Free Intranet website to share data across the organization

Question

Hi,

In our organization we don’t have any intranet website to share the data/information across the organization.

The information could be:

HR Related Information [E.g.: HR Policies, Company Events etc., New Joiner’s Information etc. etc.]

Application Developments Related Information [E.g.: How to build a program on Catching, Lucene Search etc. etc.]

So would you please suggest any free source software package which is built on Windows that will serve the above purpose? Please also provide the reference link.

Many Thanks,

Regards.

Anusha.

Answer 1

This is my Favorite:

Trac

It has bug tracking, WIki, Message Board

and it is free.

if you want a non free solution - Sharepoint 2007 might be a good tool.

Answer 2

This probably belongs on ServerFault, but you can use Windows SharePoint Services for such a task. If it becomes something widely used that you want to invest money into then look into Sharepoint Server for a more robust solution.

Answer 3

There are a lot of options: You can use a CMS like Joomla or Drupal You can use a Wiki tool like MediaWiki or Dekiwiki You can use SharePoint server ( basic version comes free with Windows Server 2003 - check me on this)

You can see an exhaustive list here: For CMS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

For Wikis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_software

Personal Recommendation and Experience I used Joomla and DekiWiki for at 2 companies, and tried a bunch of other ones: Drupal, TikiWiki, MediaWiki, Cayahoga, Xoop, etc.

I like DekiWiki the most - for the ease of use, extensibility, features. It is open source and they have a free and GPLed edition, but if you need help - you can always fall back on their paid support. ( They were also number one project on SourceForge at some point). They have an Enterprise version, but to be honest after using Community version for almost a year in a environment with about 150 users - I really don't see the need to upgrade.

Also one more thing: I used these tools in big corp. environments - and while for personal use I like RedMine ( redmine.org) , a lot of users - find DekiWiki the most easy to understand and use.

Also DekiWiki search is based on Lucene.

Answer 4

Windows Sharepoint Services, as stated, is free and for what it does at that price, a very good option.

SharePoint Server, as stated, is not free, and, IMHO, overkill and way overpriced much of the time for small org needs.

For free tools, I'd really consider getting PHP running on the Windows Server. That will open up your option list immensely to include all sorts of open source WIKIs, Bug tracking systems, CMS products, Blogging engines, etc.