Recently, I found myself in the market for a wiki.

To be honest, I wasn’t completely sold on the idea that wikis actually worked. The more
I read and researched, I found that a wiki, when done right, can be a powerful source for distributing information. It is a great way to build an information resource, and to extend a community of people who are helpful by nature.

I’m not a huge wikipedia fan (it does have it’s flaws), but I do find myself there sometimes looking up odd bits of information that are hard to find elsewhere. Like a list of free vector graphics editors, or where the “more cowbell” phrase came from.

So my first thought was to use MediaWiki (php based/opensource), the same software that powers wikipedia. I mean, it’s clear that it works; it’s running the largest wiki on the web. It’s scalable (see point number one :) It has a pretty wide userbase and community, which is very helpful for getting updates and help along the way. At the time, it was really the only wiki software that I knew about.
That was my first issue with MediaWiki: it’s all I knew. While that might be a good thing for some (narrows down the choices to make selecting a good option easier), for me, I like to do way too much research to find the product/service that fits my particular needs. I’m the kind of guy that actually likes to go and listen to knowledgeable salespeople in the stores try to sell me on something, just so I can learn new terminology and see what features people are looking for.

So I went googling for more wiki alternatives, and I came across WikiMatrix. It was perfect for what I needed. It gave a nice comparison chart of all the different wiki software packages that were out there and even had a handy dandy wiki wizard that asks you a few simple questions that help you decide which wiki was right for your perosnal/business needs!

The wizard helped me learn about features that I didn’t know were possible with wikis (like a WYSIWYG editor) and features that some wikis didn’t have that I thought were must have features (like a stored revision history so you can revert back in case of distructive edits).

Some things to consider when you are selecting a wiki for your site:

• what database will store the wiki pages? mysql, postresql, flatfile, microsoft access
• how much do you want to pay? open source only, support fees ok, paid licensed products preferred?
• linking structure preferred? simple URLs, query strings OK, CamelCase
• how active is the project? is it being actively developed, is there a strong userbase for peer support, is the project stable, but not being developed anymore. Read the member mailing lists for each, check the changelog to see how often new releases and security patches are deployed.
• Who can edit your wiki? Do you want the traditional open editing ability where anybody can edit any article, or do you want approved authors or user registration.
• Ease of installation and upgrading. Some wikis may require shell access (or even root access) to install. Some may require knowledge of php, manipulating mysql databases, and others may have easy to follow installation and upgrade procedures. How comfortable you are in handling technical stuff will sort of shape which one you should select.

I personally ended up going with PmWiki.

While it didn’t have some of the features I thought I might want (like WYSIWYG editing for non technical authors with great information to contribute), it did shine brightly in many other areas.

A lead developer who is passionate about the software. A changelog that almost reads like a daily stardate update from Captain Kirk. Frequent and succinct :) The frequency of the updates might scare some, but for me, once I realized how easy it was to upgrade from one version to the next without destroying your live wiki (or putting the site in maintenance mode for hours/days), I grew to love the constant updates.

PmWiki is easy to “skin” so it can match an existing site’s “look and feel”, and it has a lot of user contributed plugins (called Cookbook Recipes), that extend the already deep featureset of the software.

There are lots of wiki software packages out there, and wikimatrix is a great way to check them all out, kick the tires, and see which one fits your wikineeds. For me, PmWiki was the way to go. It was “free” under the General Public License (GPL), but I always contribute to free projects that make my life easier :)