Wiki Under The Microsoft Web Server

This seems like a good place to describe people's experiences getting a wiki running on a MicrosoftWebServer. There are lots of WikiWikiClones but figuring out which would run was rather time consuming (and I'm not done yet).

In my case I had Linux boxes available, but for reasons not relevant to this discussion the most appropriate choices were running Microsoft Windows 2000 and IIS (InternetInformationServer) version 5.

My criteria include:

Runs under IIS readily (a preference not a requirement).
Good separation of views (HTML) from control logic.
Keeps revisions of pages in some fashion (CVS or other VersionControl software) for history and recovery.
Some sort of access control (might be something I add).
Has a better editing interface than this stupid tiny text box (might be something I can add).
Implemented in JavaLanguage or PerlLanguage (a preference not a requirement).
others not yet described...

Except for the implementation in Java or Perl, I think OpenWiki meets all the criteria. Care to do an upside/downside analysis?

Agree. I am using 0.78 version of OpenWiki for my job (as an online documentation and a knowledge library management tool). It's really really nice.

We also use OpenWiki and have found that it was easy to setup and modify. We have added our own tags such as #READONLY to lock down a page. Oddly enough, we are being driven to a JSP environment. Anybody know of a JSP-based wiki engine that is a port or close clone of OpenWiki?

Agree again - I had great difficulty finding a Wiki that would install on IIS6.0 - OpenWiki did the trick for me

Wikis implemented in Perl

These most interesting examples seem to be derived from the original implementation by WardCunningham and include:

WikiBase under IIS

Filled in the HyperPerl parameters, downloaded the generated Perl script, and hacked on it until it ran. Sort of.

Upside

A clear, concise wiki implementation

Downside

HTML generation embedded in program
No history/revision control
Unix dependencies

UseModWiki under IIS

Looks like this is an evolved WikiBase variant. Many added features. Worked w/o change under IIS.

Upside

Very easy to get running under IIS.
Very easy to test/iterate under IIS.
A clear, concise wiki implementation

Downside

HTML generation embedded in program

TWiki under IIS

Never did get this running properly and finally gave up.

On last iteration, defined /twiki/bin/view as an "application" and got an entirely blank page for my result. It seems that configuring IIS to handle /twiki/bin/scriptname/pathasargument is at least extremely tedious. Perhaps I missed something.

DolphinWikiWeb

I modified it slightly an now use it to host several wikis. For example http://wiki.xp.be.

Upside

HTML generation with templates.
Can host multiple namespaces.
Not to hard to install. You just need a Perl runtime (I downloaded one from ActiveState).
Stores information in plain text files.
Generates static HTML files upon editing.

Downside

A few bugs in the generated HTML.
Sometimes, in some browsers, in some situations the 'edit page' doesn't work.

AspWiki under IIS

Hacked on this a bit to separate the HTML from the program logic. Learned a bit more about ASP in the process :).

Upside

Very easy to get running under IIS.
Very easy to test/iterate under IIS.
Uses a database as a back end (a big plus in my book).
Uses MicrosoftAccess for the database.

Downside

Written in VbScript (not fatal, but...).
Uses MicrosoftAccess for the database.
Rather light on features (translation: Do I really want to put in the time...). Now includes search, recently modified list, ip address auditing, images. Missing diff, versioning.
Not likely to be portable :) If the goal is WikiUnderTheMicrosoftWebServer, then how portable does it need to be?

Wikis implemented in JavaLanguage

The interesting examples appear to be:

While it is certainly possible to run Java Web applications behind IIS (via the Jserv, Tomcat, Websphere or others), I'd tend toward using a standalone Java Web server (like Jetty) for a simpler installation.

The WebMacroWiki is at present a non-starter on Windows as the TAR file contains a wiki/VLH:1998/ directory that is completely illegal on Windows. Need to track down this "VLH" package they are using...

It looks like JikiJikiJava has gone nowhere for at least a year...

DevWiki looks interesting, more so as there are instructions for running under Jetty at:

http://www.devtools.org/servlet/wiki/DevWikiOnJetty

(More later) -- PrestonBannister

TiKi is implemented in Ruby and can be made to work under IIS by specifying the Ruby interpreter as a new script engine (remember to specify it as ...\ruby.exe %1 (or %s) or it won't run the CGI script!) in the virtual directory you create for Tiki. Instead of using the usual Ruby make technique (which is Unix-centric), I just moved files into the proper places manually, with the makefile as instructions (they're quite short). You'll also want to change $TIKICONFIGFILE = 'tiki.conf' to $TIKICONFIGFILE = '/Inetpub/wwwroot/<virtual directory name>/tiki.conf' in tiki.cgi.

Get TiKi at http://todo.org/download/tiki/

Get Ruby for Windows at http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ruby-install.html

Question moved to PersonalWebServer

See WikiOnPersonalWebServer (PWS being a scaled-down version of IIS)