Wikis

Not in the workplace, but I've just set up a Wiki here:

This uses the MediaWiki engine which is very powerful and incredibly easy to install. You can get the link from the MediaWiki button on the bottom of the page.

A comparison of various Wiki engines is here:

I found the MediaWiki one is by far the most popular though, and it is the one that powers the massive Wikipedia engine so it must be very stable and full featured.

I was expecting all kinds of problems but installation was a breeze following the step-by-step instructions, and the almost fully automated setup procedure. No need to know PHP or anything like that. The most complex part was changing the file permissions on the directories, and that's a snap with any FTP program.

I went from knowing almost nothing about it to have having a fully installed and working Wiki on my site in under 2 hours.

As for the workplace, intranet web pages work very well at our company, but the problem is that you have to have someone to maintain it and edit the HTML etc. A Wiki would allow anyone to edit it with no knowledge at all, and rollbacks are easy in case you get a total twit who stuff it up.

Wikis get the thumbs up in my book.

Dave :)

Thanks for that Dave. I'm thinking about implementing it specifically for Production and Testing, and also for Engineering documents. But I really don't want P and T to change things without permission, so is that easy? I'm still considering creating an intranet system for the internal docs, but yes, I'm concerned that my time would be taken up with maintaining it, rather than the IT admin we've got at the moment.

Regards David

Haven't got that deep into it yet I'm afraid, although I have heard you can restrict editing rights to only certain individuals fairly easily. It's probaly all detailed in the MediaWiki documentation.

Intranet systems work great for production and engineering documentation, as the documents are imediately available to anyone on the shop floor or wherever with a browser without having to use the company configuration tool or whatever. And of course you can hyperlink everything any way you like, so you can break down your pages by product and then have all the files imediately available - schematics, BOMs, drawings, firmware, software, procedures etc. It is an excellent way to "release" documents where everyone is guaranteed access to the latest versions. Handy for ISO audits too. Everyone knows how to use a browser, so it makes navigating for documents real easy.

An intranet can be nothing more than a bunch of HTML documents on a network drive that you can edit using Microsoft Word (no need for a proper HTML editor). No need to involve IT at all either, which can be handy. Although it's good to get IT to set up a domain map to make it easier to find - eg. "intranet.company.com.au" is better than "K:\Engineering\intranet\index.html" etc.

Gotta watch out for morons who decide to change a directory name or move things around and screw up all your hyperlinks!

Dave :)