Private Library

Simple

As a PHP application, BookStack is also quickly installed or launched as a container. The wiki works with the usual suspects (e.g., a MySQL or MariaDB database as the back end). Compared with other wikis, BookStack offers less flexible customization options and plugins. To compensate, the tool comes with a very simple and clear-cut interface, is very fast, and offers great editors. The environment is well suited for use as a documentation server in an internal network.

Gollum

A wiki does not always require servers, databases, and an Internet connection. Those with a need to prepare, edit, and correct pages on the go with no connection to their wiki can do so with Gollum [8] (Figure 4). The small Ruby tool builds a wiki exclusively from files in a local directory and relies on Git for version control. In principle, a set of local Markdown files can also be edited with a suitable editor such as Visual Studio Code or Atom. Gollum charms users with its ability to render pages so that Markdown hyperlinks and, in turn, the wiki page structures work.

Figure 4: It doesn't get any simpler than Gollum. The local tool is great for preparing and editing Markdown pages offline.

Besides regular Markdown (e.g., as on GitHub), Gollum supports other language plugins like WikiCloth or AsciiDoc. I don't have much to say about the installation: On a system with Ruby (and ruby-devel ) in place, you just need to type

gem install gollum
gollum </path/to/wiki>

to install and start the tool, having previously run git init in the same path. The directory either contains existing Markdown files, or you can add content from within Gollum. The tool listens on localhost:4567 and can be used with any browser.

Gollum has a simple Markdown editor and renderer. The tool is great for preparing Markdown content on a local computer and uploading it to a wiki later.

Conclusions

Admins who want to set up their own wiki platform have several interesting alternatives from which to choose. Of course, the list here does not claim to be complete, because a plethora of other tools exist (e.g., XWiki and Outline). The tools I looked at in this article (except MediaWiki) are easy to install and use, which means that users who are not yet familiar with the strategy, operations, and use of wikis can familiarize themselves with the material and then take a closer look at various aspects. DokuWiki exhibits the "classic" wiki structure, BookStack is the DMS among wikis, and Wiki.js is a modern architecture.

In principle, wiki platforms offer a comparatively simple approach to storing document collections centrally and making them accessible to all users in the data center. Although this setup might go against the current "cloud first" trend, not all information and documentation is necessarily better off stored on cloud servers than in your own back yard.