Wikidot Data Forms is a very powerful feature that makes it possible to build everything from simple applications in your wikidot sites to a complete content management system (CMS) across your entire site.

A normal wiki page holds unstructured text. A wiki page with a data form holds structured data in "fields", the same as a database. In many cases structured data in a data form is easier for your users to edit, to understand and to work with.

Some uses for data forms

Some of the uses where data forms might work better than simple wiki pages are:

• I'm collecting references for my thesis, and for each reference I want to record the title, author, ISBN, date of issue, publisher, and language. If I use a data form with one field for each piece of data, I can easily produce reference lists in any format.

• I'm organizing my club membership and for each member I want a page with their name, email address and so on. By using a data form I can extract fields like the email address to send everyone a newsletter.

• I'm cataloging my video game collection and using a data form means I can search on games by console, by publisher, by genre and so on.

• I want my members to enter information about software, but I want to control what they enter by using lists they select from.

• I want users of my site to be able to easily upload images and videos at the same time that they create a page.

• I want to build a complete site where the user doesn't need to know any Wikidot syntax but can just fill in forms and press Save.

Live demo

• A live demo is available to show the features of data forms that we have described in this documentation. The permissions have been relaxed so you can try out the form:

* main page for creating new pages in the band category and for listing bands: http://vineyard.wikidot.com/bands:main
* example page at http://vineyard.wikidot.com/band:queen
* live template at http://vineyard.wikidot.com/band:_template

• pagepath.wikidot.com shows examples of the pagepath concept.
• There is also a pagepath example using the band example at http://vineyard.wikidot.com/bands