Wiki tool for Windows and Mac?

Posted by Ike Washington
Oct 19, 2007 at 11:57 AM

Why not set up a locally hosted personal wiki using Mediawiki, the open source application behind Wikipedia? Gina Trapani’s instructions at Lifehacker worked fine for me: http://lifehacker.com/software/wikipedia/geek-to-live—set-up-your-personal-wikipedia-163707.php

Big difference compared to CT: you’re saved from having yet another window open; the wiki is inside Firefox.

I can pretty much tick off most of Franz’s wiki requirements: since I’m using Mediawiki and Firefox as platforms for the wiki, I can draw on their extensions; I’m able to draw on other applications which interact with Firefox - particularly DT Search.

Big drawback for Franz may be that Mediawiki only gives you one wiki. This isn’t a problem for me. I’m using the wiki to store preliminary notes for potential research topics. The aim is to get the notes to cross-fertilise, produce those aha moments. But it would be easy enough to set off projects using categories.

It’s also possible, though I haven’t tried this, to put a local Mediawiki on a stick and so take it from machine to machine.

The tech side of setting up the local Mediawiki may seem daunting at first. Just follow Gina’s excellent instructions.

The main drawbacks for me have been that it’s a bit slow, a couple of seconds, to open up at first. And adding photographs is a couple of clicks rather than CT’s drag and drop.

Ike