Looking for wiki software

[Chris Hill]

Hello list,

I'm looking for advice and opinions on wiki software. This would be for
use by a small business group, probably not more than 25 or so users in
total. The idea is that each user would contribute material on subjects
in which he is "expert." Eventually we end up with solid documentation
of our processes and our homegrown software, and then things don't go to
hell as much the next time someone is nearly killed in an accident.

I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this, but still it
would be nice if the solution were, for example, not too heavy on the
build- and run-dependencies.

Other nice-to-haves:

. Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
. Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
. TLS supported

I'd be grateful for any suggestions, or for stories of good or bad
experiences.

[Waitman Gobble]

Post by Chris Hill
Hello list,
I'm looking for advice and opinions on wiki software. This would be for use
by a small business group, probably not more than 25 or so users in total.
The idea is that each user would contribute material on subjects in which he
is "expert." Eventually we end up with solid documentation of our processes
and our homegrown software, and then things don't go to hell as much the
next time someone is nearly killed in an accident.
I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this, but still it would
be nice if the solution were, for example, not too heavy on the build- and
run-dependencies.
. Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
. Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
. TLS supported
I'd be grateful for any suggestions, or for stories of good or bad
experiences.
--
** [ Busy Expunging </> ]
_______________________________________________
https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions

Hubzilla has wiki component,
https://github.com/redmatrix/hubzilla

[Christos Chatzaras]

Check dokuwiki.

Post by Waitman Gobble

Post by Chris Hill
Hello list,
I'm looking for advice and opinions on wiki software. This would be for use
by a small business group, probably not more than 25 or so users in total.
The idea is that each user would contribute material on subjects in which he
is "expert." Eventually we end up with solid documentation of our processes
and our homegrown software, and then things don't go to hell as much the
next time someone is nearly killed in an accident.
I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this, but still it would
be nice if the solution were, for example, not too heavy on the build- and
run-dependencies.
. Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
. Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
. TLS supported
I'd be grateful for any suggestions, or for stories of good or bad
experiences.
--
** [ Busy Expunging </> ]
_______________________________________________
https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions

Hubzilla has wiki component,
https://github.com/redmatrix/hubzilla
--
Waitman Gobble
Los Altos California USA
650-621-0423
_______________________________________________
https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions

[John Levine]

Post by Chris Hill
I'd be grateful for any suggestions, or for stories of good or bad
experiences.

I have a bunch of wikis in mediawiki. I needs mysql, a web server
(usually Apache) and PHP, all of which are in the ports. It is not
hard to set up, and the load it adds to my system for low-volume wikis
is imperceptible. It has self-signup and you can configure it in reasonable
ways like login to edit or login to view.

It has the advantage that since it's the same software as Wikipedia, anyone
who knows how to navigate and edit Wikipedia already knows how to use it.

R's,
John

[Roderick]

Post by Chris Hill
Hello list,
I'm looking for advice and opinions on wiki software. This would be for use
by a small business group, probably not more than 25 or so users in total.

Perhaps ...

https://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki

http://www.cvstrac.org/fossil/doc/trunk/www/index.html

[Paul Schmehl]

Post by Chris Hill
Hello list,
I'm looking for advice and opinions on wiki software. This would be for
use by a small business group, probably not more than 25 or so users in
total. The idea is that each user would contribute material on subjects
in which he is "expert." Eventually we end up with solid documentation of
our processes and our homegrown software, and then things don't go to
hell as much the next time someone is nearly killed in an accident.
I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this, but still it
would be nice if the solution were, for example, not too heavy on the
build- and run-dependencies.
. Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
. Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
. TLS supported
I'd be grateful for any suggestions, or for stories of good or bad
experiences.

Unless you have someone to manage it who is very technically astute, I
would NOT recommend mediawiki. It is written by programmers for
programmers, and requires a great deal of commandline work to get it
working right. If your admin can't read code, stay away from mediawiki.

I haven't used it, but looked at it in some detail, and I would recommend
docuwiki. For the size project you're considering, it's probably ideal.

Paul Schmehl, Retired
As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
are my own and not those of my employer.
*******************************************
"It is as useless to argue with those who have
renounced the use of reason as to administer
medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very
intelligent person could believe in them." George Orwell

[Valeri Galtsev]

Post by Paul Schmehl

Post by Chris Hill
Hello list,
I'm looking for advice and opinions on wiki software. This would be for
use by a small business group, probably not more than 25 or so users in
total. The idea is that each user would contribute material on subjects
in which he is "expert." Eventually we end up with solid documentation of
our processes and our homegrown software, and then things don't go to
hell as much the next time someone is nearly killed in an accident.
I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this, but still it
would be nice if the solution were, for example, not too heavy on the
build- and run-dependencies.
. Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
. Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
. TLS supported
I'd be grateful for any suggestions, or for stories of good or bad
experiences.

Unless you have someone to manage it who is very technically astute, I
would NOT recommend mediawiki. It is written by programmers for
programmers, and requires a great deal of commandline work to get it
working right. If your admin can't read code, stay away from mediawiki.

I strongly disagree. Mediawiki is quite simple to set up, web based script
does all for you. Also, it is decently secure architectured. And there is
absolutely no need to look into the code. I have more than a dozen of
mediawiki instances on the servers I maintain.

