Writing.Com General Discussion

This is going to sound odd, but bear with me. I wrote an article for a magazine recently, which extolls the virtues of using notepad-type programs that have wiki-like features. Of course, you'd need a desktop to use them (Zim-Wiki and WikidPad), but I also investigated whether a full-blown wiki would work as well.

The advantage of a full-blown wiki is you can easily install it on a website you own. I opted for DokuWiki, which stores all its pages in plain text files. This makes it easy to backup. As you edit a page, previous versions of the page are stored, so you can always roll back.

I added a tree-view, so you can see the all the sections and sub-sections at a glance. I makes ordering and structuring your notes easy and transparent. If you look at my blog (linked below), then imagine that each of the sections you see in the treeview relate either to a different project or to specific parts of a project (e.g. one section for characters, another for world-building), you can see how this can be useful. Everything is easy to find and well structured and nicely ordered.

Can you stop the whole world seeing your project? Yes. In fact, on my website, you can only see the blog - there is much more on the website, and only I can see it. If I decide to collaborate, I can grant that other person access to the hidden stuff.

DokuWiki adjusts to screen size, and happily works on a phone as well as a desktop. Now you can access it from all devices, anywhere in the world. There is a bit of a learning curve, but you can just write plain notes to begin with and spruce them up as you learn more. Best still, just like wikipedia, you can cross-link pages.

Aside from the paying the hosting service to provide a domain for you, DokuWiki is free.