So we like to have fun here, too. You just can’t help but want to hack on neat projects with such talented engineers around, so Nathan, Brian, and I put together a computer that is attached to our wall with thumbtacks, displays hundreds of silly cats, and makes a sound whenever interesting things happen at PBwiki, like when someone upgrades. We tried having it make a sound whenever anyone edited, but the loud and continuous torrent of noises proved too much.
New feature: Plan an event using your wiki
Have you ever wanted to plan an event, coordinate RSVPs, and even sell tickets right from your wiki?
Lots of people already use their PBwikis to plan events (e.g., here and here).
Now, we’ve added a free feature to make event-planning easier. We partnered with Eventbrite, the leading online event registration service, so you can sell event tickets and collect registration information online. You can publish, promote, manage, and sell out your events with Eventbrite and PBwiki.
Watch the video below to see how easy it is to insert the Event Promoter plugin on your wiki.
(What the video says: To use the new feature, click “Edit Page”, Insert Plugin, and then hover over “Productivity” to “Plan an Event.”)
The big news: You can plan an event, coordinate RSVPs, and even sell tickets right from your wiki using the Eventbrite plugin — free.
Share Word docs with our PBwiki Installer — available now in beta
[Update, 1/30/08: We’ve put this project on hold, so please disregard the blog post below.]
We just released a super-very-much-not-final beta of the PBwiki Installer at http://install.pbworks.com.
Share Word documents through PBwiki
Want to collaborate on a Word document? Use the Installer to send files to PBwiki and collaborate with your co-workers. You can send your Word files to PBwiki in two ways:
1. In Word, just click File >> Send to PBwiki.
2. Use the dropbox to drag Word files to PBwiki. Just drag files to the dropbox and they’ll magically appear in your wiki.
Coming up: the ability to send documents to your wiki alone, improved notifications on your desktop, and a Mac version (depending on demand). David spent many late nights on this, so give it a shot!
Want some free materials to spread the word about PBwiki?
We have some free PBwiki materials I want to share with you.
Lots of our users give talks about wikis. Some are teachers, like the 1,000+ who responded to an email I sent out a few months ago asking if they plan to present about wikis. (They presented in places like Maine, Malaysia, and Texas — see pictures.) Others are just casual users who want to show their friends what a wiki is. Sometimes, employees in big companies want to communicate the idea of a wiki to their boss.
For everyone, we’ve developed the PBwiki Presenter Packs, which include videos, how-to guides, and more. Until now, you had to sign up to get them (and if you want a free PBwiki t-shirt, you should still sign up).
But now you can download the PBwiki Presenter Pack materials and use them for free right here. Enjoy!
-Ramit
What do you think of these ideas for new PBwiki features?
We’ve been hearing requests for certain features, so we’ve put together some surveys to learn more about how they might be used. Please take the surveys below and tell us! (Max time: 10 minutes.)
Quickie Tidbit: Disallow Search Indexing
Some people who run wikis that are publicly accessible have asked us for the ability to set a robots.txt that tells polite search engines like Google, MSN, Alexa, and Yahoo to please not index the content of the public PBwiki. We listened and added this functionality. If you’d like to enable this on your PBwiki, just go to the “Public / Private” settings tab and click Disable indexing. This sets your robots.txt, updates your page headers, and even puts a setting in your RSS & Atom feeds to discourage feed readers & scrapers from republishing your public feed.
10 Things You Didn't Know About PBwiki (Tip #22)
Ramit Sethi (PBwiki marketing guru) and I spoke recently about doing something a little different before I continue with your regularly scheduled Tip programming, so this is what we’ve decided: PBwiki has a lot of information spread out all over the place, and it’d be nice to pick a few of these things and consolidate them all in one place for users to reference. If this is helpful, I may do it once or twice more in the future. Let me know your thoughts by commenting below or e-mailing me at jason.nguyen@pbworks.com
Now, I’m not saying that you won’t know all 10 of the things on the list, but for the average PBwiki citizen, a lot of these things might be new. If none of them are new to you, then you’re probably as much of a PBwiki geek as me and you need to get some air *wink*. Anyway, on with the list:
Continue reading “10 Things You Didn't Know About PBwiki (Tip #22)”
Tip of the Week #21: Introduction to CSS
Eventually, every PBwiki user wants to have a little extra graphical pizzazz in his/her wiki. The current skins are nice of course (especially that new Bamboo skin…I wonder who made it…), but everybody is using them, so it lacks a little individuality. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to change some colors, or add some backgrounds, or design a whole new theme from the ground up?
CSS is the way to do that, with minimum hassle. Rather than trying to define the styles of every individual block of code or text like people can currently do in the Point-and-Click Editor, CSS defines classes and how to present different types of information. Read on to find out how it can work for you.
IT'S PBWIKI'S 2-YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!!
2 years!!
Congratulations to the entire team for building the world’s easiest wiki. Now beware…we may be in a little late to work tomorrow.
Wiki delete now works
For a while, we had temporarily halted wikis from being deleted to do some behind-the-curtain plumbing. Wiki delete works again. If you really want to delete your PBwiki (why would you want to?), just log in, click “Settings” and then click “Delete.”
Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever, so be careful!
Note: Once you delete a wiki, that wiki name will be retired / unusable forever.
