6 ms·

What are good options for replacing Confluence? I looked at available open source wiki's maybe 1 or 2 years ago and there seems to be nothing that was as easy t

by new299 9y ago

What are good options for replacing Confluence? I looked at available open source wiki's maybe 1 or 2 years ago and there seems to be nothing that was as easy to use for non-technical people (which would include having WYSIWYG style editing). Are there any good options now?

Karunamon 9y ago
MediaWiki now has a decent WYSIWYG editor (you can demo it on wikipedia), but IMO, it's still way too unfriendly for people that don't know their way around markup language. Confluence has a nice balance of ease when you need it and flexibility when you don't.
- new299 9y ago
  Shame, sounds like it's the only option. It would be nice to see some competition in this area and wiki's are a great collaboration tool in interdisciplinary environments.
mgkimsal 9y ago
A wiki that allows referencing to a ticketing system - the way you can tie confluence docs to jira - is, imo, one of the unique tie-ins I've not seen replicated in any other system. Check list of items in confluence? Click and ... bam - tickets where you can track discussion, media, code, etc. Link back to the definition doc, and the doc has a status view of the ticket(s). I've wondered if they've got some patent on this which has prevented other folks from replicating it. Or... is everyone else so focused on "disparate tools that talk to each other" that this tie in has never made it on anyone's radar? If this was in redmine (for example) - having the wiki be aware of the ticket system - that would be great.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  The JIRA <-> Stash integration is also nice. Create a bug in JIRA and reference a release tag (which integrates with Stash), create a branch to fix it right from the ticket, ticket shows when that branch gets a PR and is eventually merged. It's possible to e.g. close the ticket when the bug fix gets merged too.
- andrewl 9y ago
  The FogBugz project management system has pretty good integration between its case system and its wikis.
- Drdrdrq 9y ago
  Afaik in GitLab Wiki you can mention issues to link to them (same as in merge requests and elsewhere). Is that what you had in mind or is the integration in Confluence deeper?
- Gibheer 9y ago
  It does work in redmine[1] and that for years and the same as in github and Jira, using the #XXXX notation. [1]: http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineTextFormattingMarkdown http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineTextForm...
  - mgkimsal 9y ago
    That does not let me create something from the wiki, only reference issues that already exist. EDIT: Specifically, allowing people who are primarily text driven to be reading a doc/wiki page, right click a sentence or phrase, then create an issue right from that screen, without leaving, and have them linked back and forth, is... seemingly obvious, yet I've not seen it done elsewhere. Someone else pointed out gitlab - I've not tried it there yet.
    - derintendant 9y ago
      There IS a Add-on for exactly that use case: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/net.seibertmedia.confluence.conjira/server/overview https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/net.seibertmedia.c... Disclaimer: I work for the Add-on developer
      - mgkimsal 9y ago
        For redmine? The creation of jira tickets from confluence already seemed useful enough for my use cases - not sure that I'd need a plugin to do more, but interesting to see that you've got something (and to know others want it). My original post was pointing out that this wiki/ticket connection is something I've only ever seen in jira/confluence, not in anything else.
- Game_Ender 9y ago
