jtara - 11:35 pm on Jan 1, 2006 (gmt 0)

I've been a webmaster off and on for about 10 years. I worked for a consulting firm that did some early eCommerce sites for some big names, started one of the first outdoor webcams, and ran an investing discussion board for several years, on highly modified open source Perl software. So, I've done this the hard way.

I'm in the process of developing a new site, a kind of directory of establishments (drinking establishments, to be exact...) and I think I've settled on TikiWiki as a platform.

It strikes me that TikiWiki would be quite suitable for a lot of personal and hobbyist sites.

You have to look beyond the "wiki" part. That's ideal for my directory, because that is what I want - a directory that my users can insure is up-to-date.

But "wiki" is a misnomer in this case, because TikiWiki is also a rather complete CMS with a ton of components, including blogs, articles, forums, chat, photo gallery, RSS support, mobile support, etc. etc. etc. It includes just about every style of user interaction you can imagine.

It seems it might be particularly suitable for hobbyist sites where the site author might want to share the authoring duties with others in a controlled fashion.

The look out-of-the-box is a bit busy and techie. But it is highly customizable.

Since it's non-commercial and free-as-in-beer, I think I can get away with dropping a link, right?

[tikiwiki.org...]

I think there's a list there somewhere of ISPs that either routinely or on request will pre-install it with a web hosting package.

Anyway, just wanted to suggest that anybody building a hobby website give this a good look, even if you don't need or haven't considered incorporating a wiki.