What is the best wiki to install and run locally?

Question

I want to start my own wiki page for note keeping. As the info I will be keeping is sensitive I need to host the wiki internally on my LAN. It's possible I will be the only user of the wiki but I could very well see several other people potentially using this.

That being said, what is a good wiki software that I could install on my laptop or the local LAN with ease in a Windows environment?

Is there a wiki that would allow for a locally-cached version, only to update at a later point in time? (I realize the better option might be to simply take notes and then update at a later time)

Answer 1

Zim Wiki is simple. It is not a server solution, but as long as you have access to your "zim notebook" (e.g. LAN) you can use it.

The nice thing is, everything is stored as a text file. It has some plugins, too, like TODOs or Versioning.

Answer 2

It appears you are mainly looking for ease of installation, and that you have a LAN, and that you see the need for growth into multi-user.

So you might consider MediaWiki. It needs MySQL for a back-end, but if you're running a home server, it might be handy to have a multi-user relational database, anyway. It also needs a webserver, but again, if you're running a server on your LAN, that can be handy.

That way, you can work your way into sharing at a later date and have what is surely one of the most versatile and powerful wikis out there.

I don't know how hard it would be to get it onto Windows, though. On almost any *NIX, it's dead simple to install. You could get a thrift-store computer and dedicate it to Linux and MediaWiki on your LAN.

Answer 3

I loved many parts of Confluence, but can't recommend it. The server is a java app and requires ridiculous quantities of RAM (painful if you wish to run virtualized or VPS). Changing major versions was a pain, computer crashes sometimes left lock files which would prevent it running. It was just not the sort of admin effort I wanted to get bogged down in. The mobile clients were 3rd party and poor. But the editor was sheer brilliance as was the look of the formatted page.

Simplicity = productivity. I'd really use Evernote if your publishing requirements allow, at least until you go multiuser and find Evernote lacking. It has a decent html export feature and there's a good chance with its popularity that you'll find a dedicated import tool for it to your new system.

Answer 4

I've had good results in the past with TiddlyWiki (http://wwww.tiddlywiki.com) for similar uses. It's a "one page" wiki with all of the content and executables in a single html file that runs locally. There are ways to publish a tiddlywiki to a shared server and let other people view or edit pages, if you want. There are some services available that will manage wiki publishing for you. Visit the web site above for full information.

Answer 5

If you want simply TiddlyWiki is the way to go. The only other good alternative I am aware of is one of the many "tiny" web server systems on a stick with a wiki running, but that's a lot of overhead for installation. Though once it is done, they are quite capable little systems (it's what I have my students create and use, but they are taking technical classes, so the more complicated setup is reasonable).