How do I set up my own wiki

✎ This article/section is a stub — some half-sorted notes, not necessarily checked, not necessarily correct. Feel free to ignore, or tell me about it.

Do you really need a wiki?

That is, don't overcomplicate the start.

Figure out what you want to do most - brain dumping, organizing, writing prose.

Figure out the thing that you the most motivation and least friction to do - that's probably the best choice, whatever that is.

Figure out whether you want a clean separation between 'todo pile of messy notes' and 'written up well enough to publish', and if so, how.

...or maybe specifically not that , so that you'll focus on everything you write up.

Figure out whether you want to organize related thoughts - them maybe something a standalone app such as Obsidian or one of of the many things like it.

Maybe you want something you can take notes in and publish from. Maybe you want the lowest possible friction to putting it online, and maybe you don't mind that being a little technical and that's just as productive for you.

(Maybe consider not tying yourself to a specific product, so that you aren't tied to paying, or a particular way of hosting - meaning you can easily move it should you need to).

Say, consider the style of e.g. jvns.

Conceptually, that entire site is static HTML. ...but not quite like the stuff we wrote in notepad in the nineties. This site gets re-generated whenever a new article gets added.

The items are written in Markdown, which is mostly human-geared but with just enough structure to have things like headers and links.

There is a sort of template that tells it how to translate that to HTML. You don't have to alter it, though probably want to over time to make it look more like your thing.

No database, no reliance of the kind of hosting, so easier to move to another host, or self-host.

If this suits your needs, this is more portable and, after the initial setup, more lightweight and low-maintenance.

When do you really want a wiki?

Generally, a wiki is preferred if you want one or more of:

• public facing

e.g. obsidian can check most of the boxes - for private/group use.

• collaborative editing

that is, where the primary copy is online, and editable, rather than with one person

• specific features that specific wiki software

e.g. if you want source code to be processed and shown colorized

• cross-linked structure

that is handled more or less automatically