basic things in this hour.)
To add information to a wiki, follow these steps:
1. Go back in the browser or just click one of the two Home options you see.
2. Click the Edit icon in the ribbon.
FIGURE 12.2 The Starter Page of a wiki library
FIGURE 12.3 How to use a Wiki Library
Nothing seems to change in the text section, but the ribbon is replaced by one suitable for editing, and you can now delete the existing text (which you couldn’t before).
3. Select the existing text and delete it. Now we have a clean sheet to work with. We start with the Title.
4. Add some text. (As you can see, it’s similar to working in Word.)
Write the heading text.
Select the text.
Center it.
Make the font larger.
Add an underline.
Figure 12.4 is a page in which that has been done and where you can also see what the drop-down at the top right of the ribbon is for.
FIGURE 12.4 Starting to create a wiki home page
Or can you see what it is for? It’s certainly for selecting a language, but what can you do with this drop-down that you couldn’t do before? Nothing much actually. It adds a piece of code to the page (not visible) that advises programs that evaluate the page’s contents which language all (or some selected part) of the text is in.
There’s another possibly key function in the ribbon that is not directly obvious. There are two A icons in the Font section on the left of Figure 12.4. The left of the two actually leads to a choice of colors.
(The reason I find this difficult to see is that when installed the color of that A is the same as that of the other A. If it were, for instance, bright red, it would be obvious that this icon means change color.)
5. Add more text to the page following the guidelines from Figure 12.3. (See Figure 12.5 for the result of that.) While you are doing this, a few “helpful” pop-ups appear that you can ignore.
FIGURE 12.5 The full text of the page
6. Click Save at the left of the Ribbon.
See Figure 12.6. It’s a mess, isn’t it?
FIGURE 12.6 Not very pretty
So what went wrong?
The first thing is that only the formatting is wrong. We lost all the line feeds that made Figure 12.5 look reasonable.
The other thing that appears wrong is that we have three things that are underlined with a dotted line (and in a color book would also appear in blue). The dotted underlining means that these are links to pages that don’t exist. When we create those pages, the dotted underlining disappears.
Two of the underlined links should go to other pages. The first though should indicate to readers that to create a link to another page, you need to write two open square brackets, then the Title of the page you link to, and then two close square brackets. We can remove that problem by spelling it out rather than using the symbols.
7. Click Edit again.
The problem is that the function ignores line feeds; you need to move the cursor to the correct line and then write the text in. (The opposite of what you’d expect, isn’t it?)
There are two main solutions.
If you are happy using HTML, you can use the HTML button and amend the code by adding in <p></p> wherever you want an empty line. The HTML window is however extremely messy, so this would be the alternative to choose if trying to adjust the page by (a loop of) changing something followed by saving (and finding something still wrong) was driving you mad.
Remember the old (SharePoint v2 editor!) favorite of needing to have two empty lines in your edit form when you actually only need one?
(After rewriting the text and including two empty lines when I wanted one—and removing an extra line when I suddenly had two empty lines—I did the final step 6.)
8. Click Save.
Now you should see Figure 12.7.
FIGURE 12.7 The first page correctly spaced
9. Click the CustomerContacts link.
Even though the link to CustomerContacts is underlined because there is no CustomerContacts page, you can still click the link. Figure 12.8 displays that you want to create a Customer Contacts page, after which you can add some data to it (see Figure 12.9).
FIGURE 12.8 Creating a new Customer-Contacts page
FIGURE 12.9 Populating the Customer-Contacts page
10. Click Create.
Wiki Pages (and Sites) in SPF 2010
When you install SPF 2010, the system creates a default site, and when it creates that default site, it uses the Team Site site template. When creating additional sites later, you decide which site template to use, so although you could create a site using the default Team Site template, you also have the choice of another nine other site templates.
The relevance to wikis is that the Team Site site template creates a site where the default page is a wiki page. The default pages for all the other site templates are not wiki pages but “web part pages” or pages where the main concentration is on adding web parts in zones on the page. You might also see the term Zone Pages used for them.
