Reality Skimming

Tuesday, March 15, 2005
 
Our experience with wikispam notwithstanding (when the beginning pages of an ORU novel were repeatedly replaced by crud), I still like the wiki format, because it offers the opportunity to grow notes and reference material freeform, without having to decide upon its structure in advance. I have an installation of UseModWiki on my G4, which I use to slap down various bits and pieces, but a key feature was lacking: the ability to export files in any format. If I'm going to build anything coherent, I'd like the ability to load it onto my PDA, not to mention possibly loading it onto a website. So I went looking for an easy-to-use wiki that would export HTML at least. I came across Dokuwiki - designed for small companies to write documentation with - which uses PHP and stores the information in readable flatfiles. I rather like the idea of flatfiles, too, having now twice manually rebuilt a MovableType blog because the database became inaccessible. Dokuwiki took me all of 5 minutes to do a default installation, and the default installation is simple and elegant (it's the one that the site itself displays).

Comments:
That a recommendation that we coax our jaded web master into replacing the ORU wiki with Dokuwiki? Or you offering to host on your mac and let me in?

About the plain HTML vs. web application thing ... am I allowed to mutter "I told you so" under my breath, once, in good taste. :-)
 
You are allowed; I think I have said 'I told you so' too, on some occasions. I was thinking of it for the ORU encyclopedia, actually, the on-line version. It has the option of password protection of pages. It also has the option of refusing edits by content rather than merely by ISP, which given the ephemeral nature of ISPs these days is a singularly ineffectual way of squelching the commentt spammers.
 
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