- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- foss@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- foss@beehaw.org
Today I was looking at some ways to get wikis for games that are very in depth offline for personal use. Wiki.js was one of the more prominent results so I looked into it. I’m no HTML pro, but I do know a few things, enough to make it look decent enough for my own curiosity and usage. I just wanted to share with others who might be interested in something similar!
I absolutely love the layout and how easy it is to move stuff over. Once I made the default theme dark, it was game on. I have spent the last 3 hours moving bits and pieces from the wikis I was interested in over to it. Give it a try!
I’m hosting it through the Apps feature in TrueNAS Scale. Not exposed to the internet. On TrueNAS, I set it up ACL (permissions) with a preset one that I made for quickly giving myself access to anything for my file browser.
THANK YOU to all the devs and anyone who has supported this project. Excellent piece of software!
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I deployed an instance on kubernetes for my company and I like it very much (heck I even contributed to correct some stuff in the helm charts documentation now I remember). The UI is very polished and its a pleasure to use.
Its mainly one guy doing all the work, there was a very promising v3 on the roadmap, I think it was planned for 2024, but Im not sure if that still going to happen. But there was a lot of cool stuff planed: https://beta.js.wiki/blog
Since I usually write MD files (I’m using obsidian) and I like the style I use ‘Material for MkDocs’. Easy to use can be set up as docker container to compile static pages. And as I already said… Uses markdown aka. Easy to edit.
I had to use that thing for 2 different jobs and I have always hated it. It’s opaque, I’m not sure you can export your data easily if you’re a user, and you couldn’t switch from rich text to markdown.
But some people may enjoy it.
Yeah, I noticed that when you choose a format, it’s that format or delete and start over with the new format. That would be a neat feature at least, but I can see the troubles of properly reformatting the file into the new format you want. Luckily, I’m just using it for giggles and a little bit of learning! Haha!
It isn’t! There’s a convert button in the little edit quick menu in the bottom right
Keep on using it, it’s pretty but, as a developer, I always prefer solutions like GitLab where the markdown is stored in a git repository.
I’ve never developed or anything like that. Just fiddled around with HTML, CSS, and markdown before. Can you explain the upsides to the git structure? I’ve never used it, so I’m interested to know from someone who has used it!
Git is what’s known as “Version Control Software” which basically means that it keeps track of the changes you make.
It’s primarily used for software development, and where it shines is when multiple people are collaborating on a project which will receive many changes. You can create a “branch” of the project with the changes you want to “commit” and then after they’re reviewed in a “pull request” you can “merge” them back inyo the main branch. If at any point in the process you discover that the changes cause issues, a history allows you to “revert” those changes back to what you had previously.
As you can probably see, there’s a fair bit of terminology in git. It’s a powerful tool that has a learning curve in order to use it.
While git is primarily used in software development, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, you could use it for any collection of files that receive changes. It’s not uncommon to see it used for technical writing , wikis, or large collaborative documents. I recall seeing a compelling argument that it could be used for drafting legislation, although I’m not aware of any government which uses it for that purpose.
Some people argue about whether or not you should use git with non-text files because the changes are much larger, but you don’t have to rigidly follow dogma.
I knew a guy who liked to use git for his RPG campaign notes. The main branch held his setting info, and when he’d run a game he’d create a new branch. If he was pleased with the game and wanted to enshrine it in canon, he’d merge it into main. Otherwise, he could leave the branch alone, but he’d still always be able to go back and look at the adventure with the details of the setting as it was at that time. I thought it was overkill, but he had fun.
You can sync wiki.js with git solutions. I use that option to allow my colleagues to make changes online or through their favorite text editor. Bulk editors are way easier in a text editor, then commit and it will sync with wiki.js
I implemented and administer wiki.JS for my company. The ability to view source and convert between formats are permissions the admin can bestow on groups. My colleagues are editors so they have full permissions to create, convert, edit, and even have access to the github to edit in their favorite code editor if they wish. Our customers have read only access. Sounds like your admin did not grant you those abilities.
I used to love it, but wiki.js 2.0’s editor is very unfriendly to non-tech users. 3.0 could’ve been the solution, but after waiting over and over for wiki.js 3.0 to release, after being years late on their schedule and with less and less blog posts (the last blog post about 3.0 is two years old!!) we chose to migrate to Bookstack.
I switched from wikijs to outline because it takes too much time to render a page and it doesn’t support real-time collaborative editing.
I’m using wiki.js right now. It’s the best tool for the job right now but still lacks some niceties that would elevate it to an enterprise-level solution. I took a look at outline. Seems nice but it’s Open Core, not truly open source, and their pricing for business and enterprise licenses while self-hosting are insulting. They also go on the SSO wall of shame.
Neat, I’ll need to look into this. I’ve learned how to clone fandom wikis, but haven’t found a good way to “rehydrate” them into a usable wiki, maybe there’s something here.
I’ve added a screenshot to the main post of what it looks like after I did a reformat of the content from the Stardew Valley Wiki. I highly recommend it so far!
