Recommendation for Personal Wiki?

B

Blue Knight

Gawd
Joined
Dec 2, 2000
Messages
699
I've got my own webserver in a colocation. One of my goals is to setup a wiki - any recommendations?

The wife's gonna use it, so it's got to be easy to use from a user standpoint. I think it needs to support a WYSIWYG as well as simple file uploading (PDF or JPEGS) to help emphasize points. (A photo gallery is already being handled by Gallery3)

Nothing heavy duty - just two users. Probably for things like recipes, home project notes, car notes (mileage and maintenance), etc.

I've already tried mediawiki and dokuwiki. Mediawiki I think is somewhat overkill for this (and text editing's not the friendliest). Dokuwiki's pretty nice, but the image uploading's not that easy to use either.

What do you guys use?
 
for what you seem to be intending to use it for, I'm not sure a Wiki is the way you want to go. Why not just setup a shared Google Docs account and be done with it?
 
Mind touch deki wiki might do the job, but you normally have to pay for it, though I think theres a non-shitty free version.
 
maw said:
for what you seem to be intending to use it for, I'm not sure a Wiki is the way you want to go. Why not just setup a shared Google Docs account and be done with it?
Click to expand...

Because the whole concept of documents is somewhat outdated to me: an individual file containing specific information.

I like wikis because they have search tools, are interlinkable, are easily modifiable (with history), in the internet cloud. The information is also presented in a better fashion - as long as the effort is taken to manage the site well.

Twiki looks pretty powerful - I'll give this one a spin.
 
WikkaWiki is really nice and simple.

Any wiki is not really WYSIWYG compatible 100%, wiki code is a bit unique. There is a lot of documentation that is easy to understand for WikkaWiki though. I also like that it is simpler than ones like MediaWiki which can be a serious chore to setup and maintain.

If you want to see it in action, look here: http://wiki.techislands.com/
 
This might get me thrown out of this forum :), but after trying MediaWiki(a horrible horrible product, one of the worst text entry systems I've seen) at my work for a month(with a few very non-technical users), as well as a few other wiki type products, I ended up using Google Docs as a wiki.

My work already used Google Apps for email, so I began using the Docs side of it and a shared folder as a wiki. It works great, the text entry is stupid easy, adding images is a cinch(now includes in-doc Google image search), and you can link to other gDocs via the hyperlinking tool. I'm generally for "rolling your own", but in this case it was too simple not to rock the gDocs.
 
bobmagoo said:
I'm generally for "rolling your own", but in this case it was too simple not to rock the gDocs.
Click to expand...

OP already shot down this idea, though I also agree with you. I think using a full-blown Wiki is taking a fairly simple requirement and making it needlessly complex, but I've been wrong before. Maybe I'm just not seeing the whole picture.
 
Last edited:
Sorry guys, I didn't mean to rock the boat or anything.

Maw's right in that in addition to the "need" I also have ulterior motives. I always like to branch out and try new things. 50% of my motivation here is to install and manage a LAMP server and install apps that you might generally use in a small business, or enterprises. I know it's not going to be exactly "real world" but I like to get my feet wet and try new things. It's overkill and Googledocs is pretty good, but it doesn't quite satisfy my need for "blood and sweat" and the feeling of accomplishment. :D
 
I run moinmoin for myself, but I'm probably not the same kind of user as you and your wife.
 
hmmm. i picked dokuwiki partly because the uploading of external images/files is easier then other wikis.

Also look at FosWiki, I couldn't get it setup for some reason, but it looked nice IMO. It's based on Twiki (or maybe the same, not sure exactly)

The WYSIWYG editor seems good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPWs9e9EJm0
 
yup, i use google docs between my wife and i. we also use the calendar for events and just add each other so we know who's doing what and if a babysitter is needed, etc.

and you can get calendar alerts to your phone.
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys!

One other thing hanging on the edge is that the family might start a business soon, and we'll need a solution for a website. Some of these wiki's look like they could double as a website pretty quickly.

I've taken a look at a few more wiki solutions - never knew there was so much development here! One that's caught my eye is XWiki. It looks to be extremely flexible (pick your database backend), looks clean, and has an easy WSIWYG with an quick and dirty Picture Import (no renaming or linking needed)! Other stuff like PDF export, possible standalone usb installations, and MS Word plugin for creating pages (if you really want to) are just icing. The only thing is that it runs on java, and for webhosting needs a container... I'm debating if the work is worth it....

Has anyone installed Xwiki or have any thoughts?
 
Blue Knight said:
Thanks for the suggestions guys!

One other thing hanging on the edge is that the family might start a business soon, and we'll need a solution for a website. Some of these wiki's look like they could double as a website pretty quickly.
Click to expand...

If you're going to go that route, it looks like you'd want a CMS(Content Management System), rather than something hacked to look like one. I ran site using Joomla's CMS for over a year and it was really great, there are some awesome plugins for backup/updating/text-editing(PM me if you want more info). You could have a Wiki type section of the site, and then have an official side of the site and it would run much smoother than a wiki trying to be a traditional business site.

Drupal is the other main contender, I don't have much experience with it but I know the US government uses it and it powers my college's website, so it can't be too bad ;)
 
Drupal's internal design is very flexible and well done. It's quite amenable to modifications and module development to do pretty much everything. Quite the learning curve though to get started developing on it, and even getting a decent looking website up and running using the included modules is somewhat of a challenge. If you're a web developer doing this often, looking for a platform to help you save time building custom CMS-type sites, it's a great place to start, but I think it's a bit too much to learn for a one-off.

Joomla is a little easier to use, but personally I don't like the design as much.

I haven't used either of them extensively though, mostly my brief experience with them and opinions of some good friends that do a lot of web app development.

Haven't seen it mentioned yet, so I'll throw out what I think is one of the better Wiki engines out there: TikiWiki.
 
I think that Wordpress can full fill your requirements, is easy to deploy. Im already install my SOHO wiki with Mediawiki and is a powerfull tool and easy (after a few days of reading).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top