Post by Paul Schmehl
I haven't used it, but looked at it in some detail, and I would recommend
docuwiki. For the size project you're considering, it's probably ideal.

And I disageree again. I do not run docuwiki, but I looked in detail into
a couple of docuwiki intallations when I inherited support of couple of
servers. I quite disliked what I saw, it looked like a mess to me even
though its base is quite trivial, and all your data are in plain files.
All in all, security wise to maintain docuwiki is sysadmin's nightmare
IMHO. As you can guess, I migrated docuwikis I inherited to mediawikis,
even though it required some effort to convince wiki owners.

My advise would be: take few minutes more, set up mariadb, mysql or
postgresql (the last is what I usually use), install mediawiki, subscribe
to mediawiki mail list so you know when there is critical update, which
are released occasionally.

Valeri

Post by Paul Schmehl
Paul Schmehl, Retired
As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
are my own and not those of my employer.
*******************************************
"It is as useless to argue with those who have
renounced the use of reason as to administer
medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very
intelligent person could believe in them." George Orwell
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Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
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[Roderick]

Post by Valeri Galtsev

Post by Chris Hill
I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this, but still it
would be nice if the solution were, for example, not too heavy on the
build- and run-dependencies.
. Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
. Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
. TLS supported

I strongly disagree. Mediawiki is quite simple to set up, web based script
does all for you.

I think, it cannot be simpler than fossil. It is very easy to build. It
is just one executable. And the repository with the wiki is also a file
that as such can be moved, renamed, installed on other computer
without problem. See:

http://www.fossil-scm.org/fossil/doc/trunk/www/quickstart.wiki

[Chris Hill]

Post by Roderick

Post by Valeri Galtsev

Post by Chris Hill
I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this, but still it
would be nice if the solution were, for example, not too heavy on the
build- and run-dependencies.
. Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
. Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
. TLS supported

I strongly disagree. Mediawiki is quite simple to set up, web based script
does all for you.

I think, it cannot be simpler than fossil. It is very easy to build. It
is just one executable. And the repository with the wiki is also a file
that as such can be moved, renamed, installed on other computer
http://www.fossil-scm.org/fossil/doc/trunk/www/quickstart.wiki

I have used dokuwiki in the past. Although it's near-trivial to get
working, my non-technical users (which was all of them) had some issues
with writing content.

I ended up going with mediawiki this time. It was pretty painless to set
up and get it working, although there are still one or two
lingering questions. I do like that its look and feel will be familiar
to anyone who has seen Wikipedia.

Fossil is next up if mediawiki doesn't work out.

Many thanks to all who responded.

[James B. Byrne via freebsd-questions]

Post by Chris Hill
Hello list,
I'm looking for advice and opinions on wiki software. This
would be for use by a small business group, probably not
more than 25 or so users in total. The idea is that each
user would contribute material on subjects in which he is
"expert." Eventually we end up with solid documentation
of our processes and our homegrown software, and then things
don't go to hell as much the next time someone is nearly
killed in an accident.
I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this,
but still it would be nice if the solution were, for example,
not too heavy on the build- and run-dependencies.
. Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
. Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
. TLS supported
I'd be grateful for any suggestions, or for stories of good or bad
experiences.

We use Redmine project administration software for this sort of thing.
It is packaged for FreeBSD and available through ports. It has a
large number of features that you can safely ignore; unless and until
you need them. The authentication/ authorisation mechanisms are well
integrated and easy to use; and to understand.

Redmine requires an SQL back-end. The 'default' back-end is MySQL /
MariaDB. PostgreSQL is also available.

We have been using Redmine and Git since we moved off TRAC and
Subversion back in 2006. We use Redmine for the company
administrative wiki, programmer day books, computer system operations
scheduling, issue tracking, work requests, documentation, time
tracking, project management, and many other things. You can have
multiple independent projects/wikis, or dependent sub-projects. Each
user can have different roles assigned in different projects.
--
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James B. Byrne mailto:***@Harte-Lyne.ca
Harte & Lyne Limited http://www.harte-lyne.ca
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Hamilton, Ontario fax: [phone]
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[zep]

Post by Chris Hill
Hello list,
I'm looking for advice and opinions on wiki software. This would be
for use by a small business group, probably not more than 25 or so
users in total. The idea is that each user would contribute material
on subjects in which he is "expert." Eventually we end up with solid
documentation of our processes and our homegrown software, and then
things don't go to hell as much the next time someone is nearly killed
in an accident.
I have a reasonably decent machine on which to run this, but still it
would be nice if the solution were, for example, not too heavy on the
build- and run-dependencies.
 . Easy user management, ideally with self-signup
 . Use with http server of my choice, i.e. server-agnostic
 . TLS supported
I'd be grateful for any suggestions, or for stories of good or bad
experiences.

my choice for this is/would be dokuwiki - it's very light, there's no
database or external things to go sideways, all your files are stored as
plain text if something does go wildly sideways, it's just text.  
should be very easy to recover/backup.   I've only ever tried to run it
under apache, but it ... might?  work with other webservers, probably
nginx fairly easily, maybe more.  I think the only thing it needs to run
is ... maybe php and a 'user that httpd runs as writable filesystem'. 
there are minimal bells/whistles to this, though.   user mgmt is
basically .ht files.