Wikimedia on CD or DVD?

March 3, 2007 4:56 AM

I'd like to create a CD or DVD version of my company's MediaWiki-based Wiki.

The wiki is technical information that would be very helpful for surveyors who are working offshore -often without internet access. It would be great if they could bring the wiki with them.

I've tried Scraping the site with HTTrack. This missed some pages and doesn't allow search functions. You basically have to click through links to find what you want. Much of what makes MediaWiki great is lost (categories aren't useful any more, etc.)

I also tried Wiki on a Stick, which is very cool. It doesn't, however, like running on a drive with read-only permissions. So Wiki on a Stick doesn't seem to translate to Wiki on a CD.

posted by MotorNeuron to computers & internet (8 comments total)

MediaWiki: Static HTML tree drumps for mirroring or CD distribution
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:11 AM on March 3, 2007

Searching is going to be hard if you want this to be purely something browser-based. I suppose you could hack up something where there is a page that contains a list of every article title, and then the user could Ctrl-F to find (or write some javascript to do the same and spit out the results as the appearance of a rudimentary search.) But fulltext searching? I'm not sure that would be possible unless you allow something to run, be it an executable on the CD, a java applet, or something.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:10 AM on March 3, 2007

Webserver on a Stick would be worthwhile investigating (it's not quite the same as Wiki on a Stick). You need Apache/PHP/MySQL if you want all Mediawiki features to work properly, like searching.
posted by Aloysius Bear at 7:31 AM on March 3, 2007

I'm looking for something like this too, in order to create a dynamic, distributable ebook. I've seen wikis out there that let you simply click on a link that says "zipped version of this wiki" but I can't remember which one it was, and the wiki itself looked like a drag to install and use. The other possibility might be finding a wiki that generates static html from the get-go but that doesn't help you with all of the content you've already created.
posted by craniac at 9:57 AM on March 3, 2007

You were probably thinking of TiddlyWiki, which is a self-updating single file of html and javascript. It's really ingenious, but since it's all in one file I'm not sure how well it would scale for a large amount of information.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:01 AM on March 3, 2007

.../maintenance/dumpHTML.php appears to export static copies of MW pages.
posted by c0nsumer at 10:14 AM on March 3, 2007

Wow, you guys have me confused. There is another Wiki on a Stick which does not involve MediaWiki at all. It's like Tidlly Wiki except infinitely easier to use.
posted by IndigoRain at 12:22 PM on March 3, 2007

Tiddly*
posted by IndigoRain at 12:22 PM on March 3, 2007