| | I go through this debate nearly every time I do major work on the MCTB(2), and that is: do I just go online, make it always a wiki, with all that wiki functionality, and abandon print?
There are so many advantages to this...
Regular updates, many internal links to various things, the lack of fixing something that will never feel finished in place for a few years until the next book update comes out, easy of updating it, and the like. Instant translation of ideas to the world...
BTW: the Liferay wiki drives me nuts. Its lack of authoring controls and the lack of ability to upgrade it to newer versions with those controls has totally annoyed me, and, while Florian has agreed to try to make it happen, plenty of pros have already failed (gone through 3 so far...). I want a wysiwyg editor: call me a baby, but markup languages make my blood run cold, reek of web 1.0, and break my creative flow.
Squarespace, where I host interactivebuddha.com, doesn't have real wiki functionality, so far as I can tell, which is too bad, because I like it: very user friendly and easy: nothing to get in the way of expression.
So, I have looked at Foswiki, as it has wysiwyg and appears to be one of those best-in-class, mature wikis that will probably be around for a while, and it would allow trusted people to help edit it, add to it, etc. as it has versions, controls on permissions, and the like, which is what I envisioned for here but I never could make happen.
Thoughts? Thoughts on who to host it? Dreamhost apparently hosts foswiki... Looking for something stable that will be around for a while and I could bail from if needed and move somewhere else. Anyone know anything about Dreamhost? Online reviews often seem to be created by advertisers rather than real people. (I guess advertisers are people, but you know what I mean). Set up my own server?... Any reasonable cost is fine: the VPS at Dreamhost is about $15/mo. which is fine.
I secured mctb.org for this purpose.
In my dreamworld, there would be software that was a wiki with full wiki functionality, but you could at any time just press a button on the website, add an address, pay for the thing, and a print version of whatever the latest version was would just be laser-printed and sent to your door, and you could also press another button and various mobile ebook versions would be downloaded to your computer, phone, ipad, whatever. Anyone want to write that software? The textbook world is dying for something like that, and it would yield the best of all worlds, so I think.
Anyway, wanted to know your thoughts.
Thanks,
Daniel |