Make A World With A Wiki
TiddlyWiki is my new favorite thing. It’s a wiki that is easy to run locally. Too much software-as-a-service out there, not enough software-as-a-program. It’s also easy to version control because the wiki is just a collection of files - just Git the folder.
I have recently started using it for keeping track of the world building I am doing for a fantasy novel I am writing for fun. I use it for keeping track of the world’s flora, fauna, magic, and what color I said that character’s eyes were in chapter 3. It’s marvelous.
Here’s my setup with it:
Navigation - I added an entry called “Navigation” where I added links to the different sections I wanted. I added a link to each “section”, i.e. for history, characters, religions, flora, etc. For example:
[[History]]
. You add links like in other wikis. With double-brackets.Create Section Pages - Then, I created “section pages”. For example, a page called “History”. I edited each section page to be, e.g.:
<<list-links “[tag[history]]”>>
. This line makes the page show a list of links to everything with the tag “history”.Create a Page with a Tag - Now, when I write a page on the history of cheese, I tag it with
history
. Then, a link shows up on the History page.Show just one page at a time - By default, TiddlyWiki has this (to me) weird thing where it shows multiple pages at the same time in a scroll, like a series of blog posts. I think it’s distracting. So I click the cog and go into the Settings. I set “Animation Duration” to 0. Then, I go to Appearance→Story View→zoomin. Now the wiki just shows one page and doesn’t show me any animations. Just the pages, please.
Set Navigation as default “tiddler” - To set the top-level Navigation page as the default, go to Info→Default tiddlers in settings and set it. I also go to the right hand pane and check “home” under “tools”.
Now we have this really compact system for browsing the wiki. Can just click the House button to bring up Navigation, click a topic, and then click the page we want. I’ve found it super.