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View Full Version : How to Set Up a Wiki



jseiser
January 9th, 2008, 04:13 PM
I have a issue that needs to be solved at work. We get a lot of people calling in with different OS's, all with similar problems. Information on the troubleshooting is spread out all over the place, undocumented for the most part. I can see what problems this person has had before, but normally, what solved it, and how often this problem occurs. I would like to receive a call, open up my database that contains this customers info, and open up a separate 'wiki.' I would like to type in vista, and have all the documented articles/issues/ with vista presented. Or if i type Dial-up, receive all the pages dealing with dial-up presented to me. Much the same way wikipedia allows you to search, shows you results by relevance, enter, and edit/append the page. This would help with troubleshooting/training immensely. I know i will need a server. I also need a wiki software, might as well use what wikipedia uses unless their is an easier way. I also need a database of some sort. Any ideas or hints, this will most likely be on a windows based system :( ANY HELP will be awesome.

argie
January 9th, 2008, 04:50 PM
If it's a wiki on a server you likely won't notice if its Windows or Linux, so I'd suggest go with the latter. But that's your business.

MediaWiki is good, I've used it before and it works very well and looks nice and the search works well. You'll need an SQL database, and a server that allows php. Also, if this is only going to be for you and your colleagues you can just get an old machine, stick it up on the LAN and run a server with this on it. It's terribly easy to get a Debian server up and running, especially for what you're looking to do.

Also, if you want to just have a look to see how this would work, there are hundreds of free hosts out there that aren't any good for long term hosting but useful for testing this sort of thing.

jseiser
January 9th, 2008, 07:57 PM
lol, i would much rather it be LAMP as well, but I work at a ISP and even though most of the servers are bsd/linux/solaris, up front where the actually info and such is stored is all on windows servers for some reason. I am pushing for LAMP as well, i run linux at work on my PC, so i may be able to sway em. But im glad to hear this is pretty easy. Im just learning SQL. Dont know php at all, and havent ever set up a real server. If i can , i will use a bsd flavor.