Personal wikis

Wikis aren't just great tools for sharing information and collaborating on projects. They also make excellent personal information managers. With a personal wiki, all of your to-do lists, notes, and appointments are at your fingertips in form that's easy to use and maintain.

The problem with most wikis, such as MediaWiki (the engine that powers Wikipedia) is that they take a lot of effort to set up and maintain. You have to deal with not only the wiki software itself but also the Web server and database that underlie the wiki. All of that is overkill for anyone who wants a wiki for strictly personal use.

DoxWiki

DoxWiki makes it easy for you to get a wiki up and running quickly. When installed on your computer, DoxWiki weighs in at just over 200KB.

The heart of DoxWiki is a a simple Web server that's written in Perl. To get going, all you have to do is start the Web server at the command line; it doesn't seem to like being launched from a desktop shortcut. Then, open the wiki's main page in your browser by typing http://localhost:8080 in the address bar.

Instead of saving content to a database, DoxWiki saves the individual files that make up the wiki on your hard drive. The files are small, so it would take quite a lot of them to put a dent in your drive's capacity.

Creating wiki pages is simple. On the main page (called the Wiki Root), you type a name for the new page in one of the fields, and then click the Go button. From there, you add content. 

TiddlyWiki

TiddlyWiki is flashier than Wiki on a Stick. It follows the same principles as that application, but does so with a little more pizazz. For example, when you click a link to jump to some wiki content, an in-your-face JavaScript transition brings that content to the top of the page. You can turn that animation off if it bugs you. TiddlyWiki also has a simple built-in search engine that does the job.

TiddlyWiki divides content into two types: Tiddlers and Journals. Tiddlers are general wiki entries -- ideas, notes, to-do lists, or whatever else you want them to be. Journals, on the other hand, are notes that are specific to a day. While I was experimenting with TiddlyWiki, I used Journals to track specific tasks that I needed to do on a particular day, and used one as a personal diary.

You can configure several options in TiddlyWiki. You can set it up to do automatic saves and to create backups. You can also enable regular expression and case-sensitive searches, as well as generate an RSS feed. The latter is useful if you plan to post your TiddlyWiki on the Web. Unlike Wiki on a Stick, though, you can't change the look and feel of TiddlyWiki from the interface. You either have to edit the TiddlyWiki code, or create some sort of custom theme. The TiddlyWiki Web site leads you through that process.

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Tags: Wiki, personal wiki, share information, to-do lists, mediawiki, tiddlywiki, search engine, tiddlers, journals, track information, specific tasks, personal dairy

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