JSPWiki

I think JSPWiki is one of the greatest pieces of open source software out there anywhere.  It might not be well suited to everytone running a small website on a shared host because it requires a Java servlet container for hosting, so demands a slightly higher level of expertise than the PHP junk that's out there.

That said, it drops into place and "just works" for a fast tryout or evaluation.  At the same time most of the flexibility needed for large-scale, sysadmin-run deployments is easily available, and its not an "all in one big step" thing either: you can gradually add the finer-grained controls as you need them.  Any Java-capable sysadmin will have no difficulty.

Furthermore, there is an active, healthy and, above all, friendly developer community.

I am using JSPWiki to run the "static" content side of this website, with only myself allowed to create, delete and edit pages.  (Indeed, only I am allowed to log in!)  Its perfect for the task.  All I have to do now is hack the templates into something nicer to look at. :-)

More website progress...

Finally managed to get the farm web content up and running under the new JSPWiki - now I just have to hack the templates to conform to the new scheme of things.  The advantage is that I'll be able to secure the content-editing using the new permissions system in JSPWiki, instead of my old scheme of having two different template sets.  Means I will only have to maintain one template set in future.

JSPWiki is just such a great piece of software; the guys who develop it have a fine sense of "as simple as possible, but no simpler".

mikro2nd.net Stage 2 retro rockets firing

So, Stage 2 of my experiment is now working - integration of the wiki (JSPWiki - the best wiki engine out there) with the blog system (Blojsom, in case you didn't notice, and also a best of breed piece of work).  Next I'll probably fiddle with wiki templates for a while to get some working the way I want things.  OTOH I don't want to drop too deep into Look and Feel issues before adding Forums.  (Isn't it a pity that "Fora" is such an ugly word that almost nobody gets without blinking?  Correctness sacrificed for common use.)

I'll probably go for using MVNForum, and have never yet had the pleasure of installing it, so I would really, really like to hear from anybody who has strong opinions (for or against) MVNForum, particularly from the viewpoint of installation and administration.