Wiki for developer docs/specs - in .net?

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Nerseus

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I'm a casual Wiki user - I use wikipedia.org for all sorts of things, but I'm no wiki master. I'm proposing the idea of a wiki for my company, to hold a repository of developer related docs at first with the potential to grow if the idea catches on. We currently use Sharpoint for our document repository but it has a LOT to be desired.

Has anyone had any experience with installing and using a .net based wiki? Ideally .Net 2.0 but even a 1.1 solution would be nice. I'm looking to use this as a document repository, where our team can add pages of tech specs and various diagrams (JPGs, unless something better is supported).

We have a license for SQL Server for various inhouse applications so I don't mind if it requires that (it would be ideal, actually).

I did a bit of googling on wikis, to find a solution that I could implement. Twiki sounded ideal in terms of what it offered but the solution is not .net and not meant to run under windows and IIS. I found OpenWiki, written in plain vanilla asp and it seemed Ok out of the box, but a bit old fashioned.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

-ner
 
Something I have found to be of use when looking around for .NET based Open Source software is to have a look at http://csharp-source.net/ and you can look at the different categories of software. For the Wiki software, the actual link would be http://csharp-source.net/open-source/wiki-engines

I personally have not tried any of these yet, but do plan on reviewing them to some extent to get an idea of what is available myself.

Happy reviewing.
 
If you have a server available, I think you'll have a lot more options going the open source route, PHP/mySql (though any sql db should work just fine, and you can install php on windows with no problem). If you are looking for a good PHP solution, my company has been very happy with mediawiki, the same wiki used by wikipedia. Twiki seems to be very popular, but as I recall it was a perl cgi (is that right?) and not very windows friendly. Sorry, I guess I don't have too much to offer on the .Net front.

My company has been using our wiki for about 9 months now and we are very happy with it. Using a wiki is definitely a good idea in just about every corporate/tech collaboration setting in my opinion.
 
When it comes to any type of software package in the Open Source arena, at this point in time you will find way more options available in the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) domain than you will in the .NET domain. This is because the LAMP arena has had for some time now development tools which were also either Open Source or at very low cost to the developer. I have felt that this is the primary reason that with .NET 2.0 MS opted to develop the 'Express' Editions of the tools and offer them initially at no charge (some of which have been proclaimed now to be offered at no charge indefinately rather than by the initial timeline).

In the original post to this message there was a comment made about SharePoint. I use it at my place of work and it does very well for what it was designed to do. Keep in mind the goal behind it was to promote group/team productivity by having a central point for all your MS related documents. Hence, you need MS Office on each client workstation in order to create/edit the documents that are to be shared. Wiki's completely remove the need for any type of office type tool by being completely web based and as a result, SharePoint really isn't group document work like Wiki's are.
 
Thanks for the links!

I really like the ProntoWiki - ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Express backend and more! I got it up and running without issue and has all the basics, including a bit more (such as attachments).

Thanks for all the help.

-ner
 
I'm glad to hear of your happiness and success with the wiki system you opted to give a try.

I'll have to admit that other things have kept me from actually spending time working on trying them out myself. As far as I got the other night was looking at the options and thinking of which one I would like to try first. Ironically, the one you opted for is the one that I had thought I would try first as well.

I will need to install SQL Express to use it and I do have it downloaded but just not installed on my server yet that has SQL 2000 on it. I'm hoping the two can run side-by-side on the same server :confused:
 
I'm actually running the full SQL Server 2005 developer edition. I had to use "attach database" to attach the files, but it was still painless. Check out the readme on SQL Express, but I'd guess that it would run side by side with SQL 2000. You might also check and see if it would work with SQL 2000. I didn't look at the code long enough to notice if it's using any new features...

I'm going to start using ProntoWiki more next week and let some other devs that work for me use it as well. Nothing like being the boss to push a new technology on lab rats... I mean junior devs :)

-ner
 
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