quiki

Git

quiki's git integration makes it easy to manage revisions of a website.

By using git to track your changes, you can

  • Revert specific changes (such as malicious ones), usually automatically even if other independent changes have occurred since.
  • Compare versions to see how content has changed over time.
  • Determine which changes are attributed to specific users.

How it works

The most trivial revisioning insists that each specific change is committed independently of other changes. That allows the change to be selectively applied and reverted later. From the command line, this is achieved like so: 

nano -w pages/my.page		# User edits a page
git add pages/my.page		# User adds these changes
git commit -m "Edited my page"	# User commits the change with a justification

More advanced users can draft versions of the website before publishing them by using branches: 

git checkout -b mychanges	# User creates and checks out new branch
nano -w pages/my.page		# User edits a page
git add pages/my.page		# User adds these changes
git commit -m "Rough draft"	# User commits the change to the new branch only

Other changes are committed until the branch is ready to publish. Then, 

git checkout master		# User returns to master branch (public website)
git merge mychanges		# User merges in the changes

adminifier integration

adminifier seamlessly integrates git in a way that's far less intimidating to non-technical folk:

  • When a user makes edits, a new branch is transparently created to allow them to draft and preview their changes.
  • The quiki webserver allows only authenticated users with the proper permissions to preview the site in this state, at a different URL path than the public-facing site.
  • When a user "Publishes" the changes, the branch is simply merged into the master branch. Usually this is an automatic procedure, but if conflicts occur, they are presented online for the user to resolve.