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Help with starting up a wiki
Ok...firstly, I am really a beginner. I do not even know what this really is, but if someone can help me with 2 questions I will be really happy.
I was searching for a tool that could help me to in an easy and userfriendly way edit and make accessible a quality handbook for our family company. I have understood that MediaWiki could be a good solution for this, so I tried to download the turnkey-mediawiki download.
Question number 1: am I right when I think that this tool can be used for the purpose described?
Question number 2: when I download the file and instill the thing a program called Roxio Creator Basic opens...to be honest I have no clue what to do from here!
If someone can give a clue about these questions I will be very happy :)
Best
Magnus
Replies (3)
Yes, a wiki is what you are looking for
Reply 1Hi there :-)
Reply 2Hi,
1) Yes a wiki is a good tool to use to develop a handbook. It allows all users to edit it but chnages can be undone, so nothing is ever lost (unless deleted by an admin). Wikipedia is based on the mediawiki, so if thats the sort of thing you're after then it'll work well.
Out of interest, OpenOffice has a plugin so you can convert documents to wiki formatting so you can upload any existing docs you have without having to do extensive editing.
2) The file you are downloading is an iso file. They are a CD/DVD image file (an exact replica of how the data is to be layed out on a CD/DVD). It looks like on your system iso files are associated with your CD/DVD burning software (Roxio).
You have two options.
A) If you wish to install the server to hardware (ie a PC, replacing the current OS), just put a CD in your optical drive and burn the iso to the CD by double clicking it (as you've done already).
B) The other option is to have a play with it in a virtual machine. On a Windows system the 3 main options are Sun VirtualBox, VMWare VMServer and MS Virtual PC. All of them are available free (or have free versions). My personal preference for testing is VirtualBox (its also the smallest download), but VMServer may be more appropriate for consistant running of a Virtual Machine (it can run as a Windows service without a lot of mucking around). Either way, download your preferred VM software and install on your host - ie the PC that you will run your virtual machine (guest) on. Once installed, setup a new virtual machine using whatever settings you want (you can set virual RAM size, virtual HDD size, vitual networking etc). You will probably want to setup your networking in bridged mode (if you want full access from your LAN) or NAT mode (if you are only going to access it from the host PC - it will drop unrequested incoming packets - just like in your router). Then set the VM to load the iso as a CD and start your VM.
Good luck!
Thanks
Reply 3Alon and Jedmeister,
thanks a lot for quick responses. Now I understand that I am not even a novice in this game, and should take a chat with a friend of mine which is web-developer and probably she can explain me the very basics of what this is all about! I want to understand and to try this so I will probably ask a question or two later if I get stuck...
Thanks again :)
Magnus
Yes, a wiki is what you are looking for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
TurnKey appliances are provided as ISO images which can be installed on real hardware or in a virtual machine. I assume you are running windows and double clicking the ISO, which is launching your CD burning application (Roxio).
You can either burn the ISO to a CD and use it to install on real hardware, or install in a VM (take a look at the appliance virtual machine installation video and documentation).
Hope this helps.