Tech & VC 24 Nov 2006 11:27 pm
Easiest Wiki Platform (not JotSpot)?
An emerging company I consult for wants a wiki, and I don’t know what platform to recommend. Does anyone have a wiki platform they recommend (and why?)?
At Union Square Ventures, we use JotSpot, and I have only positive things to say about it (especially with regards to ease-of-use). I would love to give them JotSpot, but since the Google acquisition, JotSpot is closed to new registrations, so that’s not an option.
My other wiki experience is with MoinMoin and MediaWiki, and I think both of them are too difficult for the less-tech-saavy members of this company (especially compared to Jot). Has anyone used SocialText or Twiki with success? Cost is not an issue for this company, so that’s not a reason to discard SocialText.
The usage will be primarily collaborative document editing (some pdfs involved). and group commenting on lists. No really specialized stuff like coding, calendaring, blogging, etc.
Thoughts?
4 Responses to “Easiest Wiki Platform (not JotSpot)?”
on 25 Nov 2006 at 10:41 am 1.Lee Semel said …
For nextny.org we use Stikipad (www.stikipad.com) which is quite simple and straightforward You can go to http://www.nextny.org and try editing a page. We are using Textile as the markup language, but it also has rich text editing as an option.
on 25 Nov 2006 at 10:58 am 2.Steve said …
Hey Parker,
Take a look at PBWiki (pbwiki.com). It uses Wikipedia-style pseudo-code for editing pages (instead of Jot-style WYSIWYG editing) but it’s otherwise very easy to use. It also lacks the plugin apps (calendar, spreadsheets, etc) but it doesn’t sound like they need those.
On the plus side, it’s hosted (at least I consider that a plus) and allows customizable CSS with the enterprise version. I personally think Jot is ugly. And it does away with those infernal “WikiWords” – I deployed a Jot wiki at for my company about 6 months ago and I still have to explain WikiWords to somebody once a week.
For whatever reason, they don’t publish a version comparison on their main site – it’s only available when you want to upgrade an existing wiki. Here’s one from someone else’s wiki: (https://walkinguofmclasses.pbwiki.com/upgrade.php) If you want domain mapping you’re stuck with Platinum.
PS. I’m not sure if Ian called you yesterday, but I’d like to talk to you this weekend. If you could shoot me an email and let me know when you have about 20 minutes to talk, I’d appreciate it a lot.
on 25 Nov 2006 at 12:52 pm 3.Ryan said …
If you have the option of installing a wiki, I’ll recommend Atlassian’s Confluence since Jot is offline. Confluence is pretty easy to install and is great for enterprise use.
on 25 Nov 2006 at 2:18 pm 4.Andrew Parker said …
These are all great suggestions. I’ll investigate them all. Keep them coming. I would be curious is anyone stongly recommends MediaWiki in spite of my early dismissal of it. I’m hosted at Dreamhost, and they offer one-click installation of MediaWiki… so that’s a strong incentive to use that one.