Selfhosted wiki/ documentation

iandk · June 2020

Hi,

I've been using Notion as a documentation/ wiki platform for the past months.
However, I'd like to give a self-hosted, browser-based solution a try.

Therefore I'm wondering which is your goto solution for a self-hosted wiki/ knowledge base.

I've tried BookStack, but I don't like the interface.

vyas · June 2020

You can try (In no particular order)

a. Typemill : https://themes.typemill.net/knowledge or https://themes.typemill.net/learn

b. Dokuwiki : Any recent template : https://www.dokuwiki.org/template:bootstrap3 or https://www.dokuwiki.org/template:bootie

c. Grav KB Theme : https://demo.hibbittsdesign.org/grav-learn2-git-sync/ (you might want to download the skeleton and customize to suit fit)

d. Datenstrom Yellow: https://datenstrom.se/yellow/help/how-to-make-a-wiki

Tried all of the above in different degrees, my preference is Typemill these days

Cheers,

verjin · June 2020

Try https://readthedocs.org its good and self-hosted.

InceptionHosting · June 2020

You could consider grav + the learn2 theme: demo https://demo.hibbittsdesign.org/grav-learn2-git-sync/intermediate

No database and all in markup.

elliotc · June 2020

I am using tiddlywiki+github+netlify.
However it can not edit directly on browser

CamoYoshi · June 2020

+1 for DokuWiki, very light on the resource usage, especially if you'll be the only one using it.

seriesn · June 2020

So,
I was recently hunting for something for internal documentation + QNA and minus confluence, nothing was working as expected, without complicating life.

Confluence felt too heavy.

Wordpress rescued me. Wedocs plugin+wedocs theme. Limiting the whole site with login only and using htpasswd for the basic.

angstrom · June 2020

Like a number of you, I'm also interested in the similarities and differences between wikis, knowledge bases, and documentation.

If one really wants a wiki, I would recommend going with dedicated wiki software. In this case, DokuWiki would be a good all-around choice.

One can use a wiki for a knowledge base or documentation, but often these latter two have more specialized requirements in terms of how a reader would interact with them, for example, in terms of export formats or how they appear on-screen. In addition, the development of knowledge bases and documentation tends to be more centrally controlled by a small group of people (often by a single author).

I tend to think of the difference between knowledge bases and documentation in terms of the range of topics covered. A knowledge base often covers a range of topics within a given domain: for example, the domain may be a hosting provider and the range of topics covers issues relating to the services that the provider offers. Documentation is detailed information about a given topic, for example, a manual about PHP would count as documentation.

I think that wikis are the most flexible format, because a wiki can also be used for a knowledge base or (manual-like) documentation. But if one really wants to make a knowledge base or to document something, it may be preferable to use more specialized knowledge-base or documentation software.

Ympker · June 2020

@seriesn said:
So,
I was recently hunting for something for internal documentation + QNA and minus confluence, nothing was working as expected, without complicating life.

Confluence felt too heavy.

Wordpress rescued me. Wedocs plugin+wedocs theme. Limiting the whole site with login only and using htpasswd for the basic.

WordPress has some solid Wiki options out there.

Unixfy · June 2020

My recommendation will always be Atlassian Confluence. I've tried all of the free solutions: WikiJS, Mediawiki, Dokuwiki, Bookstack.. but I am always going back to Confluence. The ecosystem, features and support are unmatched, in my opinion.

FlamingSpaceJunk · June 2020

Dokuwiki is the go to for wikis. It's simple, has lots of plugins, and I like the wiki syntax.

For documentation...

MkDocs is a nice turnkey solution.

Hugo is a static site generator which could be used to create docs from markdown with the correct template.

@vyas said:
a. Typemill : https://themes.typemill.net/knowledge or https://themes.typemill.net/learn

Typemill looks interesting. Thanks for posting!

c. Grav KB Theme : https://demo.hibbittsdesign.org/grav-learn2-git-sync/ (you might want to download the skeleton and customize to suit fit)

Grav is really nice. It can be kind of sluggish when it's cold though.

willie · June 2020

I've used gitit which is a bit heavyweight, but cool in that it uses git as the revision backend, so it can easily be a distributed wiki. For very lightweight but code control oriented, there is fossil. In between is mediawiki which is very widely deployed and configurable. I wouldn't bother with the others, though I've used a few, moinmoin (easy to set up but rudimentary) and a home-rolled one.

hey · June 2020

if your documentation had a lot images wordpress, either ways wordpress too.

for my own notes I prefer mardown, renderer using mkdocs.

vyas · June 2020

Selfhosted wiki/ documentation

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