Wanted to ask what WIKI software teams are using to save documentation to / how to’s for staff, etc.
pro’s
con’s
We have an older wiki bare-metal wiki server, that I want to get replaced before it kicks the bucket and was looking into various ones.
thanks;
CPV
Confluence.
DokuWiki, redmine wiki, GitLab wiki parts.
Like any other software, make a set of requirements and then go
looking. The order of those two steps is important, though you're
allowed to iterate.
Remember to match the requirements to the people who will actually be
using the thing, not the people who will be managing it 
Personally I think the plethora of formatting options in things like
Confluence tends to distract people into spending vast amounts of time
getting their pages to look just right, that would have been better
spent capturing more actual information. Or it makes them avoid adding
information because it's too hard, or it takes too long, or it invites
odious comparisons with other people's entries.
Regards, K.
I personally like Dokuwiki a lot.
From a usability standpoint, once you spend a few learning the interface, it’s very simplistic and not overwhelming in features. You can always add extensions for stuff you need that isn’t there out of box.
From a technical standpoint, it doesn’t need a database. The entire structure is text files, so it can be run on even a super small VM, and doing backups is as easy as tarballing the data directory.
It’s got support for LDAP for authentication too, which might be useful.
[Disclaimer: former Atlassian Reseller and Certified Confluence Administrator here.]
Atlassian Confluence.
It’s not cheap, and it certainly has its flaws, but it incorporates one feature that most (all?) other wikis don’t – hierarchy. You can organize information (pages) hierarchically like a directory structure.
The key here is that some people think hierarchically, and some people don’t. For the hierarchical thinkers, a free-form wiki (i.e. most of them) is absolute hell to navigate, and you can still cross-link pages and use tags and categories, so the non-hierarchical thinkers are still just as much at home as with other products.
Another plus, despite the cost, is you can host it on-site or in the cloud, depending on your needs.
-Adam
Adam Thompson
Consultant, Infrastructure Services
100 - 135 Innovation Drive
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 6A8
(204) 977-6824 or 1-800-430-6404 (MB only)
athompson@merlin.mb.ca
www.merlin.mb.ca
Dokuwiki is definitely my favorite as well. The UI is appropriate to the task, so you get work done quickly and without a lot of fuss.
-Bill
Trac — http://trac.edgewall.org
Extensible, integrates with subversion (and other code repos), relatively easy to install, maintain and use.
M
Lol, Sharepoint,. Arggg, yea NOT going to happen ,
We’ve managed to avoid using that.
Confluence is good for small teams. Self-hosted is $10r. Plus addons we end up around $150/yr. Unfortunately, we outgrew it in terms of users. Additional users are way too expensive.
+1 for Dokuwiki as well as Gitlab.
I personally like Gitlab but fact that wiki is on per project basis. It is easy to use Dokuwiki as a general purpose, project independent wiki.
I think DokuWiki does this and as an added bonus saves all as text files.
I've been using MoinMoin wiki for years. It hasn't been updated for quite a while, but it has worked really well for me, is trivial to install, uses text file backend so no need for a database, allows for hierarchical structure, is pretty fast, is very very light weight and extensible, built on python and free.
I don't know if there is a docker container, but I'm thinking of building one.
If you want something simple, stable, older, small and usable you might take a look at MoinMoin.
If you want a docker container, ask and I'll probably build one.
Geoff
We’ve been using BookStack. It’s easy for staff to use and understand. We gave each department their own “shelf” in there and can assign rights to shelves so managers of the departments can add their own books/chapters/pages. Once you dive in you’ll see how it’s organized but it’s a really solid platform. Supports LDAP auth as well. Great platform, we’ve loved it.
+1 for dokuwiki
easy to maintain, has enough features while not become distracting
only complaint is that it doesn't support markdown, but the syntax is
easy enough (much easier than MediaWiki imo)
I know I'm a bit late to the conversation. We have been using PMWiki for well over 10 yrs now. At the time we started using it there weren't a lot of Wikis out there. MediaWiki obviously was the most popular, but it did not provide the level of secure access that we wanted. We didn't want everyone to be able to edit certain pages. It was also very easy to integrate into CAS. I wrote a cookbook for it years ago. We use groups to allow only certain people to edit certain pages. We also restrict viewing of some pages. Our Security Group keeps some of their stuff restricted. I work for the network team and we prevent everyone but our team from editing our pages. They can view them, just can't mess with them. Hope this helps someone.
Mediawiki is ideal in my use. If security is a concern just front it with oauth2 via Caddy[2] and maybe have a look at how Wikipedia self documents infrastructure[3]
Craig <cvuljanic@gmail.com> writes:
Wanted to ask what WIKI software teams are using to save documentation to / how to's for staff, etc.
On the wiki side: +1 for dokuwiki
Given that more and more people are automating stuff and this way ending
up git anyway:
Write your doku as markdown, put it into git, generate static web
pages. For people who like editing via a GUI can use gitlab or something
similar.
This approach has some advantages:
- You always have (a more or less) current version of your documentation
offline
- You can just use grep to find stuff
Jens
We're a new group and at recommendation of this thread, I set up
dokuwiki for us and I like it already!
Greatly appreciate all these suggestions, we are going to test several of these packages out and determine which will be best for us.
Thanks!
Then comes the task of getting the legacy wiki pages off the Mac wiki server over to the new wiki
Argg
More figuring out to do.