from Hacker News

Wiki.js

by akandiah on 7/21/20, 3:49 AM with 199 comments

  • by Keyframe on 7/21/20, 8:16 AM

    I need one function in a wiki platform that I haven't seen so far. When I write text, in its WYSIWYG editor, I need an ability to paste in an image (a screenshot that I just grabbed, let's say) and for it to automatically upload it and embed it into text. Does this support something like that?

  • by schoolornot on 7/21/20, 7:52 AM

    This is exciting. A compelling FOSS alternative to Atlassian Confluence was sorely needed.

    Mediawiki has some UX and RBAC challenges that makes it difficult to scale to large organizations.

  • by tweetle_beetle on 7/21/20, 9:59 AM

    I'm looking to launch an internal wiki and Wiki.js came out on top for my requirements:

    - easy to use for technical and non-technical staff alike: multiple editing options

    - third party authentication: really comprehensive offering

    - quality search: comprehensive internal and third party search offering

    - ease of maintenance: largely everything is built-in, so no module/dependency maintenance headaches

    - user management: solid user/group management system

    With internal tools you need things to stick, and fast. As much as I am fond of mediawiki, the editing experience is a barrier to usage for many. And the extension ecosystem, while rich and diverse, is just more of a liability than a single installation. A quality search is also really important to adoption, so having options there is great.

    I'd been using Docsify on a small scale with authentication through GitLab to edit, GitLab CD to build and Cloudflare Access to secure the front end. It works really well, but the lack of user management and the editing experience mean that it's time to move on.

    It would be great to hear if this is a case of the grass always being greener on the other side.

  • by mard on 7/21/20, 10:55 AM

    I'm not impressed. Wiki.js is supposedly "built with performance in mind", but its documentation wiki [1] is much slower than any DokuWiki site I could find [2]. It also requires JavaScript to be enabled in the web browser.

    [1]: https://docs.requarks.io/

    [2]: https://www.dokuwiki.org/

  • by Hamcha on 7/21/20, 7:28 AM

    docs.requarks.io, which is said to be using Wiki.js, straight up doesn't load without Javascript, and even with Javascript enabled it's a multi-page application that just feels slower browsing page to page than your average 10-year-old mediawiki install (probably also heavier on the backend).

    Who exactly is asking for slower software?

  • by aerojoe23 on 7/21/20, 12:40 PM

    We needed a documentation solution at work. MY coworker had some experience with Wiki.js. What sold me on it was that you can use markdown and it can keep itself synced with a git repo.

    This gives us plan text files that are tracked in a repo. It uses the user as the author, so now I can "code review" edit's to our wiki.

    The content of the wiki is easily cloned by cloning the git repo. It is markdown in folders so if wiki.js dies at some point I could write a pandoc script to turn it into web pages again, you do loose all of the cool UI features.

  • by heresie-dabord on 7/21/20, 1:57 PM

    I used a Wiki for a long time. But I try to minimise maintenance ("foist it upon others"). I also try to resist the enthusiasm for Rube Goldberg machines and for installing bad tooling (such as PHP).

    Now that git has become ubiquitous, I prefer git with a self-hosted git-daemon instance. git , grep , awk , and sqlite make a strong set of tools for knowledge curation.

    edit: minor grammar fix

  • by oneplane on 7/21/20, 8:30 AM

    I wonder why it's AGPL and not dual-licensed or some different GPL. As it is right now it's dead in the water for any commercial usage unless you're manually installing the thing on a manually installed server somewhere (which you probably aren't).

    With automation you'd build images based on their images but run via your own CI/CD with your own security scans and any additions you might need (like additional logging infrastructure). Doing that is not possible with AGPL.

  • by w-ll on 7/21/20, 7:11 AM

    I'd atleast expect a demo, and the homepage to be running on said wiki.

  • by Nuzzerino on 7/21/20, 3:55 PM

    I've been using Wiki.js for several months now on a production project (self hosted). It has worked nearly flawlessly for me so far. No complaints. Setup was a piece of cake too.

  • by dheera on 7/21/20, 4:17 PM

    Just a minor nitpick. If there isn't an actual file called "wiki.js" that is self-contained, I would prefer it be called WikiJS instead of "Wiki.js" to avoid confusion. In general when I see ".js" I expect to see a single file I can import that does something useful to my code.

  • by techaddict009 on 7/21/20, 11:31 AM

    Can I know what exactly this numbers are "15M+ Installations" On your home page.

    I mean thats too large number. Is this of all open source software or I am misunderstanding something else?

