• fast
• small
• few dependencies
• Very easy to install
• flat text files under the ~/.didiwiki directory
  • easy to edit
  • integrate and use with other tools, only some bash knowledge needed
  • easy to backup
  • you can change this directory, see README
• Optional Gnome front-end

• no revisions
• no back-links
• search is case sensitive
• not based on templates

Best thing is that you don't need to install mysql databases, webservers, php, etc.. And if it was packaged as an RPM installation it would have been much easier to install. Yes, I can here some of you, *urpmi phpwiki* on MandrakeLinux installs a full featured modular PHPWiki with all its dependencies. I did this before and didn't work like I wished, I had to edit some config files outside my home directory. Plus, I don't like having my data hidden somewhere in a MySQL database. I will not learn SQL to learn how to manipulate my data. Sorry, to much overhead for me.

DidiWiki 0.5 is an extremely fast and easy to run personal desktop wiki. It is written in C and is only 25KB. It is comes with built-in webserver, syntax similar to kwiki ,standards compliant output. If you can do the installation routine bellow you will have a nice small personal wiki running.

 tar -zxvf didiwiki-0.5.tar.gz
 cd didwiki
 ./configure
 make
 make install       # as root
 
 Point your favorite browser to http://localhost:8000

DidiWiki is not the best wiki software. However, its a very nice easy to install and easy use wiki. Which, I think, creates a low barrier for adoption of this kind of ad-hoc personal productivity software. And this is the purpose of this review, to encourage you to try and experiment with using a wiki for organizing your life, projects or whatever. Since, some may be wiki-shy to edit public wikis and thus fail to realize their potential, a personal hidden wiki for you to keep track of whatever that makes you busy would be more inviting.

In general wikis are one of the best inventions that appeared on the web lately. Coupled with the idea of structured text, which makes it easier to edit. Currently, the downside is, nearly every wiki uses its own syntax for structured text. Which makes it hard to remember if you are frequently using several kinds of wikis. Hard to migrate from one wiki software to the other. Complicates things if you like to write in your wiki first before posting to a blog or another wiki. I hope bodies like the W3C would create a structured text standard for wiki developers to adhere to. I did complain about this before here

Tips for using a personal wiki

Write down first, organize later

Should I create a separate page for this idea, should I put it with other things. etc.. Don't bother thinking about how to organize your wiki. Wikily write it down, later on you can think of how to organize it. A personal wiki follows no rules, only yours and you will formulate them down the road.

Only use one date format.

This will help you searching for pages that mention specific days, months or years. I personally use the ISO date format so I can sort a list of events.

Go mobile

Put it on a Handheld or a USB memory chain.

More tips and user experiences with personal wikis here

Arabic

• Didiwiki uses !UTF8 by default. Which means there is no encoding hassles.
• Concerning RTL you will have to drop a custom style.css in the ~/.didwiki/ directory.

 Goto http://localhost:8000/styles.css copy all the contents of this page in your favorite text editor then append the following line:
 div#wikidata {direction: rtl;}
 save your file as ~/.didiwiki/styles.css

• Since there is no way to create CamelCase Arabic. You will have to force links, but Didiwiki doesn't allow forcing links to more than a single word try doing this instead:

 [شخص_خجول_مجهول]

Security

Security is probably the most important issue in Didiwiki. Although, wikis on the web are made for anyone to read and edit. A personal wiki is not the same you don't want your personal TODO list or contacts for everyone to see. It provides no security in this domain, your data is in the open. For anyone to misuse, laugh at, tamper with at port 8000. But as far as I know there are no other wiki software that provides such level of privacy.

If you have a firewall and its your own personal desktop, with no one you don't trust logged in, then there is no need to freak out.

DidiWiki should have optional password authentication, and the ability to change ports. Fortunately Matthew Allum, DidiWiki's author plans to add this in the future:

 If you really do want to run one publically with SSL, http auth etc
 one way you can do it is sit it behind an apache reverse proxy. I do
 intend to one day add http auth to didiwiki itself.

Fortunatly Matthew has lots of ideas and plans for didiwiki.

Other personal wikis

• Instiki - A small wiki written in Ruby
• A complete list at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PersonalWiki