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

bookstackapp.com

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

#21

Post by bloggie »

I came across your software a few weeks ago when I was looking for some kind of locally hosted collaborative documentation suite for internal use, basically, a wiki that can be used by people who aren’t programmers. I was a bit incredulous when I found that it is basically expected to use markdown if you want to have a wiki. This really raises the barrier to entry and restricts users to ones that are technically proficient and have the time to learn and deal with markdown. Wysiwyg is a necessity.

Easy content insertion is also necessary. We haven’t yet integrated bookstack, but I don’t see any alternatives (sticking with the locally hosted requirement)

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

#22

Post by fnord123 »

Sorry this is nothing like Confluence. On Bookstack you click a link and get a new page instantly. This is nothing like Confluence where you need to wait 5-8 seconds for each page.

And no, I will never not shit in Atlassian products until they fix performance. Trello is the standout. Thanks for not trashing it.

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

#23

Post by ssddanbrown »

drcursor wrote: post #19

A killer feature would be confluence import. How do the permissions work ? Same way as confluence (inherited) ?

Sure, See my other comment here in regards to import/migration: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29852265

I'm not sure how Confluence permissions work. Within BookStack pages (Main content) is generally within a hierarchy of Shelves > Books > Chapters > Pages. Both shelves and chapters are optional parts of the hierarchy,and Books can be members of multiple shelves.

General permissions (Edit/Create/Delete) can be controlled per-role, and multiple roles can be assigned to a user. Permissions can then be overridden per hierarchy item. Permissions for Books and Chapters will cascade to child items unless they're overridden.

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

#25

Post by ssddanbrown »

fnord123 wrote: post #22

Sorry this is nothing like Confluence. On Bookstack you click a link and get a new page instantly. This is nothing like Confluence where you need to wait 5-8 seconds for each page. And no, I will never not shit in Atlassian products until they fix performance. Trello is the standout. Thanks for not trashing it.

I hear this a lot from people switching from Confluence. I watched a colleague using Confluence once and was surprised how much time was spent looking at those text-placeholder blocks while content was presumably loading in the background.

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

#26

Post by ssddanbrown »

iambateman wrote: post #17
ssddanbrown wrote: post #2

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!

Happy to help! I will say that I would in no way present it as an example of a clean codebase. 6 years of weekend and night development, while having significant code understanding/learning during that time, has lead to somewhat of a mix of ideas and approaches. Constantly trying to re-align things though!

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

#27

Post by throwaway9492 »

We actually moved from Confluence to Bookstack last year, mainly because the EOL for the Atlassian server-licenses. Sure, it has less features, but the main function, maintaining content by non-tech people works great!

Thanks for creating this app.

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

#29

Post by wwarek »

bloggie wrote: post #21

I came across your software a few weeks ago when I was looking for some kind of locally hosted collaborative documentation suite for internal use, basically, a wiki that can be used by people who aren’t programmers. I was a bit incredulous when I found that it is basically expected to use markdown if you want to have a wiki. This really raises the barrier to entry and restricts users to ones that are technically prof…

Not sure if this fully fits your needs but you might want to look at Wiki.js. You can self host it, has WYSIWYG editor available (as well as HTML and markdown). I'm not associated, just use it for some time.

https://js.wiki/

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