  Phabricator has the wiki, code review, and ticketing systems tightly integrated. It's a clean, fast, and free alternative to JIRA. https://www.phacility.com https://www.phacility.com
  - cyberferret 9y ago
    I'm a long time JIRA user who started using Phabricator last year for a side project (that has now become my main project). I didn't really have a major problem with JIRA, but we self hosted them on AWS, and the resource requirements of JIRA, Confluence, Fisheye etc. meant that we had to set up separate instances to stop them crashing all the time. Phabricator gives us the same functionality as all the Atlassian tools I mentioned above, but on one virtual Digital Ocean $10/mo server. It is much more reliable, and has a better, much more integrated UI. Faster too - MUCH faster. I can really tell when I go back to JIRA to log a bug and have to wait 5 to 10 seconds for a form to build itself and load.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      What the hell are people doing to their Jira instances that make them load that slowly? I've got a fairly busy instance at $dayJob with hundreds of users, 10+ addons, and some automation scripting, and it runs as fast as any webapp can be expected to. There was no explicit performance tuning happening here, either. 1 instance of Jira talking to 1 instance of MySQL behind 1 instance of nginx on a modest VM. I'm not doubting you, but this is a common enough complaint that I assume there's a footgun lying around that I've managed to luckily step over.
      - mgkimsal 9y ago
        I dunno, but the hosted version has (imo) always been rather slow. It's felt faster in the last year or so, but definitely slower than most other tools I use (mostly redmine these days when not in jira).
unethical_ban 9y ago
It's interesting. Confluence's "user friendly" editing and interlinking is a weakness for those who wish to have a clean hierarchy and well-defined document layout. Before our company started using Confluence, our team ran a Dokuwiki server. FOSS, can hook into AD, many plugins and extensions available. Worth looking at... yes, it does have Markdown based editing, though it has a rich editor to assist. EDIT: Apparently they have a WYSIWYG plugin. Haven't tested it.
- new299 9y ago
  I mean the problem is that doesn't always go down well in an interdisciplinary environment. Generally Markup works well for coders, but if they're non-coders it can sometimes be a challenge to get people using it I've found.
wordsmattr338 9y ago
A dialed in README.md in every repo is all I want. It can link me all over Wikipedia style as needed, but I want the manual to come with my $ git clone and not have to fart around in some other document repo.
SomeHacker44 9y ago
Confluence is pretty good. It's better than MediaWiki, the Wikis built into GitLab (or GitHub if that's your thing), etc. I dislike that it doesn't support MarkDown as a native language, but it does have a solid WYSIWYG. I'd say Confluence is the best of their products and the one that I'd be most likely to use again in the future. I've also used their CI solution at another company and I found that one easier to use than most of the other open source ones, although I haven't tried some of the newer ones in the last few years or GitLab's CI integration.
- vacri 9y ago
  Confluence used to support a markup language, but they discontinued it for maintainability reasons, as they were also supporting WYSIWYG.
psteinweber 9y ago
It probably matters highly on the use-case, but for us (documentation): Dropbox Paper. Linking between documents is super easy (as opposed to similar "low tech" solutions like Google Docs, Markdown files, etc), and features are sufficient for our use. Due to its simplicity, I find it one of the most exciting products recently. (Not affiliated whatsoever)

