Selfhosted wiki/ documentation

iandk

Hi,

I've been using Notion as a documentation/ wiki platform for the past months.
However, I'd like to give a self-hosted, browser-based solution a try.

Therefore I'm wondering which is your goto solution for a self-hosted wiki/ knowledge base.

I've tried BookStack, but I don't like the interface.

vyas

You can try (In no particular order)

a. Typemill : https://themes.typemill.net/knowledge or https://themes.typemill.net/learn

b. Dokuwiki : Any recent template : https://www.dokuwiki.org/template:bootstrap3 or https://www.dokuwiki.org/template:bootie

c. Grav KB Theme : https://demo.hibbittsdesign.org/grav-learn2-git-sync/ (you might want to download the skeleton and customize to suit fit)

d. Datenstrom Yellow: https://datenstrom.se/yellow/help/how-to-make-a-wiki

Tried all of the above in different degrees, my preference is Typemill these days

Cheers,

verjin

Try https://readthedocs.org its good and self-hosted.

InceptionHosting

You could consider grav + the learn2 theme: demo https://demo.hibbittsdesign.org/grav-learn2-git-sync/intermediate

No database and all in markup.

elliotc

I am using tiddlywiki+github+netlify.
However it can not edit directly on browser

CamoYoshi

+1 for DokuWiki, very light on the resource usage, especially if you'll be the only one using it.

seriesn

So,
I was recently hunting for something for internal documentation + QNA and minus confluence, nothing was working as expected, without complicating life.

Confluence felt too heavy.

Wordpress rescued me. Wedocs plugin+wedocs theme. Limiting the whole site with login only and using htpasswd for the basic.

angstrom

Like a number of you, I'm also interested in the similarities and differences between wikis, knowledge bases, and documentation.

If one really wants a wiki, I would recommend going with dedicated wiki software. In this case, DokuWiki would be a good all-around choice.

One can use a wiki for a knowledge base or documentation, but often these latter two have more specialized requirements in terms of how a reader would interact with them, for example, in terms of export formats or how they appear on-screen. In addition, the development of knowledge bases and documentation tends to be more centrally controlled by a small group of people (often by a single author).

I tend to think of the difference between knowledge bases and documentation in terms of the range of topics covered. A knowledge base often covers a range of topics within a given domain: for example, the domain may be a hosting provider and the range of topics covers issues relating to the services that the provider offers. Documentation is detailed information about a given topic, for example, a manual about PHP would count as documentation.

I think that wikis are the most flexible format, because a wiki can also be used for a knowledge base or (manual-like) documentation. But if one really wants to make a knowledge base or to document something, it may be preferable to use more specialized knowledge-base or documentation software.

Ympker

@seriesn said:
So,
I was recently hunting for something for internal documentation + QNA and minus confluence, nothing was working as expected, without complicating life.

Confluence felt too heavy.

Wordpress rescued me. Wedocs plugin+wedocs theme. Limiting the whole site with login only and using htpasswd for the basic.

WordPress has some solid Wiki options out there.

Unixfy

My recommendation will always be Atlassian Confluence. I've tried all of the free solutions: WikiJS, Mediawiki, Dokuwiki, Bookstack.. but I am always going back to Confluence. The ecosystem, features and support are unmatched, in my opinion.

FlamingSpaceJunk

Dokuwiki is the go to for wikis. It's simple, has lots of plugins, and I like the wiki syntax.

For documentation...

MkDocs is a nice turnkey solution.

Hugo is a static site generator which could be used to create docs from markdown with the correct template.

@vyas said:
a. Typemill : https://themes.typemill.net/knowledge or https://themes.typemill.net/learn

Typemill looks interesting. Thanks for posting!

c. Grav KB Theme : https://demo.hibbittsdesign.org/grav-learn2-git-sync/ (you might want to download the skeleton and customize to suit fit)

Grav is really nice. It can be kind of sluggish when it's cold though.

willie

I've used gitit which is a bit heavyweight, but cool in that it uses git as the revision backend, so it can easily be a distributed wiki. For very lightweight but code control oriented, there is fossil. In between is mediawiki which is very widely deployed and configurable. I wouldn't bother with the others, though I've used a few, moinmoin (easy to set up but rudimentary) and a home-rolled one.

hey

if your documentation had a lot images wordpress, either ways wordpress too.

for my own notes I prefer mardown, renderer using mkdocs.

vyas

Related to the topic

https://www.notion.so/Better-Wiki-c9cb3d3509a64743ac85f9c192ab4ce1

seanho

For internal KB I use hugo in a git repo with CI. I just need to fiddle with the theme a bit; blog layout isn't a good fit for KB.

vncoupon

You can try Dokuwiki