Daily Archives: September 16, 2012

Playin’ with wikis…

I like wikis! I’ll confess that back in the dark ages about a zillion years ago, when I first heard about wikis back in the late 90’s (for the curious, here’s the history of the wiki), I said to myself, “why would anyone every want to create a website that lots of folks can edit?” My lack of imagination about things like this is why I’m not an entrepreneur, I guess 😉

I’ve used different wiki software, but mostly I’ve used PmWiki and MediaWiki. MediaWiki is more powerful and complex, but I like PmWiki for a “quick and easy” wiki that provides reasonable flexibility. They are both in PHP and will run most anywhere. I’m running a PmWiki instance on my Raspberry Pi now. I’ve used PmWiki to create exercises for the Systems Analysis class I teach at UNC-CH. We’ve got a family “notebook” running in PmWiki. I’ve got a family recipe archive in a MediaWiki instance, and some other things as well.

I’ve been sitting here on a rainy September Sunday doing some updates, and just reflecting on fun with wikis.