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Tangentially related: if you’re starting anew, Wiki.js is a nice modern take: Markdown, auto commit and push to git remote, responsive, visually pleasing, etc.

by oefrha 6y ago

Tangentially related: if you’re starting anew, Wiki.js is a nice modern take: Markdown, auto commit and push to git remote, responsive, visually pleasing, etc. all out of box, no need for heaps of plugins. https://wiki.js.org/ https://wiki.js.org/

electricEmu 6y ago
Seriously. wiki.js was easy to setup, simple to run, and actually works on mobile devices. Markdown files are published to an external git repository. I am happy with wiki.js. It's much less maintenance than Dokuwiki.
- geppetto 6y ago
  Dokuwiki is fast and bloat free and works great on mobile browsers since 2012. I've been running it on the same single board computer since 2013 (good luck running Wordpress or Nextcloud on that hardware!). Install is super easy - linux-apache-php and no DB so it runs everywhere - and it hardly needs maintenance(all I do is upgrade every now and then when a new version is released). It's theme/template may be dull but it's simple, clean and not outdated yet. Moreover it's a wiki, not a blog so... who cares? Content is all that matters! That said I like choice be it for themes or wiki apps!
  - electricEmu 6y ago
    Hardly needs maintenance at all was not my experience. My primary driver for seeking out a new wiki was because of how difficult testing and managing Dokuwiki can be. Updates to the main wiki are infrequent, plugins are often abandoned, and the setup, running, and maintained of the wiki is non-trivial. I recommended wiki.js is easier to run, uses markdown by default, backs up data as flat files in a git repository, and does not require many resources either. Plus, there's a supported Docker image that works out of the box. There's no problem with choice. Dokuwiki is frequently recommended to new users and wonder if that wiki is an appropriate recommendation. I explicitly would suggest wiki.js or something similar to someone not already running Dokuwiki.
    - geppetto 6y ago
      I've never had an issue in 7 years while upgrading (unpack a tgz file and minor cleaning) so my experience is different. Backup is not an issue because all pages are just text files I can rsync anywhere. Plugins can be updated clicking a button in the admin panel and infrequent updates to the main wiki is a feature to me while all is working fine. In the end it depends of what you use it for and right now I trust this solution and I'm confident it will keep working in the future. I've looked into wiki.js and its really nice but I doubt I could run it on my hardware and I'd have to install node and Postgres (docker is not my thing, I'm old school!). Anyway the real deal breaker to me is that mathjax support is not there yet and I need formulas.
      - electricEmu 6y ago
        Dokuwiki will function perfectly for some specific use-cases. The file format and plugins are not something that should be glossed over with Dokuwiki though. Yes, it's possible to rsync flat files from Dokuwiki to somewhere else, but Dokuwiki files are stored in a unique format. Moving files from one machine to another does not make the format more ubiquitous or easier to parse. The amount of work required to migrate data out of Dokuwiki may be trivial to some very experienced developers but would be neigh impossible for greener developers. The plugin ecosystem of Dokuwiki is reminiscent of Jenkins. Dokuwiki plugins can do anything, but few seem to do them well or without quirks. Some require updating the CSS and HTML template for a theme. Others require modifying the host system. Few plugins are active, modern, and useful to more than a subset of specialized scenarios. The mobile editors are truly an exercise in frustration for even tech-savvy users. Dokuwiki is great if you have specialized needs and accept the file format costs. The specialized markup language and plugin ecosystem are a type lock-in that should really be stated more up-front to new and perspective Dokuwiki users. I do recommend Dokuwiki for very particular and specific needs, but not as a general purpose wiki for "most people".
bityard 6y ago
I'm a long time user of Dokuwiki. I ran across wiki.js a while back and it showed potential. My main issues with it at the time were: * Had an overall half-bakedness about it. Like, there are features in the UI that sound cool but when you click on them it says "sorry, not implemented yet." ...Then why even have the button? * Using it, the UI felt "heavy" and a bit sluggish in a way that I can't quite quantify. * Having to set the page title and URL separately is weird. I think this is an artifact of designing it more like a document repository than a wiki. Because in a wiki, the URL _is_ the title of the page. I remember linking between pages being a little obnoxious somehow, but I don't remember the details. * You can have WYSIWYG HTML pages or Markdown pages. You cannot switch a page between the two. Which is totally and completely crazy. Either design your WYSIWYG editor to handle Markdown so that you _can_ switch between them or settle on one or the other.
- oefrha 6y ago
  It’s a big undertaking for a one man open source project, especially considering v2 is a rewrite. I believe all necessary functionality is already implemented in v2 so it makes sense to push it out of the door UI-wise and fill in additional features later. Conversion between Markdown and WYSIWYG is planned[1] although I couldn’t care less. It’s not like the Markdown editor doesn’t have buttons for non-technical users to push; they’ve been pushing buttons to generate BBCode just fine for two decades. [1] https://wiki.js.org/feedback/p/switching-from-an-editor-to-another-on-an-existing-page https://wiki.js.org/feedback/p/switching-from-an-editor-to-a...
  - rhizome 6y ago
    >v2 is a rewrite I've got half a mind to make an "our incredible journey" blog with all of the software that has uttered these famous last words.
slim 6y ago
Dokuwiki stores markup as is in text files. No database needed

by oefrha 6y ago

electricEmu 6y ago

Seriously. wiki.js was easy to setup, simple to run, and actually works on mobile devices. Markdown files are published to an external git repository. I am happy with wiki.js. It's much less maintenance than Dokuwiki.

