Table of Contents
Ad-Hominem Template
Compatible with DokuWiki
- 2024-02-06 "Kaos" yes
- 2023-04-04 "Jack Jackrum" yes
- 2022-07-31 "Igor" unknown
- 2020-07-29 "Hogfather" unknown
Simple and lightweight, but modernized version of the default template
Similar to dokuwiki
This is an attempt to create a very simple and lightweight template for DokuWiki that stays true to the ideas of the original design, but modernizes the code and improve on the usability.
It was designed to work for my DokuWiki site of the same name (now migrated to Denkfehler Online), but may be useful for others, too.
This is provided “as is”, with no explicit or implied claim to be usable for any specific purpose. It is well tested and fine-tuned, but you are using it at your own risk.
Feedback and bug reports are of course always welcome 
Features
- Prominent search field with preloading search results.
- Collapsible sidebar and table of contents.
- Link preview: title and first paragraph of the linked page is shown in the title text.
- This also works for Wikipedia links!
- Looks good in print.
- The template implements WCAG 2.1 Level AA (however, the DokuWiki content renderer has some limitations)
- Neatly formatted and standards-compliant code (where possible – again, the DokuWiki content renderer is the limiting factor)
- Makes better use of larger screens (target is half of a 4K screen), but because the template is fully responsive, smaller is no problem (down to ca. 300px wide)
- improvements to edit view, media manager, etc.
- User-side controlled “dark mode”, i.e. follows the client side dark mode settings.
- Improvements to the default functionality, e.g. a resizeable internal link selection widget, etc.
- Configuration to override the “home”-link (see below)
- Integrated “Cookies” banner functionality
- Integrated languages menu (for the Translate plugin)
- Compatible with PHP8 and DokuWiki “Kaos”.
Download and Install
The easiest way to install the template is to use the Extensions Manager in the Admin panel. Just search for “Ad Hominem” and click “install”. Then head to the configuration page and select “Ad Hominem” from the template popup menu.
Alternatively, you can download the latest version as a ZIP file from the following page:
Refer to template on how to install and use templates in DokuWiki.
Configuration
The configuration options are now documented on the GitHub Wiki Page. Make sure to read it, to make the most of your DokuWiki!
In short, the following configuration features are available:
- Icons and site logos – specific names to be used to overwrite the default site logos and e.g. the favicon.
- Page blocks – you can upload HTML snippets that are then inserted at specific places of all pages, e.g. in the footer or the sidebar.
- Template options in the site configuration page (section: “Template options”).
Details on how to configure these can be found on the page linked above.
Cookies Banner
This template has its own, built-in “Cookies”-banner. This function is heavily inspired by Michal Koutný's “cookielaw” plugin, but it is much better integrated into the template design, and of course fully configurable.
There are three settings that control the behaviour of this
- “Display the Cookie message banner”: can be either “Don't show”, “Show on top of page” and “Show on bottom of page”. The first option disables the banner altogether.
- “The message to display on the Cookie banner”: This is a free-text field that allows you to set the text to display. This text is directly copied into a
<p>context in the banner, without escaping. That means you can insert some (inline) HTML for formatting, if needed.
- “Link to the “More information” page”: this is either an internal or external address that the “More information” link shall link to. Internal addresses should look like, e.g.
about:cookies(this is also the default), external addresses start with eitherhttp://orhttps://…
Override Home Link
The template has an option to override the “home” link in the settings. What is this good for? Imagine your wiki is not “stand-alone”, but rather only a section in your wider website. In this case, you don't want a click on the site name or logo to bring the visitor to the wiki homepage, but rather to your main site homepage. Well, this can be done with this option.
If you enter, for example, “/index.html”, the links on the site icon and site name will both lead to this address. In addition, the “home” icon link in the “You are here” navigation (if enabled) will lead to this link, and the wiki homepage will become a normal entry in the site hierarchy.
Leaving the field empty will keep the original behaviour (home is your wiki homepage) intact.
