---
title: Concepts
tags: [About]
---
A few ideas explain most of how Wiki Forge works.
**Variants.** Fan Forge, Hobby Forge and Wiki Forge (where these docs live) are themed variants of the same engine. Each has its own domain and look; the features are the same.
**Wikis.** Each community's wiki has its own address (`name.fanforge.wiki`), pages, files, settings, people and theme. Anyone can ask for a new wiki; the site admin approves each one.
**Articles.** A page, written in **Forge Markdown**: Markdown with wiki links, citations, components and emotes. Every article has a permanent **id** (like `k3v9qa`) as well as a title, so links survive renames: the editor shows titles, but links are stored by id.
**Revisions.** Every save is a revision with its author, summary and date. History, differences between versions, restoring an old version and rolling back someone's edits all work from revisions. Nothing is silently lost.
**Components.** The building blocks inside articles: `:::infobox`, `:::tabs`, a wiki's own `::legends-nav`. The platform provides a set ([[Platform components]]); each wiki writes its own on top ([[Writing components]]), and that's where a wiki's personality and power come from:
- A component is one readable file: **props** (what an article passes in, each with a type), **markup** with simple logic (show this if, repeat that for each), **styles** kept to the component, and **examples**.
- Articles use a wiki's components exactly like the platform's, with completions and checks in the editor.
- Components can use each other, read the wiki's [[Wiki Data]], and add tags and to-dos to the pages that use them.
- Change a component once and every page using it follows.
- Whatever a component does, it can't break a page or run scripts: its output is checked like any article's.
**Files.** Images uploaded to the wiki and shown in articles with ``. They're resized and re-encoded on upload and served from the wiki's own media address. See [[Images and files]].
**Tags and to-dos.** Tags say what a page is about and list pages by topic; to-dos say what a page still needs, for editors only. See [[Tags and to-dos]].
**Wiki Data.** Named data sets (a table or YAML) that components read, so facts used on many pages (stats, dates, lists, links) live in one place. See [[Wiki Data]].
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