Easy Wiki Installation? PmWiki, WikkaWiki and…

On my Mac, I use a software program, called VoodooPad which is a Wiki-based organizer that makes it a snap to collect, organize and otherwise document the random pieces of information that I accumulate as a search engine marketing manager, landing page consultant and general internet info junkie.

Wiki What?

The word “wiki” is reportedly taken from a Hawaiian word meaning “fast” and the goal in creating a Wiki is to create the simplest, easiest format for collaboration such that any user can access and modify content. Using my offline based Wiki, VoodoPad has been so useful, that I have begun exploring the use of self-hosted open-source online Wiki’s. What this would mean is setting up a user-editable website, something akin to what you see on Wikipedia.

There are numerous reasons that I have for creating a Wiki website. I have several “distributed” working groups, meaning a group of far-flung associates with whom I edit and share documents and resources, and a Wiki could be useful to speed collaboration. Most importantly, I have one potential group that would consist of hundreds of user/editors across the globe. My need is for a self-hosted Wiki solution. I want it to be “self-hosted” as the Wiki would be a destination in itself, and I want it on its own URL for ease of access (both for users and for the search engines).

Installing and configuring Wikis is a much more difficult task than I anticipated. I spent some time creating and configuring several Wiki platforms, most notably PmWikki and WikkaWiki. Both are easy to install if you have web hosting that uses “SimpleScripts,” which can also install TikiWikiCmsGroupware. (If your host uses Fantastico, it has two Wiki options: TikiWiki CMS/Groupware and PhpWiki.)

The Wiki installation went very quickly on SimpleScripts, taking less than 60 seconds. Likewise, my first attempts at creating content was incredibly easy. Of course, I am quite familiar with Wikipedia editing, editing on VoodooPad, as well as blogging, so perhaps it’s not really a surprise that it was easy.

However, the difficulty in using the Wiki’s became clear when I began to modify them. I wanted to add and change templates (also called “skins” or “themes”) and I needed functionality such as the ability to approve new members and quickly and easily change permissions and access. I was expecting to find something akin to what you would find when using WordPress such as, open-source plugins and themes that were ready for using and installation. To an extent, there were such things, but the documentation was sparse. And much of the added functionality required editing the CSS and .php pages and changing other parameters via FTP.

Is a Wiki Worth it?

It’s the type of thing that I could figure out given the time. I do code in html and have a smattering of php. It’s also the type of thing that my offshore programmers could do for me. But even so, the learning curve and the time spent figuring out what to install, how best to install it etc. is immense. I simply do not have the time to spend doing it, even if I was managing a programming team to set it up and configure it.

Interestingly enough, one thing that I discovered about Wiki’s is that the help and support material was surprisingly un-organized and difficult to navigate. All of the Wiki’s use their own software to organize their help functions. As you might imagine from user-generated content, it was slighly chaotic. As far as I could tell, there was no previously thought out categorization schemes and specific “how to do XYZ” were either completely missing, hard to find, or spread out over several pages.

After about 6 hours, spread out over the course of several days, I am going to put away the thought of creating an online Wiki. This is a “problem” where the effort required to find a solution is more of a hassle than living with the problem itself.