Internal Wiki Advice

DiscoDave · 26 Jan 2011 at 19:57

Evening all,

I have a requirement at work to produce a internal knowledgebase system for our department (IT). The idea is we have a internal website that lists a lot of how to's (do various things in VMWare/NetAPP/etc specific to our configuration) Policies and procedures (backups/restores/starters/leavers/etc) and configuration information (IP address allocation/switch/router configuration files/etc).

I've installed and tested mediawiki, which is excellent for a lot of guides but kind of falls short when I want to upload files (non images).

If I want the website to store our files (for example a spreadsheet with our IP addresses) when I want to edit it, I have to download to a local disk, edit, upload back to the wiki and re-link it to the article, which is a bit long winded.

So, does anyone know of any more suitable wiki/KB software that would be suitable for our environment? Ie one that has a bit of an easier interface for uploading files (file management would be a huge bonus, revisions, rollbacks etc) directly into pages/articles?

If not I'm guessing I'll have to use UNC share paths to a file server from each article.

Thanks,

David

gambitt · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:20

Sounds like you need something like Sharepoint but I'm guessing that would be overkill for this task!

Ekim · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:21

We use Social Text at work:

http://www.socialtext.com/

DiscoDave · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:37

I'd prefer the software to be open source/free though. I see MS do a free version of Sharepoint called Sharepoint Services, might give that a go.

NathanE · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:38

We use Screwturn Wiki. It's very easy to deploy and get working and it is free and open source.

Don't use Sharepoint, it's a piece of carp.

DiscoDave · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:45

NathanE said:
We use Screwturn Wiki. It's very easy to deploy and get working and it is free and open source.

Don't use Sharepoint, it's a piece of carp.

Does screwturn wiki allow direct uploads into article pages/document management?

NathanE · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:50

DiscoDave · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:53

Sweet. Any revision management?

brainchylde · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:57

Sharepoint crap? Hm... Now there's a debate.

Personally I think Sharepoint is great. The ability to structure lots of data in very different forms in one repository is a very tempting piece of bait to me. Wiki's are fine - but we have people on our team who wouldn't want to use the Wiki syntax and would prefer to upload a word document or similar. Sharepoint allows this, whilst also allowing proper version control etc. And this can all be done in the free version.

I don't mind wiki's - one of the things that is annoying about Sharepoint is the wiki functionality is particularly poor.. but then you can easily create pages anyway so it's a bit of a non-problem.

Just give a few a go and see where you end up.

NathanE · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:00

DiscoDave said:
Sweet. Any revision management?

It can diff between revisions, yup. It's pretty basic though.

NathanE · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:01

brainchylde said:
Sharepoint crap? Hm... Now there's a debate.

A short one, maybe.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sharepoint+crap

topbanana · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:04

If you're using your wiki to store spreadsheets you've missed the point

brainchylde · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:07

NathanE said:
A short one, maybe.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sharepoint+crap

The very same way I could do "WIKI CRAP" or "sharepoint excellent". The answer to the debate lies not in the product but rather what you are trying to do with it.

NathanE · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:09

topbanana said:
If you're using your wiki to store spreadsheets you've missed the point

Agreed.

DiscoDave · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:14

topbanana said:
If you're using your wiki to store spreadsheets you've missed the point

Perhaps, is there anything else out there that's more suitable then?

visibleman · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:14

NathanE said:
We use Screwturn Wiki. It's very easy to deploy and get working and it is free and open source.

Don't use Sharepoint, it's a piece of carp.

Have used Screwturn Wiki in the past and it's not too bad. TWiki might be worth looking at as well. From the five minutes or so i've played with it, it seemed pretty decent and there are a number of file upload plugins for Twiki.

mikeh501 · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:15

Share point is crap, completely agree.

Were looking to replace at the mo

whitecrook · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:22

You should put the ip address directly into the wiki page, not in to a spreadsheet on a wiki page. To not be doing this is completely Doing It Wrong.

If it's a document/file mangement thing you need, with auditing and revisioning, chek out checkin full text search etc, then check out Knowledge Tree. Even has webdav access for 'filesystem' interfacing which is pretty neat.

You can of course, link from the wiki to the document system.