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#1 2008-04-11 15:37:30

DoctorOwl
Member
Registered: 2008-04-11
Posts: 1

Which free wiki to host product documentation - details reqs inside

Hi,

I work for a company that has a complicated and poorly documented software product.  I want to set up a wiki for the customers to use, and start filling it with information on how to complete common tasks and, perhaps, eventually even host the manuals we DO have so they can be updated over time in a way that is easy to search and access.

Each wiki page doesn't need to be complicated, but it almost certainly needs to have sections, bullet point instructions, and most importantly, screenshots following each of those steps that illustrate what the screen should look like.

Longer term, each page should be able to support its own screenshots with their own filenames.  Like, if one page has screenshots labelled 1, 2, 3, 4.jpg, then a user should be able to create another page with screenshots labelled 1, 2, 3, 4.jpg without affecting those previous files.  So far that seems the most steep requirement.

I'll run it on a windows machine, any configuration is fine though IIS+Postgres backend are preferred.  I'll take anything that really does what I want though.

So far I tried xwiki and mediawiki.  Xwiki seemed okay to start with, but after setting up a few pages and uploading the images, I discovered either I'd set it up wrongly or it doesn't work properly with Firefox or it was pretty broken and hard to deal with for uploaded files.  The images couldn't be deleted, at all, and that whole aspect of it didn't seem to work properly.

Mediawiki on the other hand I didn't get very far with at all... any kind of admin operation seems to require back-end hacking of the files and/or database, and I still couldn't find a way to properly delete wiki pages that had inappropriate content - it would just move them to the deleted items folder and there was no way to get rid of them from there.  I also think it wasn't going to handle repeated filename attachments across pages.

So ... any advice?  Naturally it has to be free, this company isn't going to pay for anything.

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#2 2008-04-11 20:25:20

cjtannu
Member
From: San Diego, CA
Registered: 2006-10-18
Posts: 129
Website

Re: Which free wiki to host product documentation - details reqs inside

DoctorOwl,

  Deki Wiki would be a perfect fit for what you are looking at doing.  A lot of companies use Deki Wiki for documentation include Mozilla who is in the process of moving their online developer documentation from MediaWiki to Deki Wiki.  Deki Wiki handles attachments on a per page basis, so you won't encounter issues with files named the same on separate pages.

Deki Wiki is open source and is downloaded more than 3,000 times a day.  We also have a very clean User interface and robust backend that allows you to integrate with applications and services.     

Another benefit is that Deki Wiki has the ability to integrate with SVN tools, bug tracking, and the ability to show source code next to executing code.  This increases clarity of your documentation when presenting it to the software's users. 

I encourage you to download our software from here: http://wiki.mindtouch.com/Deki_Wiki

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us: http://wiki.mindtouch.com/support


Corey Ganser
Customer Support Manager
MindTouch
Download for free now at http://wiki.mindtouch.com

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