Dark Mode
This template supports client-controlled “dark mode”. This means that visitors to your site who have “dark mode” activated on their machines will see the site in a suitable dark colour scheme.
The following screenshots show the light and dark mode side by side:
Generally, there is nothing to do for a site admin, but please be aware of this, and make sure to check your site in dark mode from time to time (or in light mode, if you normally use dark mode).
There are two potential issues to be aware of:
- If you used the “Template Style Settings” to override the default colours, notably to create a custom “dark” appearance, you may want to review these settings.
- If possible, create images in a way that they also work with dark backgrounds. Especially if you use transparency, it would be good to test and see how these look like with a much darker background.
There is more documentation available on the project’s GitHub Wiki Page, including some ideas on how to deal with problem situations.
And, of course, you can also override the dark mode colours using the Styling Plugin, or disable it altogether in the configuration settings (section: Template settings).
Cookies
This template also comes with its own implementation of the Cookielaw Plugin, and as such, also sets a cookie to remember that the banner has already been shown to the visitor.
The “cookielaw” cookie is set for one year (not 10 years as the original), and it can only contain the value “1”, which means it can not be used for tracking users. This means it is purely a “technical cookie“ in the sense of the EU’s “E-Privacy Directive”.
Please keep in mind, however, that the DokuWiki system sets additional cookies, which are explained on another page.
Languages menu
If have a multilingual wiki and use the excellent Translation plugin (as you should!) you know that setting up the Translations menu can be a hassle. For this reason, the template now come with the necessary code integrated. No more manually editing the main.php file necessary anymore!
The template does not simply provide the standard code either, but completely re-engineered the translations menu for optimal accessibility and improved usability. It also looks much nicer now.
There are two new configuration options to modify how the menu looks for you:
- “Display the Languages menu” defines how you want to see the languages list: Available options are:
- “As a menu in the toolbar” will insert a language icon (showing the current language’s ISO code) in the toolbar. Click on the icon to show a menu with the available translations.
- “As a list in the sidebar” will insert the languages list in the sidebar, underneath the navigation block.
- “Filter which translations to show in the menu or list” defines which languages are listed in the menu/list:
- “List all languages”: all the languages defined in the plugin settings will be listed. Languages for which the page has not been translated (yet) will display as a “missing” link.
- “List only if translation exists” will only show those languages for which a translation of the current page exists. The missing translations will be hidden.
Both, menu and list, have the language codes displayed next to the language names. Flags are not supported (and never will, don’t bother asking for it).
2-column “compact” print style
Since 1.5 there is now an option to switch from the default “basic” print style to a more “compact” 2-column style.
This “compact” style is typographically more advanced and IMHO also looks a lot better, but it requires some work from the editor to make sure the page works well in print.
Most importantly, use the class “print-wide” can be used to mark up sections that should span both columns, e.g. for images, tables, etc.
If you use the Wrap plugin, you can simply wrap (pun intended) such a section with:
<WRAP print-wide>
…
</WRAP>
Another option is the Ad.Hoc Tags plugin of the same author, which allows you to use a larger number of HTML tags, including the possibility to simply add class names (and other attributes) in your code. Here you could write, e.g.:
<aside print-wide>
…
</aside>
Last but not least: <figure> blocks are also spanning both columns by default and also have specialized styling to make sure they look good in print (including their <figcaption>s). If you want to override this behaviour, you can keep them in a single column by adding the class print-narrow.
Other print-related classes include noprint and print-only, which do exactly what their names promise.
HTML Tags
As of DokuWiki “Jack Jackrum”, embedding HTML tags in the DokuWiki code is no longer supported. In order to still allow semantic markup to be added, the autor of this template also provides a plugin, Ad-Hoc Tags, which enables specific HTML tags in a more Wiki-like syntax.
This has been developed with, and is designed to be used with this template (though it is fully useable with other templates as well, of course).
Visit my site
The best way to experience this template is by browsing my sites, which make full use of it: