Personal Wikis are Totally Awesome

**Confuseling** · 13-Jun-2009, 10:26

I just installed MoinMoin.

DesktopEdition - MoinMoin

It isn't especially fast, but it looks like it will be *incredibly* useful for organising my university notes - and it's much easier to install / edit than I expected.

Does anyone have experience with such contraptions?

**hendersj** · 13-Jun-2009, 11:02

On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:36:01 +0000, Confuseling wrote:

> I just installed MoinMoin.
>
> 'DesktopEdition - MoinMoin' (http://moinmo.in/DesktopEdition)
>
> It isn't especially fast, but it looks like it will be *incredibly*
> useful for organising my university notes - and it's much easier to
> install / edit than I expected.
>
> Does anyone have experience with such contraptions?

I played around with one that was text-based a few years ago; these days
I tend to use Tomboy (which has some wiki-like capabilities, but I also
tend to use it more like a collection of sticky notes rather than as a
wiki).

Jim

**TimButterworth** · 13-Jun-2009, 11:46

I have been using mediawiki. I have it set up on an extra PC I use as a general purpose server at my home. Setting it up was not to difficult. The quick search and organizational capability make it great for quickly accessing info that I may have not needed for a while. I went with a web based version so I could easily access it from my desktop, laptop, VPN from my netbook, etc.

The centralized approach also made it easy to keep it backed up. Before I was always playing the, what machine did I type those notes on ??? long ago, or the man my hard drive died when is the last time I backed this up and what all did I loose.

It does not use a lot of resources so you could run it on a laptop and prevent external access to it with the firewall.

I use Knotes for quick short reminders and such but not for any long term storage or aggregation of info.

**Confuseling** · 13-Jun-2009, 18:23

I played around with Zim as a more sophisticated version of Tomboy. It looked good - if I were just doing shopping lists and such, I'd probably stick to it. Not sure it's in the Suse repos, but you could probably wing it.

Mediawiki looked interesting too. Can you run it in a 'desktop' mode too? (ie without a dedicated server?)

**hendersj** · 13-Jun-2009, 21:31

On Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:26:02 +0000, Confuseling wrote:

> Mediawiki looked interesting too. Can you run it in a 'desktop' mode
> too? (ie without a dedicated server?)

Not really, as far as I know. It needs the database back end (or at
least did the last time I looked at it, which wasn't more than a year
ago).

Jim

**TimButterworth** · 13-Jun-2009, 23:22

Mediawiki uses a MySQL database to store its contents and Apache to host it so you will need to install LAMP.

You could set it up in a single user configuration by configuring Apache to use the loop back IP 127.0.0.1. This will only allow access only from the local machine. I would also keep Apache and MySQL blocked on the firewall. For a single user it does not use to many resources.

One advantage of this over a strictly desktop version is that if you are working on a group project and wanted to share access to a few other folks this can easily be achieved by re-configuring Apache with your current IP Address and allowing their IP addresses to access it through the firewall. So they can easily access it with there web browser.

One limitation to allowing other to access Mediawiki is that it does not have granular control to restrict view access to only specific sites. Atleast nothing I saw when I was setting it up. Some of the other CMS's do but this is the only one I have been using.

**hendersj** · 14-Jun-2009, 10:30

On Sun, 14 Jun 2009 05:26:01 +0000, TimButterworth wrote:

> Mediawiki uses a MySQL database to store its contents and Apache to host
> it so you will need to install LAMP.

Yeah, that kind puts it outside the realm of a "personal wiki", IMO.
Something like "instiki" would fall more in that category.

Jim

**Confuseling** · 14-Jun-2009, 12:07

I suppose it's personal as long as you are the only one writing on it, however it's implemented.

Definitely not a Desktop wiki though.

The nice thing about MoinMoin in Desktop mode is the ease of installation. You literally just unpack the archive, run a python script, then point your browser at it.

I've separated out the system stuff and put it in /opt, and put the wiki itself in my home directory, but this isn't strictly necessary.

Really impressed.

**hendersj** · 14-Jun-2009, 12:27

On Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:16:01 +0000, Confuseling wrote:

> I suppose it's personal as long as you are the only one writing on it,
> however it's implemented.
>
> Definitely not a Desktop wiki though.

A fair distinction. :-)

> The nice thing about MoinMoin in Desktop mode is the ease of
> installation. You literally just unpack the archive, run a python
> script, then point your browser at it.

That's cool. Instiki was like that as well.

Jim

**TimButterworth** · 15-Jun-2009, 07:09

tiddlywiki looks nice. No installation is required everything is run out of an HTML file. It is also very portable as it can run on a USB drive. There seems to be a nice amount of addons as well like adding a notebook look and feel.

TiddlyWiki - a reusable non-linear personal web notebook