Offline Website or Personal Wiki?

I have been asked to create an electronic O&M manual. Basically I need a way to display written text descriptions, vendor/manufacturer pdf manuals, record images, and possibly training videos of a system and the equipment is has. For example a system with 5 pumps, a conveyor, instruments, etc. This O&M manual will need to be accessed by Windows Computers.

Thinking about this it should be easiest done with some sort of folder structure holding all the relevant files on a local computer. So if I ever have to update one of the files i just swap out the old and paste the new one in the same location with the old one's name. But to display it I was thinking about creating a website that I could customize to have links to different "pages" that would have all the information I want to display.

First, Is a website the best idea for this? Or would some sort of personal wiki be better?

For either option, what is the easiest to user editor to create said website or wiki? I've tried searching for an offline WYSIWYG website creator and have not come up with much.

When dealing with websites I have the most minimal knowledge of HTML and that's it. I am more of a VBA, C++, JAVA, sort of experience. And because that qualifies me for being the most "technically" savy I have been given this task.

Any help would be appreciated!

You could use http://jekyllrb.com/ . Create your content with Markdown, it then converts it to HTML, applies the specified theme etc.

I will take a look at this but was hoping for some simple graphic interface type create I could mess around with for about 5 minutes to get a proof of concept going.

A couple of ideas here:

1. you could create something like a ".chm" file - aka windows help file, which will run on any windows computer. It's a stand alone file with everything stored internally.
It has a rudimentary table of contents and search function and looks pretty basic and boring. I haven't tried making one, but it looks interesting. You would need a .chm editor - or try out the free one from microsoft (htmlhelp).
The downside is adding stuff means you need to recompile the file every time.

2. You could do a Html Application. More info here.
I've used this and it worked great. It's basically a web page that you save with a ".hta" instead of ".htm" or ".html" There are some options you can include as far as window borders, full screen, scroll bars, etc. It uses Internet explorer's rendering engine. It's just like if you saved a html page on your computer and opened it in Internet Explorer, except without the url bar, buttons, etc. Also it allows scripting and javascript which is something that is usually blocked on a local html file. On mine, i use a html frame as the initial page with a javascript menu.
With an HTA you just put all your stuff in a folder(s) and create html pages. Setup your initial "index" page as the menu system. The downside is HTA's have low security and if someone goes web browsing inside of your hta, you might be at more of a risk for allowing malware than say a standard web browser (imo).

3. You might try something like a stand alone "wiki" such as http://tiddlywiki.com/. Again basically an html page but with some fancy scripting. I think it might have some security so that people don't deface your work.

edit 4. It might even be possible to run tiddlywiki inside a .hta, creating a more sleek look.

I like to use MindTouch for the wiki. Easy to use, fairly powerful.