Hotwords are an underdeveloped feature in tikiwiki.

Ideally, hotwords should be a feature that automates the linking of related pages in a wiki. In a site specific fashion, admins creake a list of words/phrases that are their core vocabulary, this list of words may relate to topics/people/objects whatever. In this way, hotwords can function as the hypertext equivalent of an index (which is not the same as a table on contents).

This is an important feaure because untrained editors will have a habit of creating pages and not linking them to other relevant pages. Using hotwords and backlinks together provides an means for regular users to manage/avoid content sprawl.

Desired improvements:

• need to ensure that hotwords parses only Whole words / whole phrases. (and does not screw up existing links)
• need a toggle that only applies hotwords to words/phrases with no other formatting or markup (i.e. dont screw up titles, tables , or menus by making them links.)
• need to create the link for only the first instance on the page (optional).
• need to replace longest hotwords first, e.g. replace hotword "super duper", then hotword "super" and hotword "duper".
• need a simple syntax to override hotwords on an instance by instance basis (would work?).

A whole redesign of hotwords may be needed, but a first and good step is to add tiki_p_submit_hotwords and a tiki_p_admin_hotwords (hotwords are way less important than the rest of tiki_p_admin's power, currently used).
See Discussion at bottom.

List of other products with similar/interesting/related features.

Here I would like to see some "editorial" content. How do our features compare to others?

This is where new features being developed and only in CVS are documented. When the CVS becomes RC/official release, the info in the CVS docs is transferred to update the official docs (FeatureXDoc).

I see it's a bit problematic not to be able to describe hotwords at all. They'll be highlighted in a text, but that's not so useful I propose to merge Hotwords with directory. It's obvious that the hotwords one use will also get in its site's directory, so the process of creating one is almost everytime duplicated. Maybe a way to change that would be to get a "hotword(s)" field added to the directory.

Wiki pages with names that are not WikiWords can't be Hotwords easily Of course, pages like Wiki shouldn't be linked to by default because we would have a huge hotwords mess here at tw.o. Maybe we would even want some page (like TikiWiki) not to generate Hotwords, considering how much often it's written here. So, we would end with a hotword switch for Wiki pagenames, which default state (on or off) would be determined by whether the pagename is a ))WikiWord(( or not. But we could even want to have multiple names for a Wiki page. If the primary identifier of a Wiki page becomes an ID, this would mean that renaming wouldn't break links anymore (we could just keep the old name as alias).

Extending this idea, it's clear that we could use hotwords for other things than Wiki (~and directory). Images, Forums could all use that.

So we would still need a hotwords listing, but it would include all kinds of hotwords.

I write this after wondering why we ended up with a WikiPedia page at tw.o, probably a copy of a page already at WikiPedia.

Please, comment this idea, mine is still incomplete.
Chealer9

• Well, I actually use hotwords! In my course on intellectual property, for example, I use hotwords to mark unfamiliar terms (such as 'first sale' or ''digital rights management (DRM)'). BUT a problem arises when one of these terms appears at the beginning of a sentence - it would be great to have automatic first-character capitalization in such cases... UserPagebpfaffenberger

• Well, I really want to use this feature as it is. I built a whole glossary and now am unable to use it. A bug causes this feature to interfere with lnks. Perhaps, whatever parsing is used should identify the hotword by an empty space at boths ends and an absence of punctuation?
• Wanted to use the feature too ... interfering with links was big problem. I liked the fun idea to pick out random words to be links. Makes it all somewhat more random, less stiff. Also, say, you have a site about politics, and someone asks you again to link "miserable failure" to George W. Bush's website to spoof Google ... what a time saver. UserPagebeerlounge.de

• I like the ideas where hotwords should not apply to maketoc links, nor should they be pervasive throughout a page - first occurrence is fine. I also like links made up of a combination of words, of which the hotword is one, to override the hotword. Having said that, I do find that it does not work when there are "special" characters, and I'd like the functionality to directly reference wiki pages instead of putting in a full URL. For example, I have tried to create a glossary of terms that our group uses, one of the terms being T&E. Ideally, clicking on that link would provide a URL to a Tiki page TandE. I find that Tiki will not recognize "T&E" as a hotword, and in addition I must put in a full url. I have another example for E2E which in our parlance refers to ))End-to-End((. This works because there are no "special" characters in the target (E2E), but I need to put in a full URL to the wiki page of E2E. Granted, without some sort of guidelines, hotwords can run amok on a site, but I think it's a very powerful tool that should be developed, fixed, and updated. kerrnel22