by new299 9y ago

Karunamon 9y ago

MediaWiki now has a decent WYSIWYG editor (you can demo it on wikipedia), but IMO, it's still way too unfriendly for people that don't know their way around markup language. Confluence has a nice balance of ease when you need it and flexibility when you don't.

new299 9y ago
Shame, sounds like it's the only option. It would be nice to see some competition in this area and wiki's are a great collaboration tool in interdisciplinary environments.

mgkimsal 9y ago

A wiki that allows referencing to a ticketing system - the way you can tie confluence docs to jira - is, imo, one of the unique tie-ins I've not seen replicated in any other system. Check list of items in confluence? Click and ... bam - tickets where you can track discussion, media, code, etc. Link back to the definition doc, and the doc has a status view of the ticket(s). I've wondered if they've got some patent on this which has prevented other folks from replicating it. Or... is everyone else so focused on "disparate tools that talk to each other" that this tie in has never made it on anyone's radar? If this was in redmine (for example) - having the wiki be aware of the ticket system - that would be great.

seanp2k2 9y ago
The JIRA <-> Stash integration is also nice. Create a bug in JIRA and reference a release tag (which integrates with Stash), create a branch to fix it right from the ticket, ticket shows when that branch gets a PR and is eventually merged. It's possible to e.g. close the ticket when the bug fix gets merged too.
andrewl 9y ago
The FogBugz project management system has pretty good integration between its case system and its wikis.
Drdrdrq 9y ago
Afaik in GitLab Wiki you can mention issues to link to them (same as in merge requests and elsewhere). Is that what you had in mind or is the integration in Confluence deeper?
Gibheer 9y ago
It does work in redmine[1] and that for years and the same as in github and Jira, using the #XXXX notation. [1]: http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineTextFormattingMarkdown http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineTextForm...
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  That does not let me create something from the wiki, only reference issues that already exist. EDIT: Specifically, allowing people who are primarily text driven to be reading a doc/wiki page, right click a sentence or phrase, then create an issue right from that screen, without leaving, and have them linked back and forth, is... seemingly obvious, yet I've not seen it done elsewhere. Someone else pointed out gitlab - I've not tried it there yet.
  - derintendant 9y ago
    There IS a Add-on for exactly that use case: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/net.seibertmedia.confluence.conjira/server/overview https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/net.seibertmedia.c... Disclaimer: I work for the Add-on developer
    - mgkimsal 9y ago
      For redmine? The creation of jira tickets from confluence already seemed useful enough for my use cases - not sure that I'd need a plugin to do more, but interesting to see that you've got something (and to know others want it). My original post was pointing out that this wiki/ticket connection is something I've only ever seen in jira/confluence, not in anything else.
Game_Ender 9y ago
Phabricator has the wiki, code review, and ticketing systems tightly integrated. It's a clean, fast, and free alternative to JIRA. https://www.phacility.com https://www.phacility.com
- cyberferret 9y ago
  I'm a long time JIRA user who started using Phabricator last year for a side project (that has now become my main project). I didn't really have a major problem with JIRA, but we self hosted them on AWS, and the resource requirements of JIRA, Confluence, Fisheye etc. meant that we had to set up separate instances to stop them crashing all the time. Phabricator gives us the same functionality as all the Atlassian tools I mentioned above, but on one virtual Digital Ocean $10/mo server. It is much more reliable, and has a better, much more integrated UI. Faster too - MUCH faster. I can really tell when I go back to JIRA to log a bug and have to wait 5 to 10 seconds for a form to build itself and load.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    What the hell are people doing to their Jira instances that make them load that slowly? I've got a fairly busy instance at $dayJob with hundreds of users, 10+ addons, and some automation scripting, and it runs as fast as any webapp can be expected to. There was no explicit performance tuning happening here, either. 1 instance of Jira talking to 1 instance of MySQL behind 1 instance of nginx on a modest VM. I'm not doubting you, but this is a common enough complaint that I assume there's a footgun lying around that I've managed to luckily step over.
    - mgkimsal 9y ago
      I dunno, but the hosted version has (imo) always been rather slow. It's felt faster in the last year or so, but definitely slower than most other tools I use (mostly redmine these days when not in jira).

unethical_ban 9y ago

It's interesting. Confluence's "user friendly" editing and interlinking is a weakness for those who wish to have a clean hierarchy and well-defined document layout. Before our company started using Confluence, our team ran a Dokuwiki server. FOSS, can hook into AD, many plugins and extensions available. Worth looking at... yes, it does have Markdown based editing, though it has a rich editor to assist. EDIT: Apparently they have a WYSIWYG plugin. Haven't tested it.

new299 9y ago
I mean the problem is that doesn't always go down well in an interdisciplinary environment. Generally Markup works well for coders, but if they're non-coders it can sometimes be a challenge to get people using it I've found.

wordsmattr338 9y ago

A dialed in README.md in every repo is all I want. It can link me all over Wikipedia style as needed, but I want the manual to come with my $ git clone and not have to fart around in some other document repo.

SomeHacker44 9y ago

Confluence is pretty good. It's better than MediaWiki, the Wikis built into GitLab (or GitHub if that's your thing), etc. I dislike that it doesn't support MarkDown as a native language, but it does have a solid WYSIWYG. I'd say Confluence is the best of their products and the one that I'd be most likely to use again in the future. I've also used their CI solution at another company and I found that one easier to use than most of the other open source ones, although I haven't tried some of the newer ones in the last few years or GitLab's CI integration.

vacri 9y ago
Confluence used to support a markup language, but they discontinued it for maintainability reasons, as they were also supporting WYSIWYG.

psteinweber 9y ago

It probably matters highly on the use-case, but for us (documentation): Dropbox Paper. Linking between documents is super easy (as opposed to similar "low tech" solutions like Google Docs, Markdown files, etc), and features are sufficient for our use. Due to its simplicity, I find it one of the most exciting products recently. (Not affiliated whatsoever)