I’ve used Tiddlywiki for many years - as a database and to keep notes, research, inventory, etc. I even attempted to create a website several years ago, but that wasn’t successful. I recently found that old template and wandered if creating the website I envisioned then might be a possibility now.
I’ve seen sites on static pages and CSS, but I wanted to ask if it’s possible to have a “blog”? A page that showcases the last 10 or so posts? Is that possible?
And secondly, I add a lot of book reviews to my current website. I know I could set up a template to add an image (book cover), the title, the author, the blurb and my review, but I need help in achieving that. As I said I know it can be done, but how? Any help would be appreciated.
My last question relates to a small online store. If I wanted to sell a few ebooks, is that possible via a Tiddlywiki website.
I appreciate your advice and help. If the answers to these questions are all yes, yes, yes, then I am seriously wanting to change from Wordpress to Tiddlywiki.
Karen the answers are yes, yes and yes but also can follow with “but”. Both wordpress and tiddlywiki are fully featured and extencible with plugins so it call depends on which features you need from each in your final results.
Perhaps a good start would be to think about what you want in the final result, search the community for blogs and ask us questions as needed.
IMO - this is one of those just because you can doesn’t mean you should questions. TW is basically a platform that can do just about anything. The problem is that when you try to do what you are talking about you end up reinventing the wheel - burning up a ton of time making tiddlywiki do things that other platforms do easier. Personally I’ve tried to setup my blog with TW and always ended up with a static site generator (most recently 11ty) but using tiddlywiki for all the behind the scenes work (like you are doing now) and then setting up TW to export to a format that whatever your final solution works with.
Especially if you are considering a store - Wordpress is just so mature in this respect I suggest you would waste a lot of valuable time getting TW to do what WP already does, esp if you are already familiar with how WP works.
All that said, trying to get TW to do more complicated things like you are describing is always fun and I learn a great deal from all the amazing help here, so it’s not time wasted.
I’ve been wondering about something similar for a while, but as a very low priority project so I haven’t made much progress in that general direction. What’s certain is that it’s possible to programmatically publish static pages from a Tiddlywiki, for instance automatically fetching any tiddlers with a certain tag, processing them and publishing them on a static website using a static site generator like Jekyll. See this conversation for a practical real-life example.
Regarding your second point, templates are pretty easy, you should look into the ever-excellent Grok Tiddlywiki. It’s worth going through the whole hands-on course, but there are specific parts relating to setting up a contact template that you can build on for your review template.
Regarding the small online store, you could probably integrate an external solution inside an iframe or even have a full blown shop. There were some contributions by Siniy-Kit on that topic you can look into. The results are impressive (see Lucky Sushi Хабаровск — Доставка японской кухни for instance).
It is always very cool to see all of the things that can be done with TiddlyWiki, and I always see it as a neat exercise to come up with a “how would I do this/that with TiddlyWiki?” solution because I love “Brain Age” games that keep the old sponge in shape. (Some solutions, however, entail really cringe-worthy and time-wasting workflows.)
I am first and foremost about “the right tool for the job” for all things I do. No sticks in my wheels, no wheels in the mud.
When it comes to getting intertwingularity (i.e. interconnected/intertwined information/knowlege/content/etc.) submitting to my will, TiddlyWiki puts everything else to shame.
However, when I want to blog, I use a blogging tool. When I want to put together and maintain a quick web site, I use a website building tool. When I want to do multi-user collaboration, I use a tool that has multi-user collaboration in its DNA. Etc. etc.
Aside from being a firm believer in the right tool for the job, I’m a stickler for: single-source information (i.e. I only ever want to type something in once and it being THE source), and anything I type I want it available for viewing everywhere.
For example, I have a “portal” website for BASIC Anywhere Machine (“BASIC Anywhere Machine” is a TiddlyWiki instance that is a “bottle garden”, i.e. everything in one file like a self-sustaining ecosystem, for BASIC programming.)
The portal website is a Google Site. Much of the information in there is embedded, existing in other places and maintained with other tools.
By the way @TheScribe / Karen welcome to the community,
As both a WordPress site builder and TiddlyWiki user I would suggest both are possible and each has compelling reasons. I have investigated using tiddlywiki as a blog and I think it could be superior, unless you want multiple editors or users to get an account, however can we really ever compare them, because both have many plugins and extensions.
If you wanted sophisticated blogging tools and interactive content I believe if you cant find it in existing plugins for either platform, or it was “bespoke” in nature, there would be a shorter learning curve for tiddlywiki, especially if you already know tiddlywiki.
This is very easy with a little tweaking, for example you can open a single tiddler and within that it lists the last 10 (unread even) display as desired.
Not at hand, but I believe there are even ways to just retrieve details and covers using the ISBN number if registered as a book.
For self published books you decide what appears.
This is possibly via any website, but accepting payments has requirement’s best outsourced. Perhaps look at the services offered by someone like Square. Of even more easily look at selling your products through an online service such as shopify, amazon, ebay etc…
There are plenty of services out there that can handle your shop and you can also have a “front end” representation of your products on your tiddlywiki site that to purchase they click through to that service.
If there were interest, I am confident I could build both a sophisticated blogging platform on tiddlywiki and / Or develop integrated shopping however I expect all up it would need and investment of between $10,000 to $15,000 AUD which I don’t expect many would be prepared to pay, but funding could be crowd sourced and the result opened sourced.
The result would be a comprehensive solution with industry standard features.
However for you @TheScribe I think we need only provide solutions to a few fairly simple features.
Just want to say thank you to everyone who responded to my post. I’ve looked at the links, and read all your suggestions and although I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, I want to continue on this journey. I’ve already learned a lot, and I enjoy the process of trying to create.
My previous attempt had covered a lot of my requirements. More than I realised when I wrote the post. I will research how to make the template, and will no doubt ask some questions in coming weeks.