geppetto 6y ago
Dokuwiki is fast and bloat free and works great on mobile browsers since 2012. I've been running it on the same single board computer since 2013 (good luck running Wordpress or Nextcloud on that hardware!). Install is super easy - linux-apache-php and no DB so it runs everywhere - and it hardly needs maintenance(all I do is upgrade every now and then when a new version is released). It's theme/template may be dull but it's simple, clean and not outdated yet. Moreover it's a wiki, not a blog so... who cares? Content is all that matters! That said I like choice be it for themes or wiki apps!
- electricEmu 6y ago
  Hardly needs maintenance at all was not my experience. My primary driver for seeking out a new wiki was because of how difficult testing and managing Dokuwiki can be. Updates to the main wiki are infrequent, plugins are often abandoned, and the setup, running, and maintained of the wiki is non-trivial. I recommended wiki.js is easier to run, uses markdown by default, backs up data as flat files in a git repository, and does not require many resources either. Plus, there's a supported Docker image that works out of the box. There's no problem with choice. Dokuwiki is frequently recommended to new users and wonder if that wiki is an appropriate recommendation. I explicitly would suggest wiki.js or something similar to someone not already running Dokuwiki.
  - geppetto 6y ago
    I've never had an issue in 7 years while upgrading (unpack a tgz file and minor cleaning) so my experience is different. Backup is not an issue because all pages are just text files I can rsync anywhere. Plugins can be updated clicking a button in the admin panel and infrequent updates to the main wiki is a feature to me while all is working fine. In the end it depends of what you use it for and right now I trust this solution and I'm confident it will keep working in the future. I've looked into wiki.js and its really nice but I doubt I could run it on my hardware and I'd have to install node and Postgres (docker is not my thing, I'm old school!). Anyway the real deal breaker to me is that mathjax support is not there yet and I need formulas.
    - electricEmu 6y ago
      Dokuwiki will function perfectly for some specific use-cases. The file format and plugins are not something that should be glossed over with Dokuwiki though. Yes, it's possible to rsync flat files from Dokuwiki to somewhere else, but Dokuwiki files are stored in a unique format. Moving files from one machine to another does not make the format more ubiquitous or easier to parse. The amount of work required to migrate data out of Dokuwiki may be trivial to some very experienced developers but would be neigh impossible for greener developers. The plugin ecosystem of Dokuwiki is reminiscent of Jenkins. Dokuwiki plugins can do anything, but few seem to do them well or without quirks. Some require updating the CSS and HTML template for a theme. Others require modifying the host system. Few plugins are active, modern, and useful to more than a subset of specialized scenarios. The mobile editors are truly an exercise in frustration for even tech-savvy users. Dokuwiki is great if you have specialized needs and accept the file format costs. The specialized markup language and plugin ecosystem are a type lock-in that should really be stated more up-front to new and perspective Dokuwiki users. I do recommend Dokuwiki for very particular and specific needs, but not as a general purpose wiki for "most people".

bityard 6y ago

I'm a long time user of Dokuwiki. I ran across wiki.js a while back and it showed potential. My main issues with it at the time were: * Had an overall half-bakedness about it. Like, there are features in the UI that sound cool but when you click on them it says "sorry, not implemented yet." ...Then why even have the button? * Using it, the UI felt "heavy" and a bit sluggish in a way that I can't quite quantify. * Having to set the page title and URL separately is weird. I think this is an artifact of designing it more like a document repository than a wiki. Because in a wiki, the URL _is_ the title of the page. I remember linking between pages being a little obnoxious somehow, but I don't remember the details. * You can have WYSIWYG HTML pages or Markdown pages. You cannot switch a page between the two. Which is totally and completely crazy. Either design your WYSIWYG editor to handle Markdown so that you _can_ switch between them or settle on one or the other.

oefrha 6y ago
It’s a big undertaking for a one man open source project, especially considering v2 is a rewrite. I believe all necessary functionality is already implemented in v2 so it makes sense to push it out of the door UI-wise and fill in additional features later. Conversion between Markdown and WYSIWYG is planned[1] although I couldn’t care less. It’s not like the Markdown editor doesn’t have buttons for non-technical users to push; they’ve been pushing buttons to generate BBCode just fine for two decades. [1] https://wiki.js.org/feedback/p/switching-from-an-editor-to-another-on-an-existing-page https://wiki.js.org/feedback/p/switching-from-an-editor-to-a...
- rhizome 6y ago
  >v2 is a rewrite I've got half a mind to make an "our incredible journey" blog with all of the software that has uttered these famous last words.

slim 6y ago

Dokuwiki stores markup as is in text files. No database needed