Date: 2025-01-13 Modified: 2025-01-14
Courtesy of the Awesome-Selfhosted website, I stumbled upon W: part CMS and part wiki, with a dash of note-taking app and some unusual features. An app off the beaten path!
First things first: the latest version of W (3.7.0 as of this writing) comes in a 1.4MB archive that expands to around twice that. Contrary to the system requirements, you can test it with PHP's built-in web server. You'll also want the intl extension. That's not mentioned, but you need it to display dates.
W uses a flat-file database. Installation is typical for this kind of app: upload to the server and visit the address in your browser. You can name the default database anything you want; later you'll be able to make more and switch between them. Once that's done, you're shown the front page, which only contains... a login form.
That's right, by default W isn't open to the public. Log in, create a page (you can use Markdown) and click Display. Surprise! It's just the rendered text, without any styles, navigation or other elements. Indeed, the default page template is literally just
%CONTENT%
as you can see on the Body tab. I recommend something like this to get you started:
<header> <h1>%TITLE%</h1> </header> <main>%CONTENT%</main> <hr> <footer> Last edited: <time>%DATEMODIF?lang=fr%</time> </footer>
In the admin panel you can fill in the default page body and global stylesheet among other things. Another way is to set up your first page however you like, then use it as a template for the others. It's very do-it-yourself: W only gives you tools and a blank canvas. Want a blog? You can make one using filters. Multiple sub-sites? Also no problem. It's like hand-coding a website, only with less hassle. And you can share as much or as little as you want.
Speaking of which, you can invite other people to co-edit your website, but beware that W allows raw HTML and Javascript in pages, and any kind of media uploads. Make sure you fully trust collaborators.
Otherwise, you get fairly normal features like a media manager with the ability to insert image galleries into pages, but also rich metadata including geolocation! That's not usually built in, and I get the appeal.
Last but not least, the makers of W are big on mobile compatibility. The user interface is light and adapts to smartphone screens very nicely.
As this review comes after a day and a half of playing with W, and then only on my desktop machine, more details will have to wait. Just try it and see.