The WikiPakk page tree loads page information on demand instead of loading the whole hierarchy at once. This keeps the tree fast even on sites with thousands of pages.
This article explains what the loading symbols mean and how the tree behaves on very wide hierarchy levels.
What does the circular arrow symbol mean?
A circular arrow next to a page means: WikiPakk has not yet loaded the entries below that page. At this point the tree does not know whether the page has sub-pages or not.
Clicking the circular arrow loads the entries below that page. Then one of two things happens:
- the page has sub-pages: the tree expands and the symbol changes to the usual chevron
- the page has no sub-pages: the expand symbol disappears; the page is shown as a single entry
A page without any sub-pages shows the same circular arrow until it is loaded, so the symbol is no indicator for the existence of sub-pages.
When does the symbol resolve on its own?
For every page shown in the tree, WikiPakk checks in the background whether that page has sub-pages. On hierarchy levels of typical size this happens automatically, and the circular arrows resolve on their own after a moment: pages with sub-pages get a chevron, single pages lose the expand symbol.
Why does the symbol stay on large sites?
The background check is skipped when one level of the tree is very wide:
- more than 200 pages on the top level
- more than 150 pages on a level further down
On such a wide level, WikiPakk does not check the pages for sub-pages. Every page keeps its circular arrow, and what is below a page is only loaded when you click the arrow.
This is intentional. Checking hundreds of pages for sub-pages would send a large burst of requests to SharePoint on every page load. SharePoint throttles clients that send too many requests in a short time, and once throttling kicks in, all requests are slowed down, making the whole page sluggish. The limits protect against that.
The limits are built into WikiPakk and cannot be changed via configuration.
Recommendation
If the circular arrows get in the way, reduce the number of pages per hierarchy level to below the limits. The background check then runs again, and pages with sub-pages get their chevron automatically.
If your scenario needs such wide levels, send a short description of the use case to [email protected]. This helps to get the topic on the roadmap.