Using Instiki to manage incoming data gracefully

Background info
Imagine a huge bookmarks file, dozens of text files laying around acting as to-do lists of sorts, and another dozen or so “Post-it” notes in Stickies serving similar purposes.

The quest
In my quest to manage all that data gracefully and effectively, I started considering the use of a Wiki clone.

I started with Qwikiwiki, an easy-to-install and even-easier-to-use web-based Wiki, only to realize after a couple of weeks that it couldn’t meet my needs. (That’s not to say, that it sucks; and the developer was quite helpful when assisting me with a problem I had stumbled upon.)

The destination
Three weeks ago, I decided to give Instiki a go, and I’m here to report that it (almost) rocks.

Installation is a breeze, especially if you’ve already got the Ruby interpreter installed.

Performance-wise, it hits that golden spot between simplicity in use and complexity in features.

Its aesthetics are very good and only a minor tweaking was needed to suit this thing to my tastes. When it comes to interfaces I have to interact with for great amounts of time, a visually pleasing and elegant UI (again: by my standards) is a must.

There are rollbacks; done something wrong and messed the contents of a page? With a couple of clicks you can get to any of that page’s previous states.

The built-in search engine supports even regex queries.

It runs locally, meaning you don’t have to be connected to the Internet to edit the Wiki; a very important point for dial-up users.

Finally, a special mention should go to the export mechanism. In true Instiki spirit, it’s dead-easy to export the Wiki’s content in either HTML (with working links and all) or the pure markup (to import in another Wiki).

A problem comes up
That’s not to say Instiki is flawless (as someone would expect, with a software that’s not even reached v1.0 yet). And before we continue with the bugs I’ve found, let me tell you a short story.

A couple of days ago (and ironically, while I was writing this praise), my PC shut-down due to a power network failure while Instiki was running. Upon restarting my PC, Instiki wouldn’t run, giving me a weird error:

Internal Server Error
incompatible marshal file format (can’t be read) format version 4.8 required; 0.0 given
WEBrick/1.3.1 (Ruby/1.8.1/2003-12-25) at localhost:2500

I was surprised to see Instiki give up, because it was running when the power went down, but it wasn’t processing any data or executing any commands; it was idle.

I tried to find more information about the error over at Instiki’s website and found nothing. Same thing with Google; nothing helpful. I went back to Instiki’s website trying to find a mailing list or a support forum; nothing (the IRC channel was empty). I ended up posting my help question in the FAQ; a week later and nobody replied.

It took some tedious testing, but I was finally able to fix the problem on my own. Since the problem would persist, even after re-installing the Ruby interpreter and Instiki, I discovered that the file causing the trouble was the latest “snapshot” grabbed by Instiki (a snapshot is a file containing all the Instiki changes/commands/etc. that happened in the last 24 hours). I removed it from Instiki’s storage directory and opened it with a text editor to retrieve all the valuable data I had stored. With that last snapshot being removed, Instiki would run normally and I was able to re-input all the data that snapshot contained.

So, not to sound bitter and all, but a dedicated support forum or a mailing list properly linked to from Instiki’s main page would be a welcome addition.

For now, if you need support and you’re not covered by the FAQ, you’re probably out of luck.

Bugs
The bugs I’ve run into are trivial, have mostly to do with some of its auto-formatting features, and I’m sure they’re going to be taken care of soon.

For example, references to non-.com/.net/.org domains are not recognized and auto-formatted as links (e.g. http://soma.fm/ isn’t transformed into a link).

There is one major “complaint”, but I’m not sure if it’s entirely Instiki’s fault: with all the data I’ve inputted into it so far, it takes more than 10 minutes (11 minutes by today’s count) for my first Wiki request (e.g. display the homepage) to be executed; consequent requests for the homepage or other Wiki pages are executed almost instantly.

I’m putting the word “complaint” into quotes for two reasons:

1. Can this be avoided? I’m not a Wiki clones connoisseur, so I can’t tell if there’s a clone out there who handles a similar situation while avoiding this 10 minute “buffering…”-like wait.
2. I’m running Instiki on a rather old computer.

Conclusion
I’m 80% done with the bookmarks importing (I’m doing it manually to ensure proper categorisation — ouch), and 100% done with the lists, etc. I like the end result, and feel that the move was right; I’ve now got a place that acts as my central repository for commonly-used data and even brainstorming sessions as the readme file suggests (this entry was written in my Instiki installation).

If you’re in a similar situation to mine, looking for an elegant and working way to manage data you’re (for the lack of a better phrase:) “messing with” on a continuous basis, you may want to consider Instiki.

And of course, if you were in a similar situation, and found a better way to handle things, I’m all ears. √ Aug 31st, 2004