Xwiki

What is Wiki?

A Wiki or WikiWiki is a website allowing users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. (from: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome)

A wiki is like a public encyclopedia, where people can write down articles of any subject. Once an article is published, other people
can view, add, reorganize, even rewrite it.

However because the open characteristic of Wiki is subject to abusive behaviour like spamming, some wikis add user management to manage access to contributors.

The most famous wiki is Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) with millions of articles in numerous languages.

Can I build my own wiki?

Of course. But before you build anything, I suggest you try some wiki software that other people have built and shared for free. To compare features between wiki softwares, check out wikimatrix
(http://wikimatrix.org). As a start, I chose xwiki.

Why did you pick xwiki?

Xwiki is written in java, runs in tomcat, and uses mysql. It supports many popular features of other Wikis like:

* Wiki syntax (uses Radeox engine)
* Content management (view/edit/preview/save)
* Version Control
* Attachments
* Rights Management
* Full-text Search

Moreover, XWiki excels with other features like Multi-Lingual
capabilities, PDF export, and WYSIWYG HTML Editing.

Is it difficult to install xwiki?

I should say: NOT. Especially if you follow the instructions carefully. Download xwiki.war from http://www.xwiki.org, then extract install.txt and read it. You can create the database schema by downloading the script also from that site.

As a requirement, you should already have Java 1.4 (minimum), apache-tomcat, and MySql.

I've succeeded installing xwiki on Fedora Core 4.

Before putting xwiki.war to apache-tomcat/webapps, better get the database ready first. Create database 'xwiki' and grant privilege to that database for user 'xwiki'. After that, run the mysql script to create tables needed by xwiki. (Check install.txt out for these steps).

After setting the database, put xwiki.war in apache-tomcat/webapps directory and start tomcat.

As I have xwiki up and running in my server, I'm currently trying out features that it provides.

XWiki enables user to attach files to an articles. By default, maximum size of an attachment file is 1 MB. When there's a need to increase the size, reconfigure your mysql. (Read http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/packet-too-large.html)

In Fedora Core, as mysql is part of the OS installation, modify my.cnf which is located in /etc.

However, this feature should not be abused. Essentially, a wiki should contain only articles in text. Multimedia files like images and sounds are okay, because it might enrich an entry. But when your actual need is a server which facilitates file sharing, I recommend you to use alfresco (http://www.alfresco.org).