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All Aboard the Wiki Bus! (or, finding the right wiki software)
At Ushahidi we're using Basecamp for a lot of project management activities. It's a good tool, but we've found that it just doesn't cut it as a knowledge repository. We knew we were going to have to find a wiki engine to use for our knowledgebase, but didn't realize how many options (good and bad) that there are in the wild world web.
Wiki Software or Hosted Wiki?
The first thing you have to do is decide if you are going to host your own wiki, or have it hosted for you. Regardless of which way you're going, I recommend you work your way through the wizard on WikiMatrix to help narrow down your options.
For our needs, we wanted to have more control, so we went with the self-hosted choices. Since we're a technology startup, we have the internal resources to manage this. If you don't have anyone who can help you setup, customize and manage your wiki, I would suggest you go with a hosted option.
Our Choice
Though we were sorely tempted to go with hosted wiki SocialText (after Ross Mayfield kindly offered us hosting), we really wanted to run our own software. We narrowed the field down to three possibilities:
MediaWiki - The same engine that runs Wikipedia, and one of the most widely used wiki software packages in use. In the end, a couple of us had used it in the past and decided against it due to complexity and customization. We wanted a smaller swiss-army knife.
TikiWiki - After seeing the community around this wiki software we were really excited. It looked perfect! However, it was a HUGE pain to try to install and setup. After realizing we were spending way to much time on it, we canned it.
DocuWiki - [OUR CHOICE] A simple and highly usable wiki. Nothing to crazy or complicated and easy enough to customize for our needs. After a quick installation earlier this week, we've been off and running. We're starting to migrate the discussions and documents that work better on the wiki to it now.
Needless to say, everyone's mileage will vary when it comes to choosing the right type of wiki software. If I were running a hosted wiki, I think we would go with either SocialText or PBwiki.
[image courtesy of Cogdogblog on Flickr]
Comments
Thank you for sharing your experience & wiki matrix site!
Thank you for sharing your wiki selection experience! I'll be looking for a wiki or other kind of collaboration tool in the next few months and I will definitely use the wikimatrix site when I have a better idea of our needs for the project. Thanks for the great tip.