Be Excellent To Each Other

Right so I've decided my company requires a WIKI to keep product documentation and attribute descriptions and the like all under one roof and searchable content.

Does anyone have any experience in these sorts of things and can anyone recommend any for this?

And secondary requirement is for the system to be redistributable to clients; for general reference.

Any ideas? I have only found the Wikipedia software at the moment that looks easy to use.

Do you want a hosted one, or one on your company intranet?
If you want it on your intranet, what platform(s) are you running?

confluence


runs away

Probably MediaWiki, it's about the best supported wiki software on the planet. Runs OK under Windows if you put Apache, PHP and MySQL5 on, and (naturally) runs nicely under Linux too. I think your question is better phrased as "is there any reason MediaWiki isn't right for me".

Well I'd probably be supporting the bloody thing. We are mostly windows based but I've setup enough MySQL and PHP windows based systems so MediaWiki is looking pretty good.

It would only be intranet based but ideally I'd like to package it off some how into a redistributable form… although no idea what. I guess though it could actually be based on the internet at some point so clients get live updates.

I’ve used “Confluence” before and it was pretty good. The latest versions look good.

Again I think with me doing on my own only really free stuff is the way forward buuuttt we might have spare licence kicking around (after one or two acquisitions), if we do I’ll be after it.

Cheers I shall continue checking for more info.

I've used MediaWiki, which is fantastic. I've also used the wiki built into Sharepoint. I imagine the Sharepoint wiki's creation went something like this:

- Non-technical manager uses MediaWiki for 10 minutes;
- Excitedly runs off and tells cleaners about MediaWiki (having confused the cleaners with the programmers);
- Demands that the cleaners write their own wiki that evening;
- Final code released.

It's bloody awful.

You're giving it more credit than it deserved. In my last workplace we embedded MediaWiki into Sharepoint as a Webpart to escape it's awfulness.

Sharepoint is almost universally awful, especially when people invariably try and shoehorn it into jobs that it doesn't even slightly fit. Which is constantly.

It's a moderately good version control system for Office documents. That's the only thing it does well.

Exactly. Things we are using it for at work:

Dynamic database driven work item and resource management web application.
Hierarchical sites containing mixes of HTML content, unversioned documents, and embedded items.

Neither of these should be anywhere near Sharepoint.

You could always use http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:DumpHTML to create a static HTML version then bung it onto CD or something.

Greatest... idea... ever! much love!

Tish and piffle.

You disagree? I like it for document control because it supports exclusive check-outs with notifications built into the Office UI. Nothing else does that. It's good for non-technical staff who don't want to have to use any tool over and above Office itself but if left to their own devices will email around a dozen forked copies of a document with overlapping changes.

I disagree that it is the only thing it does well.

Basically, we run an 8000 user environment off it. We're only scratching the surface of Lists, Surveys and so on.

The Wiki is pointless, though. And TBH, the Discussion forum is a bit pants, too.

It is a typical Microsoft product - 2 versions down the line, it will be awesome.

Too true! Well the current idea is that everything is run using SharePoint but alas it's rubbish and editing large documents in the UK from Canada over a VPN is near suicidal.

Permissions. 99% of problems in Sharepoint are due to permissions. It is a fucking nightmare.

The Sharepoint and the network permissions? And groups?