Recently I discovered Instiki – a quick and not-so-dirty way of running a wiki without much setup. For example, to run MadiaWiki (the original Wiki package, used by Wikipedia) you need to have a functional web server, a supported database and PHP installed on your machine. With Instiki – you just need Ruby. It serves pages using WebRick and uses SQLite to store data, making it a perfect personal wiki for jotting down notes.
Would I use it for high traffic production wiki? Not really. For what it’s worth don’t think that WebRick and SQLite offer a scalable solution. I would go with MediaWiki for that. But I found that Instiki works great if you just want to have a personal local wiki on your machine.
When I tried it on Windows, it ran out of the box. On Dapper (Ubuntu) I had to download the sqlite module for ruby via apt as they don’t seem to be included in the base ruby package:
apt-get install libsqlite3-ruby1.8
I really like this app – it is small, self contained, and full featured. I played around with several personal wiki’s that are out there, but Instiki is the best one I have seen.
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Should be ‘MediaWiki’ not ‘MadiaWiki’
Yes, it should be but I can’t spell.
Thanks!