Software to power an academic resource-sharing site?

August 19, 2008 12:51 PM

My new grad school class (of about 140, if it matters) needs an easy way to post and share categorized notes, study guides, and sundry other files and documents with one another. What simple, easy-to-use open-source Web knowledgebase and/or document-management software might work well for this purpose?
posted by killdevil to computers & internet (7 comments total)

With a smaller group, I've used Backpack, but the free version has some limitations, I think.
posted by mdonley at 12:57 PM on August 19, 2008

Google Sites?
posted by GuyZero at 1:24 PM on August 19, 2008

You could use a wiki. I made a wiki on wetpaint for almost the same purpose. The good: it's easy to set up and use. They'll also remove the ads if it's an educational wiki. The bad: they don't give much space for file hosting, so if you plan on having files posted for download you'll need to get some webspace or use something like rapidshare.

There's a wiki comparison here. Also dokuwiki and tikiwiki look ok if you have some webspace, I haven't tried them though.
posted by sero_venientibus_ossa at 1:42 PM on August 19, 2008

Kerika is easy, powerful and elegant. For instance you can drag files onto its share space and it will instantly be available for all. But you need a shared server i think.
posted by uni verse at 2:07 PM on August 19, 2008

Apropos of uni verse's commment, I should mention that I have access to a shared server and have lots of experience with database-driven Web software... so I actually prefer to install and manage a Web app rather than go with something hosted.
posted by killdevil at 2:14 PM on August 19, 2008

My grad program uses a wiki for this kind of thing. My university has some sort of approved wiki flavor it uses (I think it's based on Mediawiki) so you could check and see if yours does as well.
posted by bluefly at 2:55 PM on August 19, 2008

Moodle might be just what you're looking for. It's a free, open-source course management system that can be run on any system that supports PHP. You could easily use it for what you're describing, but it can also do much, much more. It's scalable, flexible, and visually pleasing.

I've also done something similar to what you're describing with Sharepoint, but I wouldn't recommend it. Sharepoint is cumbersome, inflexible, and downright annoying, in my opinion.
posted by k8lin at 4:33 PM on August 19, 2008