A wiki can easily be used as a personal notebook. Just think of a paper note or notebook. You want to remember something, you make a note, and you keep it somewhere. A personal and private wiki is the ideal place for keeping those notes. You can access it from everywhere, and you only need an internet connection and a browser.
Open or closed?
Originally, wikis are intended for sharing information. They are supposed to be open for everyone, and many wikis allow you to edit information without even having to register. Of course you can publish your personal notes for everyone to see, but most people probably want to keep them private.
There are several options to keep your wiki private. You can protect the directory using htaccess, requiring users to login to see the folder contents. This is quite rudimentary. If you’re the only one using the wiki, it’s just fine. When sharing the wiki with several persons, this might not be the best solution.
DokuWiki
Some wikis have rights management. The best rights management I’ve seen in a wiki is implemented in DokuWiki. It is webbased and simple to use. First you setup a group, and give it rights (view, edit, delete, upload). Users can be added to those groups. When you create a group called “viewers”, give it only view-rights, users of that group cannot edit or change the content of the pages.
For visitors that are not logged in there is a special group, @ALL. When you give this group no rights, people who don’t have a login won’t see anything. Be sure to disable the option for visitors to register, and you’re set!
DokuWiki supports namespaces, and you can assign special rights for users and namespaces. So users can have special rights in special sections of the wiki. If you want, you can create a special namespace for visitors without login. Then they can see (or even edit) only that section.
DokuWiki is a great wiki, easy to setup, easy to use, and absolutely the best choice for a quick start.
Ready, set, go!
So I’m not going to tell you how to install a wiki. If you don’t know how, find a friend who can help you. If you’re familiar with Apache, PHP and htaccess, you’ll probably find ways to protect the different brands of wikis like MediaWiki or PmWiki. If not, use DokuWiki. And test on another computer if the wiki is really protected before you put anything personal in it.
Assuming that you have the wiki installed, you’re free to do whatever you want. You can make notes, write stories, keep logs of problems or issues you encounter, or use it for (personal) project documentation.
Of course you’re not limited to one wiki. You can install several wikis next to eachother. Dokuwiki uses files as storage by default, so you can simply copy the entire directory, and you have a second wiki. Don’t forget to remove accounts that you don’t want to give access to the new wiki.
My personal wiki
My personal wiki has currently more than 1000 pages. Wow you think, 1000??? Wel… to be honest it’s close to 2000! But that took me about five years, and many pages only have one line of information (although others can be many screens long).
To give you an impression of the things I’ve put in my wiki, here’s a list.
Computer problems
I describe the problem, when it occurs, and what the solution is, including links to other websites that describe the problem. When I encounter a similar problem a year later, I can quickly find the original problem to see if it really is the same problem. That way I can quickly apply it, or rule it out.
Sometimes I don’t find an answer immediately. Then I make a note, try to describe it as verbose as possible, and leave it. When I have the time to look at it again, it’s easy to find. I write down new insights, and the solution if I find it. You never know when you encounter a smilar problem, and by that time you’ve maybe forgotten what you did the first time.
House
I write down everything I know about my house:
- What paint have I used where
- What is the brand and type of my central heating unit, who should I contact in case of problems
- I’m probably going to move somewhere in the future. Here I can make notes of my wish list for a new house or appartment.
- When I’m actually searching for a new house, I will make a small section in my wiki about this search, and keep all info there.
Of course you can keep all this information in a map. It’s just what you like. But still you can make a page in your wiki where you can find all information about your house. Where are the contracts, original bills, etc. The idea is that you have one place where you keep everything, and if you don’t or cannot keep it there, then make a note about where to find it.
A new job
When looking for a new job, I created a special wiki for this reason. I uploaded my resumé to the wiki. For every job I applied to, I created a new page, copied the job info in it, uploaded the resumé that I sent them, etc. I made notes about how the interviews went, what I liked and what went wrong. When I had the next interview, I could easily browse back and review the other interviews. I created a page with all tips I found, and made a checklist how to prepare for interviews.
Although the search is over, I will keep this wiki for the next time. I think it will be very interesting (and possibly funny or emberrassing) to see what I did in the past.
Project vault
When I start a project, or think about starting a project, I create special section for it in the wiki. Whenever I think of something relevant I add it to the wiki. If I’m not online, I make a note (on paper or my ipod touch or whatever is available) and add it to the wiki later. You can do it as you like. Maybe you prefer to upload Word documents or Excel sheets, or maybe you prefer to write the texts directly in the wiki, or you link to somewhere else.
More options
I’ve given you a few examples for which I use my wiki. I use it for many more things. It’s only limited by your imagination what kind of information you like to put into it. And keep in mind that a wiki can easily serve as a simple file-upload system or an issue-manager.
It’s up to you!
Links
- DokuWiki.org
- DokuWiki Screencasts and Manual
- Mediawiki (used by Wikipedia, difficult rights management)
- PmWiki (uses different – easier? – wiki syntax)
- C2 – the original wiki
Hello, can you please post some more information on this topic? I would like to read more.
This weblog has been offline for several weeks, due to a virus infection, and lots of other things going on that kept me from fixing this. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.