Those are the page types we’ve mostly used so far in the book because they are the easiest to use when adding web parts to a page in a controlled fashion. As we saw when we amended the default page of the Home (Team Site-based) site, we could add web parts, but it wasn’t so controlled. That, too, wouldn’t be too complicated if that were as far as it went because it would mean that if you wanted to have your default page be a wiki page, you would use the Team Site site template, and if you didn’t, you would use any other site template. However, there is an added complication.
In each kind of site, there is the possibility of adding a page (Site Actions > New Page), and no matter whether you have a site where the default page is a Wiki Page or is a Web Part Page > Zone Page, that new page will always be a Wiki Page.
Just for completeness note that this applies only to creating a new page. If you, for instance, create a document library—even in a site based on the Team Site template—and then Edit a page of the document library (for instance, the default View), the page you see is a page of the Web Part Page type.
In the next section, we create a wiki Page in a site that isn’t of type Team Site.
Creating a More Advanced Wiki in SPF 2010
Here we create a more advanced wiki. To do that we use the WebPartsTest site again for adding a page. You may remember from Hour 9, “Looking at List Types and the Included Web Parts,” that this site was created using the Blank Site template.
1. Go to the Home page of the WebPartsTest site.
2. Click Site Actions > New Page. Figure 12.10 is one reason why I decided to use the WebPartsTest site.
FIGURE 12.10 Needing a default wiki library
We already created a Wiki Page Library in the WebPartsTest site, but that isn’t good enough for this function. It has spotted that the website was not created on the basis of the Team Site template and therefore didn’t have a default Wiki Page Library (and a site assets library) installed from the start.
3. Click Create. Figure 12.11 that follows is worth showing because there is no further action required from you in creating the Wiki Page Library and the Site Assets Library.
FIGURE 12.11 Creating the first (wiki) page
4. Click Create. What you see is the same kind of wiki page we previously had (refer back to Figure 12.4) when we created a Wiki Page Library.
Now let’s do a few checks:
Check 1: Look at the URL.
The URL is http://spf1/WebPartsTest/SitePages/NewPage1.aspx.
The URL of the Customer Contacts page we had earlier was http://spf1/ WebPartsTest/Wiki%20Library%20Test/CustomerContacts.aspx.
In other words, this page isn’t stored in the Wiki Page Library we previously created (Wiki Library Test); it is stored in a new library called Site Pages.
Check 2: Click the link to Site Pages.
It shows the standard (for a Wiki Page Library) starter page of Welcome to Your Wiki Library (refer back to Figure 12.2).
Check 3: Click Site Actions > View All Site Content.
Figure 12.12 shows that both Site Pages and Site Assets were created behind the scenes as Document Libraries.
The checks proved the point that even though we didn’t see anything, the two additional libraries shown in Figure 12.10 were created even though we already had a Wiki Page Library in this site.
FIGURE 12.12 All Site Content after New Page
Also notice that Site Assets is there as a location for “files which are included on pages within this site, such as images on wiki pages.” This solves the old problem of where to put images so that everyone who should see them can.
To use an image in a wiki page, you first upload that image to the Site Assets Library. For completeness, let’s do that, and as a test we can then use that image in the Wiki Page Library page that we previously earlier (Wiki Library Test), not the one created by the system (in Site Pages).
How to Add an Image to Site Assets and Use That in a Wiki Page
The following steps show how to add an image to Site Assets and then use that image in a wiki page:
1. Click Site Assets. (You should be at Figure 12.12.)
2. Click Add New Document.
3. Select a file via Browse.
4. Click OK. The file is now in Site Assets; now let’s add it to a wiki page in Wiki Library Test.
5. Click Wiki Library Test in Quick Launch.
6. Select (Tab) Editing Tools > Insert (see Figure 12.13).
7. Put the cursor a couple of lines below the Installed Software row.
8. Click Picture.
9. Select From Address. Now you need to find the address of the .jpg file in Site Assets.
10. In another browser copy, open Site Assets.
FIGURE 12.13 Adding a picture to a wiki page
11. Find the image you want and right-click at the end of the line.
12. Select View Properties (which displays as in Figure 12.14).
FIGURE 12.14 Zooming in on the picture to get its URL
13. Right-click P101041 and select Copy Shortcut.
This displays http://192.168.1.2/WebPartsTest/SiteAssets/P1010141.JPG, which you can enter into the box you had at step 9. The final result, after adjusting the size of the image by manipulating the Horizontal Size, looks like what is shown in Figure 12.15.
