Namespaces

One potential problem with a Wiki is that the content becomes unstructured and content name clashes occur.

DocuWiki supports so called namespaces to separate different types of content in the wiki. For example all information about the rules for this wiki is in the wikirules namespace.

Namespaces are created by colons in the pagename.

If there is no colon in a linked pagename the current namespace is assumed. You can escape to the default namespace by prepending a colon to the pagename. Here are some examples:

• start links to wiki:start
• start links to wiki:start
• start links to start

  * [[wiki:start]] links to ''wiki:start''
  * [[start]] links to ''wiki:start''
  * [[:start]] links to ''start''

Sometimes you may want to link to a subnamespace without giving the full namespace. You can start the link with a dot (.) to always prepend the current namespace. Again some examples:

• discussion links to wiki:discussion
• visibility links to discussion:visibility
• visibility links to wiki:discussion:visibility

  * [[discussion]] links to ''wiki:discussion''
  * [[discussion:visibility]] links to ''discussion:visibility''
  * [[.discussion:visibility]] links to ''wiki:discussion:visibility''

Namespaces are helpful to categorize or structure the content..

One can use them to split content about the same subject from other unrelated content. This split occurs at two levels: storage and linking.

• storage - namespaces are stored as folders (directories) on the host file system. This helps keeping content about the same subject inside one folder, where all raw text files from the documents with that content are contained. Very handy to administrators, to work with the raw text files. Example: backup all project XYZ documents ⇒ backup folder projectXYZ/*.txt
• linking - namespaces are the prefix <name:> before each page name. The raw text file with the content for that page will be stored inside the folder <name>, and while viewing documents belonging to that namespace, one can refer to all other documents of that namespace without having to prefix it with <name:>. That prefix is only necessary when linking pages outside this namespace <name> to pages inside it.

The namespaces currently defined are:

• faq - Frequently Aske Questions
• dev - Developers Topics
• user - User Topics
• doc - Documentation
• tech - Technical Discussions

These reflect the categories defined in the start page.

When creating a new area, please use a wikiname of the form categoryname:activityname:filename. For example, “tech:perf:Performance”. This will help us to keep some structure in the wiki.

It is probably a good idea to make the first page of your new area some form of index, with links out to other pages that you create later. You could call it categoryname:activityname:index.

Remember, you can have whatever structure you like within your area, so use namespace to create internal structure such as “categoryname:activityname:directoryname:directoryname:filename”.

Remember, you can (and should) use namespaces to organize your uploaded images and other files. This will help to stop you having to work with long lists of files. You should normally use the current namespace when uploading files by making the wikiname categoryname:activityname:filename. If you are working with different types of file, you may want to use additional namespaces, e.g. categoryname:activityname:images:picture.jpg.