Archive for category Software
Why MediaWiki is not the right Wiki product for my clients?
Posted by Dan Katz in Online Marketing Best Practices, Software on July 16, 2008
I have been working with MediaWiki for a couple of years. I even have my own best practices Wiki running on MediaWiki. This experience matched with reviewing most client capabilities has led me to the belief that MediaWiki requires far too much technical awareness to recommend as a platform for clients. I have found applications such as SocialText to be a far more attractive package.
Why not MediaWiki for my clients?
- While a fabulous Open Source package, the benefits of commercial package with its support, product roadmap and dedicated team to fix issues is probably the most important reason to go with an alternate solution.
- My clients are all non-technical and have little if any knowledge of any markup language. Even with the best WYSIWYG and other helpful extensions I have found that the users need to know Wikitext. This really kills the popularity of the Wiki. For example, creating and managing categories is a dog in MediaWiki. My clients expect a far more sophisticated taxonomy solution that is simple for a non-technical user.
- MediaWiki out-of-the-box does not offer features that most clients desire. We then need to install numerous extensions. This is fine. However, we then get into a maintenance cycle that requires upkeep of these extensions. Going with a commercial (or open source alternative) package that has integrated items for this functionality removes this overhead. For example, one of the constants in my clients’ needs is to upload files to articles. MediaWiki without extensions expects you to host files someplace else and to link to them. The preferred method is one where you can browse and upload files easily right when you work on the page.
- MediaWiki templates are a bear. Compared to SocialText or other Wiki products MediaWiki requires a higher level of skills. Others that are available build more off of the more common HTML and CSS skill sets.
So, think I am off base. Please let me know and comment away.
Microsoft Expression Web Release; The Impact
Microsoft has released its successor to FrontPage. Microsoft Expression Web is its new design software package to compete with the Adobe Creative suite.
In its day Microsoft FrontPage set the standard for an easy to use Web site, application and page design software. Dreamweaver and other packages may have been preferred by us geeks. FrontPage held (and still does) the preference for the masses. Its initial release certainly brought Web sites within the reach of anyone who could use Microsoft Word. I know folks who have sworn by FrontPage for years – and they have never seen a single line of HTML code. (And I am glad they never looked; the code was never very clean).
Microsoft Expression Web is a major upgrade as the replacement for FrontPage and reveals many more technical aspects than FrontPage did. This may in fact discourage widespread adoption by previous FrontPage users. No matter. With this package, Microsoft is certainly going full bore to compete with the Adobe Creative Suite and move away from its lighter weight FrontPage predecessor. Reviewers do not see this as a Macromedia or Photoshop killer. However, the package is clearly targeted to the Web newbies and literati and will eat into the market for those not tied to Adobe. .
Adobe based designers will likely never switch to this suite. However, it will attract those who prefer Microsoft’s’ end-to-end integration across the Office/Server line. The biggest fault of this tool/product line appears to be that it comes from Microsoft. I expect that the vocal anti-Microsoft crowd will not be able to overcome the ease of acquisition and acceptance for product integration the majority of computer users have with Microsoft products.
My first impressions with this product are positive. It places a set of Web 2.0 features into the hands of the masses without the need to learn code. Once the plug-ins become more available the functionality will come to rival that available via its Adobe competition. I do not think I will switch from Dreamweaver. But, I would consider recommending the package to those without a brand preference.
Check out the products here: http://www.microsoft.com/Expression/
A thorough review will be posted soon.