14. Change the Tab to Editing Tools > Format Text to see the Ribbon icon Save.
15. Use Save from the drop-down or use Save and Keep Editing if you have more changes you want to make to the page.
The process of capturing the correct web address was a bit messy, so is there another way?
FIGURE 12.15 The wiki page including image
How to Add an Image Directly to a Wiki Page
The following steps are alternative steps to the preceding 15 steps. This time we don’t start by going to Site Assets to add the image.
1. Click Wiki Library Test in Quick Launch.
2. Select (Tab) Editing Tools > Insert (see Figure 12.13).
3. Put the cursor a couple of lines below the Installed Software row.
4. Click Picture.
5. Select From Computer.
6. Fill in the location of the image file. (Site Assets is the default value, as shown in Figure 12.16.)
FIGURE 12.16. Selecting a picture from your computer
7. Click OK. Then you see Figure 12.17.
FIGURE 12.17 Giving the image a Title before adding to the Library
8. Click Save (perhaps after amending the Title).
Now you are taken immediately to the wiki page where the Image has already been added. (There is no fussing about trying to obtain a web address for it).
Again (after adjusting the size of the image by manipulating the Horizontal Size), the final result looks like Figure 12.15.
As with many alternative methods in SharePoint, the end result of both methods is exactly the same.
Making a Wiki Not Look Like a Wiki
What we have so far is a normal-looking, text-based basic wiki with an image added to it. However, if you take another look at Figure 12.13, you can see that in addition to adding an image, you can also add Tables, Links, External Files, Web Parts, and existing Lists. You can even create a New List (which is similar to the way we added an image directly to the wiki page).
Rather than go through all these options, Figure 12.18 shows part of a wiki page that uses some of them that you might recognize.
Yes, even though it looks nothing like a wiki page, the default page of the SharePoint installation was a wiki page that now includes both a Text (Welcome); three Lists (Calendar, Shared Documents, and even though it doesn’t look it, a Links
FIGURE 12.18 A Wiki page—or is it?
List—Getting Started); and an Image, most of which are on the page you see immediately after installing SPF 2010.
So wikis aren’t quite what they were in WSS 3.0 after all.
Differences in the Tabs and Ribbons of the Wiki Page Type Compared to “Normal” Pages
At this point, I’d like to thank Todd Bleeker of Mindsharp for encouraging me to look deeper into wikis than I had planned.
The conversation with him started with some early comparisons he had made between the two different sets of menu lines and ribbons used by (1) wiki pages and (2) web part pages. He came up with several oddities of which he mentioned three main groups of differences in connection with Editing a Page.
The following are some of those differences put in my own words. (Earlier in this book, I have used the words “menu line” for what is officially a Tab; here I’ll use “Tab” because it is shorter.)
When you want to edit a Page, in (1), you use (Tab) Page and (Ribbon) Edit. In (2), this is (Tab) Page and (Ribbon) Edit Page.
When (after you have specified Edit) you want to insert a web part using the Tab, in (1) you use a Tab Item Editing Tools (with two sections, Format Text and Insert), but in (2) the equivalent Tab is Page Tools (with only one section, Insert).
After finishing editing your page, you find in both (1) and (2) a Stop Editing button. In (1) this means abandon your changes, but in (2) it means nothing more than stop editing, and the changes you have made are safe.
When you add something to a page of the Web Part Page type, changes to pages are saved automatically—all changes are done immediately—but if you add something in a page of the Wiki type, the drop-down (from the Save ribbon item that the Wiki page type has, but the Web Part page doesn’t have) that includes the Stop Editing option also includes a Save option and even a Save and Keep Editing option. Press the wrong option, and you lose (all) your changes since you last saved.
