Filed under: Internet Tools, Surveys and Polls
What's the best Mac wiki?
Hello TUAW readers! I thought I'd turn this out to the community as I'm shopping for a good wiki for a project I'm starting at work. Jay, who is big into wiki projects, is recommending TWiki although he is currently using Wikka, but I thought I would get the best feedback by polling the always insightful TUAW readership.The intention is to have a wiki I can run off of whatever Mac box I decide to stick it on (most likely an easily replaceable Mac mini) with secure access for people on an intranet, but making all the info available via the Internet as well and with a handful of moderators. What do you think? What's the best Mac wiki?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ryan said 3:26PM on 7-12-2005
This is a great question whose answer could be of a great deal of benefit to me. I'm applying for a job at a recently-established research institute at a prominent medical school whose goals include the establishment of some sort of collective knowledge base and meeting spot that facilitates communication between the institute's many researchers and labs. I was thinking that Wikki might be a good suggestion for a way to facilitate interaction among those unable to attend regular meetings but interested in learning about and finding ways to contribute to the work of other, related parties. I'm looking forward to everyone's responses.
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djones said 3:57PM on 7-12-2005
MediaWiki is my current favorite, for both ease of setup, use, power, and community support.
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
Like most, you do have to install PHP and MySQL onto your Apache base, but those are something that are infinitely useful to have on your server anyway.
To enable PHP on OS X's Apache installation:
http://www.phpmac.com/articles.php?view=225
And finally, a nice installer for mysql, with instructions:
http://www.entropy.ch/software/MacOSx/mysql/
(btw, entropy.ch also has a good alternate PHP installation set of instructions, in case you want an updated or custom PHP installation.)
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Bob Lee said 4:06PM on 7-12-2005
You should try Confluence (http://atlassian.com/software/confluence/default.jsp).
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djones said 4:17PM on 7-12-2005
Something tells me that $1200 for Confluence for a intranet wiki is a little overpriced. Especially since other software, like MediaWiki, which is good enough to run the entire Wikipedia project, is free.
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Lon said 4:33PM on 7-12-2005
I'm a big fan of Instiki ( http://instiki.org ) which installs instantly in OSX, including a menu-bar icon. Small, simple. Give it a try.
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Al Willis said 5:02PM on 7-12-2005
It's all about Instiki--take a look at http://instiki.org/. It's written in Ruby and takes advantage of the Ruby on Rails framework. You can use Markdown or Textile to create posts. Works like a dream--highly recommended. There's also a Mac OS X install.
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Alex Payne said 11:45PM on 7-12-2005
Third vote for Instiki.
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kukkurovaca said 10:05PM on 7-12-2005
Hmm. I'm using Instiki a lot right now, as a consequence of (a) liking wikis and (b) hating word processing programs. I'm using the "clickable" OSX version (though if you're cooler than I am, you probably gain something by using one of the more recent version that hasn't been packaged for dummies.
The trouble with Instiki is that it isn't really complete. Clumsy page deletion, no page renaming, and no deletion of "webs" aren't a big pain for light and/or casual and/or personal use, but if the project is large one, it could be an issue.
Also, if you're going to need to attach files, obviously Instiki does not have your back, at least not out of the box.
Instiki has some things going for it--incredible ease of installation, especially for terminal-phobes like myself, a really, really, really good--and this is what clinches it for me as an instiki user--markup (textile does almost everything perfectly--and believe me, small design defects in a wiki-markup or wiki-like-markup get really annoying when you deal with them constantly--of course, there are probably other wiki engines that use textile, though I don't know any offhand.) , a simple and functional interface, basic but effective page locking functionality (important when you have a lot of people working on a project in around the same time), and--this is a big plus for me, anyway--a built in way to easily add small tweaks to the stylesheet.
Instiki is a really great compromise, especially for those who are technically inept or in a hurry. *However*, if the project is large one and especially if it's something you want to stick around for a while, go for one of the more feature-rich engines like MediaWiki or MoinMoin, both of which also have respectable markup. MediaWiki also has the advantage of "Everyone who knows what a wiki is knows how to use MediaWiki" thanks to Wikipedia.
I've also gotten a lot of use out of ZWiki over the last couple of years. It's a love-hate relationship, and I have no idea how easy it is to do zope on a Mac, but if you want to use the wiki in conjunction with a bigger content management system, and you're willing to put up with a lot of idiosyncratic (but pretty) nonsense, then Zwiki+Plone is worth considering.
Zwiki mostly uses Zope's "structured text", which is at once brilliant and really stupid. (It uses indentation to an insane degree, with results that are elegant but brittle, especially for web-form-based editing.) Zwiki also *almost* but not really does other forms of markup, like Restructured Text (which is very smart and powerful in its full version) and MoinMoin markup.
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Lyubov Berezina said 4:07AM on 12-16-2005
I vote for Instiki too (http://www.instiki.org)
Whether you use it at your local machine or installing it to the server host, it suits any surrounding. It's written with Ruby (which comes preinstalled on Mac) and can be installed and updated with just one command.
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Ryan said 10:50AM on 7-13-2005
Thanks so much for your comments, everyone (kukkurovaca's were excellent). Last night I spent some time playing around with Instiki and started visualizing ways in which it could be put to use. From a project management standpoint I would likely be overseeing the content and coordination of all participants while having someone a bit more technically savvy handle the details associated with keeping the back end running. That's not to say I'm not interested in details like robustness and the complexity of the feature set. I'll likely spend some time with Instiki so as to create a basic mockup demonstrating the power of a collaborative solution like Wiki, and if things go my way I'll be spending a lot more time with it (and other flavors, perhaps!). Either way, this has been very useful and I thank all of you once again.
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C.K. Sample, III said 12:07PM on 7-13-2005
Instatiki is cool for local single user use, but I don't think it will work for what I have in mind. Still, very nice Mac installation. I've been playing with MediaWiki a little bit. Need to hack on it more. I need something that will run more like Wikipedia does, albeit within an Intranet rather than on the full WWW.
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DarTar said 3:58AM on 7-15-2005
Hi, I've started writing a tutorial on how to install Wikka on a Mac. I'll post the URL as soon as the page is ready.
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DarTar said 12:00PM on 7-15-2005
Installing Wikka on your Mac:
http://wikka.jsnx.com/WikkaOnMacOSX
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