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I've been searching for information on available wiki software, using pages such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software, and am looking for a solution which will meet a number of requirements, but haven't been able to find anything suitable yet. I am looking to create a documentation site in a form similar to TechNet, MSDN, or https://documentation.red-gate.com, and although this could be done with either a SharePoint site or a traditional wiki such as MediaWiki, these are generally for open, community edited content which evolves rapidly, or internal company documentation where the presence of errors and incomplete content is not considered an issue. In this case the documentation is to be visible to customers online and would only be edited by our staff, so it would be preferable for its content to be in source control and using managed releases to different environments (i.e. a DEV site where our staff edit the content, a TEST site for proof reading and a LIVE site, online for the public) so that half-written content, or content which has not been proof read is not immediately visible as it is in a standard wiki, but the ability to allow staff to edit the documentation quickly in a wiki-style format is also important.

I am aware that projects such as Sandcastle, Document! X and Doxygen, which generate MSDN style documentation directly from the source code, but do not intend this to be a documentation site generated from source code comments, but one containing written articles. In essence, I am looking for software which provides:

  • The ease of use of a wiki - anyone can log into the DEV site and add/edit content.
  • Source control of all the content, presumably Markdown files and images, not in a database, where the source control (TFS) is automatically updated/files checked out/checked in, by the aforementioned 'easy edit' wiki capabilities.
  • As a result of the above, the ability to 'release' the documentation to test and production environments, as you might do with any other web site solution.

Additional examples would be sites such as http://uk.mathworks.com/help or https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/introduction.html. Can anyone provide information on whether such a solution is available, or an explanation of how sites such as MSDN, TechNet or the RedGate documentation site are managed and the applications used for them?

seekingknowledge
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  • Did you mean you want to create or find a engine such as [MediaWiki](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki) According to your description, why you don't use MediaWiki directly? – PatrickLu-MSFT Sep 13 '16 at 08:03
  • Thanks for your comment Patrick, I am very familiar with MediaWiki as we already use it for internal technical documentation, as well as a SharePoint site used by one of the other departments. However, in this case MediaWiki is unsuitable as it does not allow releases or differing environments. When a change is made to a MediaWiki it is immediately made live and publically visible, there's no approvals process or ability to mark pages or changes as "in progress". This is be acceptable for some types of sites, but not for public/client visible documentation, so I was looking for alternatives. – seekingknowledge Sep 13 '16 at 08:59

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Here at Redgate we use Atlassian Confluence. It's been around for a while and despite a few quirks I would strongly suggest you try it for yourself. It is available hosted or on-premise, and has a wealth of extensions and other customization options.

David Atkinson
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  • Thanks for your response David. I actually noticed this after having posted the question above, in the "Powered by Atlassian Confluence" text on the RedGate documentation site. I've been browsing around their site, and will continue to investigate this solution. – seekingknowledge Sep 13 '16 at 11:16