Wikis For Dummies®

Chapter 10. Choosing an Installed Wiki Engine

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Understanding the basic wiki groups

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Deciding your wiki’s purpose

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Comparing choices on the wiki menu

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Going on a wiki walkabout

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Wiki engines are the programs that run on Web servers that allow people to create, edit, and publish wiki pages. When you use a wiki, you use a wiki engine. The question, then, is who installs, runs, and maintains that engine? In most cases, that doesn’t have to be you. In Chapter 5, we cover the easiest kind of wiki to use: a hosted wiki. With a hosted wiki, the people who run the hosted wiki take care of everything — installing the wiki, customizing it, backing it up, and maintaining the users and permissions — and you just sign up and use the wiki engine. Pretty darn easy.

For some people, though, a hosted wiki just won’t do. For example, if you work for a company that’s using its wiki to create or manage sensitive information, you might not trust a hosted wiki to keep that information safe. Or, if you plan on customizing your wiki heavily and making it do the advanced things we cover in Chapter 14, you want your own engine so that you can control absolutely everything about it. No matter the reason, after you decide that you need to run your own wiki engine, you have to make a decision: Which wiki engine is the best one for your needs?

Choosing software is never easy — ...