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How to setup self hosted wiki for your startup

(themythicalengineer.com)
122 points sks147 | 4 comments | 17 Nov 24 08:14 UTC | HN request time: 1.365s | source
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maccard ◴[17 Nov 24 18:35 UTC] No.42165922[source]▶
As much as I hate it, I think Confluence is the right choice for startups. (Or Github Wiki if you can stomach it). It's free to start, and you get 10 users. By the time you have 10 people who need access, (and you can export PDF's of pages if you have one off sharing to do) you pay $50/mo. If you have 10 employees $50/mo is pocket lint.
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stavros ◴[17 Nov 24 20:58 UTC] No.42167177[source]▶
My problem with Confluence is that I want a wiki primarily to be able to find information, and secondarily to store information, and I can never find anything in Confluence. The search function seems to be optimized for maximum frustration.
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1. maccard ◴[17 Nov 24 21:13 UTC] No.42167327[source]▶
I completely agree with you. I’ve literally searched for page titles and had confluence tell me there’s no results found.

I’ve found this problem exists (even though it’s worse with confluence) no matter what you use, and the solution is a better hierarchy

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2. stavros ◴[17 Nov 24 21:20 UTC] No.42167397[source]▶
I cannot for a minute believe that search over a few hundreds/thousands of documents is anything less than a solved problem these days. Confluence is another level of bad, but I'm sure some software does search well.
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3. maccard ◴[18 Nov 24 11:39 UTC] No.42171559[source]▶
I agree. If google can index the entire internet, there's no reason confluence can't index 10 pages by title in the length of time it takes to use the search.

But, my experience is that even when search is good, you need the right query. Take onboarding instructions. Do you search for "new hire", "initial setup", "setup guide", "engineering onboarding", "programmer first steps"?

Or, do you send a link in a welcome email to the right page, and have it pinned on the home page of your project?

Honestly, I think confluence would be better _without_ search.

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4. stavros ◴[18 Nov 24 13:29 UTC] No.42172128{3}[source]▶
I don't always want to find a page in response to something else. If I'm looking for a decision document I wrote a year ago, how am I going to do that without search?