Looking for an open source alternative to SharePoint for my own home/non-enterprise use.

September 18, 2007 8:09 AM

Looking for an open source alternative to SharePoint for my own home/non-enterprise use.

I am looking to do the following things:

1. Archive scanned receipts, bills. etc ..
2. Keep track of ideas, shopping lists and the like
3. Repository for URLs, Links, Documents
4. Photo/Video storage

I like SharePoint's interface and it's ability to create lists, libraries, tables, and similar structures. I also like the web-part functionality that SharePoint has. What I don't need is the Enterprise level tie-ins that SharePoint has. I would like to be able to administer and add content to my portal all through a web browser. No need for Microsoft Office or other client support. Everything through the browser.

I have looked at Joomla! and though I find it impressive, it seems more targeted to creation of articles rather than the lists and databases I am looking for. I have also looked at Alfresco but it seems to be targeted at the Enterprise.

I should also mention that this is something I want to host on my own rather than use Google and or Yahoo.

So, basically I am looking for something similar to SharePoint in functionality though slimmed down and runs on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) platform. Any suggestions? Thanks.

posted by DerekTheGeek to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I would think that any wiki app could do what you want. MediaWiki, maybe?
posted by jquinby at 8:21 AM on September 18, 2007

Plone

Zope

Hmmm - lists, I'm not sure. There may be a plug-in mobule to do this.
posted by jkaczor at 9:01 AM on September 18, 2007

Plone and Zope are both based on Python which I want to steer clear of. Also, from what I have read Plone has a fair amount of overhead. Though it is indeed a powerful CMS option I prefer to stay within the LAMP arena.

I have been reading about Drupal and even installed it locally using XAMPP. The install was smooth just like Joomla!. Now to find out if it support lists, libraries, and web parts like SharePoint does.
posted by DerekTheGeek at 5:57 PM on September 18, 2007

Well - from my understanding the "P" in the LAMP stack was originally meant to be Perl - but can easily refer to PHP - or Python.

Sorry - I've heard too many horror-stories to recomend anything based on PHP :-(

Give me a completely dynamic language (Python or Ruby) or a completely static one (Java or .NET/Mono) - but never again a mix of a half-baked script language embedded into page templates (PHP, ASP, Perl, etc. *shudder*)

Well - good luck, it would be nice if you eventually updated this question with your findings - we would all be interested.
posted by jkaczor at 10:48 AM on September 19, 2007