  • by yreg on 7/21/20, 12:26 PM

    Wikis are also useful for note-taking, I'm using Wiki.js to document a D&D campaign to have some canonical reference of what actually happened in past sessions.

  • by gwbrooks on 7/21/20, 8:21 AM

    I keep a v2 instance running on my Windows laptop solely for taking notes and keeping need-it-eventually information organized.

    It's just enough added structure and functionality to make the whole body of notes more useful, without having to learn a formal system or adopt someone else's idea of what my note hierarchy should look like.

  • by ddevault on 7/21/20, 1:47 PM

    Can we please not have SPA's eat wikis, too? Text-only content does not need... (checking...) 6.3 MB of JavaScript to display (checking...) 3.3 KB of text. Blank pages with JavaScript disabled or in non-mainstream browsers is a really terrible experience for content so plainly simple to display.

  • by lukaszkups on 7/21/20, 1:30 PM

    Is it possible to output static-file-based wiki? (so some static HTML/CSS/js ?)

  • by captn3m0 on 7/21/20, 6:51 AM

    I've used the 1.x release, and the Mongo requirement was always a bit of a pin. I think v2 fixes that, but I haven't yet upgraded. Anyone has feedback on v1 vs v2?

  • by amq on 7/21/20, 9:10 AM

    I was looking into open source knowledge / wiki base solutions recently, and I found https://www.getoutline.com/ to be the most usable.

  • by dvno42 on 7/21/20, 7:11 AM

    I've been using 2.x since Jan and have really liked it. I'm using it in docker with postgres iirc for a small team for infrastructure documentation. Very markdown friendly and gets the job done while looking nice.

  • by amelius on 7/21/20, 5:56 PM

    In case anyone was wondering, the dependencies are:

        Node.js 10.12 or later

    MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MSSQL or SQLite3
    Is it possible to install and run all of these as a non-root user?

  • by bobbydreamer on 7/22/20, 7:00 PM

    Like the common theme all this wiki and outline are having 3 pane window any for Bootstrap it.

  • by cptskippy on 7/21/20, 7:47 PM

    I like the way the documentation is laid out, does that conform to a standard?

  • by Marioheld on 7/21/20, 4:36 PM

    Does anyone has a comparison to Bookstack?www.bookstackapp.com

  • by favadi on 7/21/20, 12:16 PM

    For personal wiki, nothing beats the simplicity of tiddlywiki.

  • by kinganurag on 7/22/20, 5:38 AM

    i love this platform, i will suggest this to all my friends and clients :)

  • by amelius on 7/21/20, 3:42 PM

    Why is there a Linux Tux logo next to macOS?

  • by hombre_fatal on 7/21/20, 9:05 AM

    Slightly related PSA:

    Everyone should consider running a wiki locally just for yourself. It's like being able to organize your brain. I just got into it two days ago and basically spent the whole weekend dumping things into it in a way I can actually browse and revisit, like the short stories I'd written, spread out across Notes.app and random folders.

    You don't need to run WAMP, MySQL, Apache, phpmyadmin or anything. Here are the steps for someone, like me, who hadn't checked in a while:

    0. `$ brew install php` (or equiv for your OS)

    1. Download the wiki folder and `cd` into it

    2. `$ php -S localhost:3000`

    3. Visit http://localhost:3000/install.php in your browser

    I tried DokuWiki at first (has flat file db which is cool). It's simpler, but I ended up going with MediaWiki which is more powerful, and aside from Wikipedia using it, I noticed most big wikis I use also use it (https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page). MediaWiki lets you choose Sqlite as an option, so I have one big wiki/ folder sitting in my Dropbox folder symlinked into my iCloud folder and local fs.

    Really changing my life right now. The problem with most apps is that they just become append-only dumping grounds where your only organizational power is to, what, create yet another tag?

    My advice is to just look for the text files scattered around your computer and note-taking apps and move them into wiki pages. As you make progress, you will notice natural categories/namespaces emerging.

    I just wish I started 10 years ago.

  • by jadia on 7/21/20, 7:52 AM

    I started using Wiki.js over a year ago to maintain documentation related to system admin duties.

    We run this in a docker container with SQLite database and backup the database daily to another server.

    The private and public pages feature fits perfectly to our use case. We show system information, how-to guides and rules on the public pages and manage sysadmin documentation with restricted access.

  • by load on 7/21/20, 7:06 AM

    If it doesn't run on MediaWiki, I'm not into it.

  • by kontxt on 7/21/20, 6:57 PM

    Kontxt (https://kontxt.io) could be a perfect inline communication and engagement layer to enhance wikis and docs with inline highlights, comments, polls, @mentions, page navigation, shareable deep links, and permission-based sharing.