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Wiki

A Wiki is something no business should be without.

Wikis (best known in reference to Wikipedia.org) are a simple and fast solution for storing knowledge. The idea is that anyone can edit the information using a set of simple commands to mark up the content rather than needing to know HTML. Mediawiki is the engine behind Wikipedia and is a free and open source web content management system. The code is PHP with a MySQL database so can be set up on any platform (I have set up wiki’s on Windows and Linux without any issues).

A Wiki makes a very good Intranet platform but is better suited to documentation (or a documentation component to enhance an existing intranet) as its layout options are limited (to pretty much one option). Version control is easy (any changes can be rolled back) and users are tracked. A Wiki makes is so easy to quickly add notes, edit, update and create pages that it is no longer an inconvenience (as many people are probably aware, the first thing to fall behind when things get busy is documentation) to keep important documentation current.

To get a feel for how easy it is to “mark up” content for a Wiki, the MediaWiki help:formatiing page is a good place to start.

A Wiki is a centralised repository and can be easily backed up using the built in options in MySQL ensuring that you can keep it safe. By having it in one place that is well known and is also searchable (by its nature), new documentation is less likely to be put somewhere else (which makes it less useful). If this sounds like a strange thing to say, you have obviously not worked in SME IT where the documentation (that I have experienced personally) could be as little as 1 piece of A4 paper printed on both sides, may not have been updated on over 3 years, or may be in 5-6 different locations (electronic and physical or a combination) as each new IT manager moves in and decides to do it their own way.

Posted in: Business