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Show HN: BookStack – An open source wiki platform and alternative to Confluence

bookstackapp.com

11–20 of 203 posts

Re: Show HN: BookStack – An open source wiki platform and alternative to Confluence

#11
post #10

Even simpler Markdown-based: https://www.getoutline.com/

I'd say that simplicity can very much depend on audience, use-case and opinion. The design and content structure between platforms appears quite different.

BookStack does support Markdown content editing although it is WYSIWYG or Markdown, jumping between the two isn't really supported (Yet, Hoping to achieve this later this year).

Re: Show HN: BookStack – An open source wiki platform and alternative to Confluence

#12
post #9

Impressive. I'm definitely going to give this a look. Right now, we've got our technical docs in Sharepoint (yeah, that Sharepoint), mixing its built-in docs and Word docs, and I'd really like to get rid of that.

Thanks! My original scenario was a mix of gist code snippets and word docs. The horror is when those word docs are version by file name (server_docs_final-v2.docx). It definitely helps to get things aligned into a platform that people understand how to use.

Re: Show HN: BookStack – An open source wiki platform and alternative to Confluence

#14
post #10

Even simpler Markdown-based: https://www.getoutline.com/

One of the benefits of Counfluence is that it is one of the only Wikis where I've seen non-technical people being able to create content on a daily basis. Linking pages, inserting graphs and images just works. I have yet to see that in anything based on markdown.

Re: Show HN: BookStack – An open source wiki platform and alternative to Confluence

#15
post #13

I've been looking for something just like this. Does it support migration from Confluence? I glanced over the features section and didn't see mention of that, but perhaps I missed it?

Unfortunately no readily available migration path from Confluence. I'm not familiar enough with Confluence myself to understand the formats and options that we'd need to carry across & support.

Our API [1] has recently matured to now support the different content types so that could be utilised for such a migration job although the API is still growing to cover more actions/models.

Have recently been thinking about possibly offering some form of paid service support service to help the process and help fund the project.

[1] https://demo.bookstackapp.com/api/docs

Re: Show HN: BookStack – An open source wiki platform and alternative to Confluence

#17

I've been working on BookStack for over 6 years now, learning a lot about open source project maintainership during that time. Originally developed it while looking for a documentation system for my mixed-technical-skill workplace. Wanted something easy to use without having to get finance involved when increasing our user count. With Confluence backing away from their self-hosted offerings, hopefully many will find…

I dove into your Laravel code the other day to see how you organized things.

Thanks for making it open so I could learn!

Re: Show HN: BookStack – An open source wiki platform and alternative to Confluence

#18

I've been working on BookStack for over 6 years now, learning a lot about open source project maintainership during that time. Originally developed it while looking for a documentation system for my mixed-technical-skill workplace. Wanted something easy to use without having to get finance involved when increasing our user count. With Confluence backing away from their self-hosted offerings, hopefully many will find…

Impressive that you've stuck to it for more than six years. I remember testing an early version. Looks like you've made a lot of improvements in that time.

Re: Show HN: BookStack – An open source wiki platform and alternative to Confluence

#20
post #14
post #10

Even simpler Markdown-based: https://www.getoutline.com/

One of the benefits of Counfluence is that it is one of the only Wikis where I've seen non-technical people being able to create content on a daily basis. Linking pages, inserting graphs and images just works. I have yet to see that in anything based on markdown.

Yeah, non-technical folk were one of my key audiences for BookStack which most other popular open-source offerings, at the time, seemed to lack focus for. People do love their markdown input though.

I'm currently rebuilding the editor; My goal is it have an easy WYSIWYG editor that allows instance back-and-forth switching to Markdown. One of the tricker parts is avoiding obscure/custom markdown syntax for non-common/custom content blocks, as one of my main principals is to ensure user content is portable/non-proprietary.

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