Fandom uses MediaWiki just like Wikimedia projects do, and that also means it uses wikitext rather than markdown. MediaWiki is especially nice because 1) it’s something prolific editors are already familiar with, 2) it has a great WYSIWYG editor called VisualEditor, 3) it’s basically guaranteed to be rock-solid, 4) it has good support and documentation, 5) wikitext is portable to functionally any wiki (apparently except Wiki.js right now, which is genuinely unacceptable for wiki software), and 6) a lot of tools, extensions, and preferences that let you customize your editing experience are made for MediaWiki.
Looking at Wiki.js as someone with a decade of extensive experience editing and administrating various wikis, it looks very style-over-substance. Assuming the screenshot of their docs is supposed to represent the wiki, it’s basic as all fuck in comparison to what a MediaWiki page is capable of. It’s literally just text, headers, and hyperlinks to other pages. This is something fiddling around with CSS for 20 minutes could produce.
The sidebar has a bog-standard telescoping ToC, a standard history button (I hope that leads to a full history, anyway), a star rating system*, and a bookmark/share/print icon trio. This is baby’s first wiki. Where are the templates? Captioned images? Tables? Not all pages have to have these things, but Wiki.js gives the reader one (1) image at the top as a first impression, and it’s something totally unremarkable.
* As someone with 25,000+ edits on Wikipedia where we actually rate articles (other wikis don’t seriously do this), I can tell you this is absolutely fucking useless. We have a rating system on Wikipedia called Stub, Start, C, B, GA, A (basically disused), and FA. This is on the talk page and is nomimally based on various criteria. Almost always, the people using it actually know what they’re doing. Here, though? You’re encouraging substituting an actual talk page discussion (which I don’t even see here) with a useless star rating. Does the star rating reset every time you make an edit in case you resolved past issues? Do the votes get a corresponding message? Will the votes mean literally anything beyond what you could already glean by looking at the page? If I can edit anonymously, can I vote anonymously? It’s just stupid fluff to make up for how utterly redundant this software is to MediaWiki.
While I appreciate the honesty, you are coming off as a jerk.
This is my first time doing anything like this. I don’t normally do anything like this at all. It is a little side thing to have fun learning something new. Most of what you are talking about isn’t even something I am remotely aware of.
I’d be more interested to learn about MediaWiki from you if you hadn’t come off as such a jerk. I stated in the body of the post that I’m using it offline and for personal use. I have also just started, again, as stated in the body.
I appreciate your view, but I recommend coming at a different angle the next time you want to share your knowledge of something you are clearly passionate about.
I replied to Scrubbles, not to you, OP. If you saw it, I actually edited in “sorry for the brutal honesty, OP” at the end for just a minute because after I’d already submitted that comment, I misread something you said that made me think this was your work-in-progress hobby project (which is really sad that I could’ve thought that to begin with). I did try it here as linked below, and it’s hilariously horrendous. It’s like somebody made a bootleg Docusaurus where the contents of the page are editable and you can do a poor man’s git diff between edits and said “done, we’re wiki software now”. There are so many things wrong with this in the way of being serious, productive wiki software that I don’t even know where to begin. It’s somehow only barely less terrible than Fandom, and Fandom has 20% of the screen dedicated to actual articles and is a cancer eating away at fan wikis (plugging Indie Wiki Buddy).
Edit: Is there not even a spot at the bottom of the page for the license the contents of the article are released under? Oh my god. Copyleft is the most singularly important aspect of a healthy, thriving wiki, and instead of telling me a license like CC BY-SA 4.0, it’s saying “Powered by Wiki.js”. I can’t. This is not a serious piece of software created by someone who’s touched a wiki in their life.
I love this wiki software! There are tons of addons for markdown and HTML that allow it to render additional things like diagrams. It renders the MD extensions then into HTML then renders the HTML extensions. So of you see something you want to enable in HTML, don’t worry you can still use it in markdown mode. This may not be obvious to those new to it.
I tried wikijs but personally preferred dokuwiki.
What made you choose docuwiki over Wiki.js? I saw dokuwiki, but preferred the sleeker design of Wiki.js, but I know that’s just a personal preference! Is there a function in docuwiki that you were really interested in?
Been a while now, so some of these comparison points might not be accurate. But iirc, it came down to doku ultimately being easier to maintain (in my opinion), easily expandable with themes and modules, and a local file system that was extremely easy to understand (no database, pages are text files).
I have maintained both wiki softwares, and didnt find either difficult to maintain. Wiki.js does use postgres database which makes serving slightly faster and searching way faster. But it just stores the text files in the database and you can sync with various solutions including git. For wiki.js I mainly edited from vscode as that allowed me to make mass changes (including uploading thousands of images at once) a breeze.
I see! I believe this is my first time ever using anything that needed a database, so I’m not really keen to any downsides of a database structure. It does make sense to keep them simple like that, so I will take that into account if I ever feel like simplifying it!
There are a few options when creating a new page, markdown, RAW HTML, etc. So to make it easy on myself I’ve just been using the HTML for easy import of the wikis I’m interested in.
I just started using it last week. I really like it.
