[TriLUG] Wiki/CMS Recommendations?

[matusiak]

On May 3, 2005, at 2:30 PM, Michael Reamy wrote:

> I'm beginning to look for a good Wiki or CMS for use in our 
> engineering environment.  I would like something that non-programmers 
> could easily use while still maintaining flexibility.
> Something that easily handles technical documentation is most 
> important but eventually it might be nice to replace manual HTML of 
> web pages in general with CMS type features.  Also, features to 
> 'enable' project collaboration are desirable.
> I'm beginning to work my way through opensourcecms.com at the moment.  
> MediaWiki looks good.  TikiWiki looks better for features but I'm a 
> bit worried about it being too bloated. I'm curious as to what you 
> guys think about the options.

First of all, I think this topic would make an awesome round-table 
discussion for the future.  There are many people out there wondering 
about which direction to take for their business (even personal) CMS 
needs.

MediaWiki does appear to be an awesome product.  I have limited 
experience using it, but it always works as promised.  I can't comment 
on the TikiWiki bloat, but that is a good thing to be wary of.

The two tops for CMS implementations right now seem to be plone and 
mambo.

My absolute favorite is WordPress.  Now, most will tell you that it is 
only a "weblogger" software, but to anyone who has been carefully 
watching their development over time, you can see that they have the 
architecture for a full-fledged CMS right under the hood -- ready to be 
unleashed.  And there has been a lot of development lately (both by the 
WP crew and independents) towards bringing this functionality to light.

Those are some good places to start for your comparison.

RULE #1 -- More importantly than anything else, figure out what exact 
"features" you need from a given tool and then go compare those that 
offer your preferred features.  Write these features down, if 
necessary.

Failing to do this can stick you with either a skeletal system that 
runs fast, but lacks features or a massive behemoth that looks real 
fancy, but never gets used because of performance problems.

Good luck!
dave m.