Customizations

The wiki software (Atlassian Confluence) allows administrators to add plugins and user macros.

Plugins

Many capabilities can be added to the wiki software via plugins. Right now, we only have the plugins that shipped with the software.

Check out the vendor's plugin page to see some of the other plugins on offer. If you see one you'd like to have installed, drop us a note or leave a comment on this page.

Note that some of the available plugins are outdated or otherwise broken. Others present security risks, a few require licensing fees, and all come with an additional support burden (that is, one more thing that might break ).

While we can't promise to install any particular plugin, we'll happily take a look at any plugin that's requested to see if it's a good fit for the wiki pilot.

Some of the plugins we're mulling over include:

• Calendar plugin
• Google Calendar plugin
• Google Maps plugin
• Content Formatting plugin

Let us know what you think!

User macros

Despite the name, these can only be installed by admins; once installed, they can be used by anyone with editing rights. User macros are similar to the built-in macros that ship with the wiki software, in that they enable new features in the content area of a wiki page or news item.

Macros are distinguished by curly braces. In editing mode, they look like this:

{macroname} // a macro with no body or parameters
{macroname}content{macroname} // a macro with a body
{macroname:width=100|height=120}content{macroname} // a macro with optional parameters

When you view a page, macros are normally invisible, having been translated into whatever content they represent.

Thus far, the wiki admins have added a single user macro, called {youtube}, which allows users to embed videos from YouTube. See an example at Embed a YouTube video.

Do you need to do something with your content that the wiki doesn't support? A user macro might be just the ticket. Drop us a line (by clicking the "Contact Administrators" link at the bottom of the page) or leave a comment below.