Todays Post
Instead of trying to think of a topic to write about today I figured I would add another page. Having the Links tab is now kinda like carrying my bookmarks with me where ever I go. Nifty.
A Wiki Failure
I was hoping to write about installing, implementing, and succeeding at using Instiki.
Instiki is a wiki clone with strong focus on ease of installation and running.
Instiki makes wiki so easy, you’ll use it for many things — taking notes, brainstorming, organizing gatherings, etc…
How Instiki makes wiki easy to use:1. Two step installation: embedded web server (WEBrick) makes for easy installation
2. One screen configuration
I first read about Instiki in Sept. 07’s Maximum PC. The article was titled “Organize Your Life With A Wiki” and written by Gina Trapani, the founding editor of lifehacker.com.
Any article that starts out with Organize usually intrigues me at first then destroys my hopes in the end. My life is one big mess as I have work, school, and side projects so any help in getting everything organized would be a huge help. I have looked around at various GTD websites which have helpful ideas but never seem to be for me. That is why I had hope in Instiki.
Long story short I first installed Ruby which is 141mb in case your HDD, like mine, is about full. Second, I downloaded and extracted the zip package found here. Finally I opened MS-DOS to type in some commands that would activate it and then one more command that would start the wiki.
Done. What was so hard about it? Nothing, but to go back to your wiki you must repeat the third step. Though there is an alternative to this. You can download some files and edit some registry files to actually be able to plug in “http://localhost:2500/” into your favorite browser to instantly open your Instiki. I chose the easy way to get to my Instiki instead of the burdensome, laborious, arduous way of getting to it.
The installation instructions can be found here and before actually doing any of this I suggest reading the comments. Everyone seems to be able to have it work this way while others could not get it without editing that. It finally worked for me after reading this comment:
My System is Windows XP SP2. It seems to me that the official STEP #4 and STEP #5 doesn’t work. I managed myself to do a successful install with two steps.
I changed my ”Application” string value to
c:\instiki\instiki.cmd
and then changed my ”AppDirectory” string to
c:\instiki
What initially failed for me was the lack of a great GUI. I don’t mind using Wordpress since I can figure out where I need to go with the easy GUI. With Instiki you have a homepage where all your “Wiki words” will be like Recipes, Favorite Bookmarks, Wish List, To-Do List, etc. To add a page you add a wiki word to the homepage and from the homepage you click on a ? to edit the page.
The biggest let down was their way of editing text by using Textile formatting, a simple text markup. I guarantee you that I was correctly using it yet was not getting the results that I wanted.
After the frustration of trying to figure out what needed tweaking in the installation to the non-responsive “simple” text markup I would not do this again but stick to my .txt files and little green memo pad.
