Opinions on Wiki Software?

[mishalak]

So there are quite a few bits of personal wiki software out there. Anyone have an opinion about what works best? My intention is to create my own little wiki about word and name meanings. Because just a list of name meanings isn't as useful as a linked together set of pages that would allow me to navigate between names derived from each other and their reported meanings.

So far I've learned about TiddlyWiki, which sounds dead simple, though possibly not everything I'm looking for. Because a nice feature would be some sort of random 'page' viewing. Also looking at webpages generated using it has a weird functionality. Each new tiddler is added to the one you're viewing.

DoxWiki looks more like what I'm used to with each page kept separate. But I've yet to find much information about people's experience with it. Installing MediaWiki and WAMP server software seems like work and overkill to boot since I'd then have to learn how to do the administrator stuff and in theory this is only going to have one user on this one computer. And it would save the previous version every time I edited a page. I'm not sure if that is a feature or a bug in personal use.

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I've been very happy with Mediawiki, as the interface is very familiar, and its very easy to set up and no trouble to administer. But as you note doing it yourself needs a Linux box. There are various hosting services that will do that for you, and either charge a small fee or are free. I could set one up for you on www.johnbray.org.uk in 5 minutes if you wanted to try it out, and I'm sure site owner Alex would have no problem leaving it there for free, as its fannish.

I have used Tiddlywiki, but found the different interface distracting, not tried any others

[akicif.livejournal.com]

I find there's a lot to be said for PmWiki - very nice "out of the box" - well, tar file) - but eminently skinnable (these sites are both 100% wiki, although you wouldn't necessarily know it: SDSS (http://www.sdss.ac.uk) and the UK Access Management Federation (http://www.ukfederation.org.uk)), and there is a very active community (incredible numbers of add-on recipes and extensions, and a mailing list chock full o' clever people).

For WAMP, have you considered XAMPP? Again, "just works"....