Good wiki software for internal company use?

Question

Hi,

I'm going to be starting up a company wiki for internal use. I'm wondering what existing wiki software people would recommend to accomplish this. Here's what I'm looking for:

• Open-source/free
• Ability to store pdf/word documents, and clicking on a link to it would automatically open the document
• Easy to use wysiwyg editor
• Relatively easy to deploy
• Discussion forums a bonus

I've played with TikiWiki on my own PC, and am pretty impressed. However, I wonder if something like MediaWiki might be better suited for this.

Any recommendations?

Answer 1

You may want to check out http://www.wikimatrix.org/ and consider the features that are most important for you.

Answer 2

Drupal is closer to a CMS than a wiki, but has many of the features that you're asking for and is more readily extensible if you change your mind about what you want. (I've often found that this will be the case, particularly as an organization or project grows.)

Answer 3

TWiki is a favorite. I used it last summer at the company I interned with and it seemed really powerful. It was able to coordinate media and text quite well among users.

It was even able to divide into what I perceived as "sub-nets" (not the official term), which were like logical divisions of the company. For example, we had one for HR, Engineering, etc.

Answer 4

We use MediaWiki internally and its done quite well so far. What I'd strongly recommend is creating a instructions page that comes up first saying where people should post for different parts of the company, different products, etc.

Second, create a page that dictates a style guide that posters should follow. Its easier to set these things in stone early, rather than having to run processing scripts later to clean up messy pages.

Answer 5

Hi,

it's been several years now, but at the last company I was working for I deployed pmwiki and it turned out really well.

It handles groups (like, a wiki for each department) quite well. Has good editing features, handles uploads well, and all sorts of neat stuff.

Creating new skins for it (a must in a business environment) is pretty trivial as well.

Hope this helps.

Answer 6

We have found that DekiWiki works well for us, and we had a very similar set of requirements.

Answer 7

I use or have used trac, mediawiki, and redmine. trac and redmine are more than just wiki's. MediaWiki is good but the upload/attachment of files was always clunky. With the proper plugins and LaTeX twiddling, I got mediawiki to generate quite nice PDF's directly from the wiki page via Latex. I like MediaWiki because since wikipedia is so big, you are guaranteed that updates will come, security fixes will be timely and most importantly, the process of upgrading will never render your existing wiki pages useless.

The bigger problems with all of the wiki's that I've seen and tried, and wiki's in general are:

• You really do want the pages stored in a database or SVN repository or similar.
• The more your organization grows, the more you end up needing fine grained access control of individual pages.
• Many people who don't even know how to use Microsoft Word effectively will still complain about wiki formatting and will still just upload .DOC files to the wiki files area.
• You can install a wiki on your intranet but you CAN'T force your coworkers to use it effectively.
• Wiki's are like a garden. If no one uses it or no one manages it, it becomes stale or overgrown with pages like weeds that are out of date.

Answer 8

I've used TWiki in the past on a big project with distributed teams and liked it a lot: worked really well, had plenty of plugins,... TWiki was great. But don't you know that TWiki is dead, long live Foswiki? Reasons and chronology of events are detailed in Why this fork? on Foswiki website. So I would maybe choose Foswiki but not Twiki.

I could tell you that I use frequently TWiki, Confluence, Trac and XWiki and they are my favorite wikis. Confluence isn't free so it doesn't meet your requirements. Trac doesn't seem to have the ease of use you're looking for. For XWiki, I don't know if Java is an option. So, instead of making hypothesis, I would recommend the already suggested website: http://www.wikimatrix.org too. Just start the Choice Wizard and follow the steps to the final comparison.

While reading your question, Alfresco came in my mind. Like Drupal, Alfresco is not really a wiki, it's an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system. But it has features you seem to be looking for, especially the integration with Office (you can open/modify/save documents from Office and share them transparently in Alfresco). Take a look at it, it's a really good and mature solution.

Answer 9

http://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki

Answer 10

There are two internal WIKIs that I've used in the past. I've had great success with both

1. Sharepoint WIKI
2. ScrewTurn.eu Open Source .NET WIKI