Wiki WYSIWYG

posted on 27th July 2006 by Laurence

Having spent the last week or so investigating the world of wikis, I’ve noticed a few things which seem a bit silly.

Firstly, the lack of a high quality “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) editor, which allows the user to edit text just like Word, is evident in pretty much all of the existing wikis.

Secondly, it seems that those who allow you to host their wiki on your own server for free, seem to be lacking in usability, looks and usually both.

Thirdly, “twiki” (http://twiki.org/), which is a relatively high quality wiki, had so many installation issues that it became unbelievable frustrating to configure.

Fourthly, I found out that JotSpot’s forthcoming complete server service (Beta), where you need to deal with a 500mb file, may not be given to random hosting companies to look after. For example a company may install the software on their own internal servers, but can’t upload it to a remote host.

Finally, I investigated Mediawiki which is free, easy to use and can be hosted however you like. However, again this has primitive text editing options! To solve this problem, I decided to install a Wysiwyg called FCKeditor, the inx for which can be found here. Please let me know if you need any help with this, as there was a fair bit of head-banging in the process.

For a more factual look at wiki’s, I suggest you use this comparison site or this one.

By the way - thank god for air conditioning…