Creating Blog Support in Standard SPF 2010
In this section, we work through the standard functionality for blogs provided by SPF 2010 out-of-the-box.
Here are the steps to create a Blogs Site. To keep things simple we’re going to add it as a subsite to the WebPartsTest site. Just as with wikis, in real life, you would probably create the Blogs Site as a completely new top-level site, possibly even in a new web application. (See also Hour 10’s “Q&A” section.)
1. Go to Home > Site Actions > New Site.
2. Name the site Blog Test Site and specify its URL, http://spf1/BlogTest.
3. Specify a template of type Blog (in the Collaboration column).
4. Accept all the defaults for the remaining fields except Display This Site in Quick Launch of the Parent Site, which I always specify for test sites because it makes getting to them quicker.
5. Click Create. (Figure 12.19 gave a brief description about what a blog is. By now, this shouldn’t be particularly useful information for most of the people who see it.)
6. Click Create a post. Avoid the pitfalls new bloggers can fall into. (See the text in italics in Figure 12.20.)
7. You can either Save as Draft, in which case you can’t see it and need to go to Manage Posts, as shown earlier in Figure 12.8, to see what it looks like.
FIGURE 12.20 Writing a blog item
Alternatively, which I recommend, you can go straight to Publish. You can, after all, correct it immediately if it looks terrible. It’s a good idea to do something about the Category Names in use. See Figure 12.21 for one good reason.
FIGURE 12.21 Your first blog post appears in the site.
8. Click Home to see your blog site as other people will see it. At this point, you’ll notice how pointless the standard “Welcome to Your Blog!” post now looks, and you’ll rush to delete it (use Manage Posts).
Compared with wikis, the out-of-the-box blog function is rather simple. Because it doesn’t need much explanation, I spent most of this hour on wikis where there is a lot of added functionality compared to the previous (2007) version. As I wrote at the beginning of this hour, look out for a 2010 version of the Extended Blog Edition. That (in its 2007 version) offered a lot of useful additional functionality to the standard blog function, and so the 2010 version when available is well worth adding. The 2007 version was stable and so could be added to a SharePoint installation even by people who usually would avoid free tools.
Summary
Here we worked through the standard wiki and blog functions included in SPF 2010. We considered the different ways to create wiki pages and also noted the differences between the different kinds of site templates as far as wiki pages are concerned.
Q&A
Q. I have Word 2010 on the client machine. How can I use that to create blogs offline?
A. Here are the steps:
1. Click (on the Blog page) Launch Blog Program to Post.
2. The first time you do this, Word 2010 opens at an empty document, and you see a series of pop-ups starting with Figure 12.22 to register your copy of Word 2010 with that particular blog.
3. The options you select in the screens that follow are what you would expect; because this is a Q&A I won’t include them here. At the end of the process that probably includes you signing in to the SharePoint site, your Word 2010 copy is registered as being connected to this particular blog site.
4. Figure 12.23 is a basic example of a new blog item showing that you can use Word 2010 functionality to add an Image. (The image which no doubt confuses some of you is of a log-in screen!)
FIGURE 12.22 Starting the registration process
FIGURE 12.23 A sample blog created in Word 2010
5. Click Publish, as shown in Figure 12.23, and Word connects to the blog site and posts the blog.
6. Check that this has happened by going to the blog site.
Workshop
Quiz
1. Is it necessary to create a Team Site to get wiki pages?
2. Do I need to create a Wiki Page Library to get wiki pages?
Answers
1. No. You can create wiki pages in sites made from different site templates, not just in sites created using the Team Site site template.
2. A trick question because the answer is actually, “Yes, but . . .”
The Team Site site template when used automatically creates a Wiki Page Library and a wiki page.
Add a Page always (in whatever type of site) creates a wiki page, but in all types of sites but the Team Site, it will also as part of the process create a new Wiki Page Library called Site Pages.
You can also get wiki pages by creating a Wiki Page Library.