[Discuss] Opinions needed: wiki software

[Greg Rundlett (freephile)]

On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Bill Horne <bill at horne.net> wrote:

> I've been asked to help improve a wiki site that is currently using
> Mediawiki, and I'm seeking
> information about alternative wiki packages which might be a better match
> for the uses
> that are needed.
>
> Here are the bullet points:
>
>  * A combination of public and private info, with about 99% of it being
>    "public".
>  * The group needs to be able to restrict access to the private
>    material, with
>    a reasonable level of security.
>  * The group installed a wiki to make it easier for individual group
>    members to edit
>    both shared and personal pages, and switched to Mediawiki because of
>    some
>    undefined security concern with a different wiki package.
>  * The content of the wiki changes very slowly.
>  * The Mediawiki documentation specifically warns against trying to use
>    it for
>    both public and private pages: it's used for Wikipedia, and isn't
>    geared for
>    a mixed public/private site.
>
> All suggestions welcome. Thanks for your help.
>
>
>
It's important to understand the champions of existing (or pre-existing)
systems, and also the current users/contributors interaction with the
current system.  Understand their comfort level with the current solution
and their pain points.  I wouldn't necessarily jump into a different
product without looking at the current solution's potential to deliver
based on improved configuration, extension, training and integration so
that it best suits their needs and requirements.

Earlier I said that a reverse proxy could solve the problem of publishing
to the public.  To link our internal tools at SavaJe Technologies to our
London offices, I used Squid - which is the leading open source proxy
server.  With a "reverse" proxy, you are just putting another server in
between the web server and the public internet.  Details are at
http://wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/ReverseProxy and specifically for
MediaWiki at http://www.sweetnam.eu/index.php/Reverse_Proxy_with_Squid.
 You can speed up your wiki for it's editors (but almost certainly don't
need to) by using squid as a normal proxy
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Squid_caching

For Harvard, I just used Apache's Virtual Hosting support in conjunction
with  MediaWiki's API http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API/Tutorial to create
a site acting as a custom publish/view layer between the private wiki, and
the public Internet.

hth,

Greg
-- 
Greg Rundlett
founder
eQuality Technology
http://eQuality-Tech.com