Question

I just came across few articles, while selecting a wiki for my personal site. I am confused, as i am setting a personal wiki for my personal projects, i think a flat file system is good, even to maintain revisions of the design documents, design decisions, and comments/feedbacks from peers.

But the internet gives a mixed bag of responses, mostly irrelevant information. Can anyone please shed some light on the selection. It will be nice if some can share his experience for a wiki selection for this personal/small business site.

Answer 1

You’re asking more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which has nothing much to do with how you store your content in the server. Whether in static HTML or as a DB-driven application, search engines will still index your pages by trawling from link to link.

Some factors that do affect search engines’ ability to index your site:

1. Over-dependency on Javascript to
   drive dynamic content. If certain
   blocks on information can’t even be
   rendered on the page without
   invoking use of Javascript, it will
   be a problem. Search engines
   typically don’t execute the JS on
   your page. They just take the
   content as-is.
2. Not making use of proper HTML tags
   to represent varying classes of
   data. A <h1> tag is given more
   emphasis by search engines than a
   <p> tag. Basically, you just need
   to have a proper grasp of what HTML
   element to tag your content with.
3. URLs. Strictly speaking, I don’t
   think having complicated dynamic
   URLs represent a problem for search
   engines. However, I’ve seen some
   weird content management systems
   that expose several different URL
   mappings just to point to the same
   content. It would be logical that
   the search engines deem this same
   content as separate pages, which can
   dilute your ranking.

There are other factors. I suggest you look up on “accessible web content” as your Google search key.

As for flat files vs DB-driven content, think about how you’re going to manage the system. At the end of the day, it’s your own labor (or your subordinates’). I, for one, sure don’t want to spend my time managing content manually. So, a convenient content management system is pretty much mandatory. I know that there are a couple of Wiki implementations that write directly to flat files. As long as the management part of it is good enough, I’m sure they’d be fine for your purposes.