Netcipia: the future of wiki
Netcipia offers free and paid hosting for XWiki wikis and blogs in an integrated package, which puts the spotlight on future directions for wikis. It is not yet the complete package but already stands out from the crowd. Promised improvements to tagging and access to html will really make it shine.
Netcipia provider statement
“Our goal at Netcipia, is to offer the best participative experience on the web and change the way in which users, co-workers, students, friends and families collaborate online.
Netcipia is the first participative suite available on the Internet. For its first beta version, Netcipia gives you both a blog and a wiki in a single package, accessible through the same interface, with the same great tools and features.”
Free or dedicated server options
Netcipia offers a free hosted option, with unlimited free blogs and wikis, 2GB of storage and access to Velocity programming to extend its functionality. It is a great offer. One hundred and forty nine dollars per month upgrades you to a dedicated server with 150GB of storage and your own domain name.
Domain names
You choose a sub-domain name: YourUserName.netcipia.com if you have the free option. You can use your own domain name if you pay for the dedicated server option.
Content supported
There is a growing range of widgets available to insert content into your pages.
Images - Yes
Flash - No
Audio - Yes
Video - Yes
RSS feeds onto pages - Yes
Attachments - Yes
Chat - Yes
Instant messaging - Not supported
Mathematical notations - Not supported
Diagrams - Mind maps
Task lists - Not supported
Calendars - Yes
Maps - Yes
Shopping basket - No
Content restrictions - No
Netcipia has good Search Engine Optimisation features
Search engine optimisation features in Netcipia include access to the meta tags for title, description and keywords. You cannot currently add alt tags to images.
Netcipia makes visitors welcome
Looks match topic - Limited customisation using skins but you do have access to CSS
Easy to read - Yes.
Clear navigation - Basic menu, tags work on the integrated blog, but difficult to use on wiki.
Effective wiki search - Yes
Recent activity list - Yes
Wanted pages list - No
Custom template for new pages - New skin on its way
email pages to friends - No
Access by mobile - No
RSS feeds - Yes, for individual pages or recent changes
Easy to make and read comments - Yes, log-in can be required if administrator wishes.
Page history available - Yes
Download times
Like most wikis, blogs, content management systems and groupware in general, initial download speed can be slow. However, once you are into the site most of the data, such as scripts and images are cached and movement between pages occurs rapidly. Report from web site optimisation indicates that the XWiki home page has a very good html size, but as can be expected CSS and javascript are large.
total size - 453K
html size - 9K
html images - 9K
css size - 38K
css images - 154K
javascript - 243K
Editing Netcipia wiki
Netcipia has a basic WYSIWYG editor, a simple wiki syntax editor and access to html widgets. You take your choice.
WYSIWYG - Basic WYSIWYG editor
Markup - Yes, easy to use
HTML - limited at the moment
CSS - Yes
javascript - No
programming - You can create dynamic pages by programming in Velocity for the free version and Velocity or Groovy for the paid version.
Spellcheck - No
Netcipia wiki language options
Netcipia has limited language options in WYSIWYG mode.
Translations - No
International characters - Supported exept for Asiatic and Curilic ones.
Right to left writing - Not supported
Help language - English
Permissions defined for spaces and places.
Access can be defined for places and spaces, they can be public, private or protected, but not individual pages
Place - Basically a place is the wiki. Not sure why people have to invent new names for things.
Space - A space is an area of the wiki with a group of related pages. Using spaces in this way allows you to create a simple two layer hierarchy.
Page - A page is a page and that is pretty clear.
Netcipia Security
Netcipia keeps revisions of pages and lets you roll back to old versions.
Keeps out spambots - Required registration
Blocks vandals - Required registration
Lockable pages - No
Can review changes to pages - Yes
Can revert to a previous edition of a page - Yes
Can restore your site from a local back up - No
Censored word list - No
Privacy policy - No
Secure information transfer - No
Secure attachments - Attachments attached to individual
pages.
Netcipia Management
Netcipia appears to have a dedicated team and appears to be working hard to bring in new features such as better access to html and tagging.
Automatic save - No
Site statistics - No
email notifications - No
Income from Ads - Yes
Provider placed Ads - No
Stable provider company - Not sure
Help and support for Netcipia
This appears to be spread between Netcipia who are hosting the service and XWiki who provide the engine.
Loyal wiki community - Appears to be, but not very apparent.
Community forum - Called participation place !!
FAQs - Yes
Help - Some
Technical support - email support but optional extra phone support
Server support 24/7 - Not sure
Whatever your needs I would take a look at Netcipia. Blog and wiki integration gives you so many options. If I was in business, I do not think I would consider it at the moment for secure data. It is still in beta after all. Check it out..
Tagged with: Bliki • Netcipia • Review • Wiki
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