Weblogs as Base for Knowledge Management Systems?

cpfeifer asks: "I'm joining a small startup that needs a knowledge management solution. I know that 'knowledge management' is seen an empty buzzword, but after working at a company where the communication is very poor, I see the value of allowing folks to post their own news instead of having it filtered through some sort of corporate newsletter. I've seen the commercial portals (Plumtree & others), but after seeing a couple of OSS publication systems (phpNuke, Slash), I think these would fit the bill quite nicely." Aside from some of the basic features found in weblogs (posting, archival, sorting and searching), what else is necessary for the proper maintenance and use of such a system? How hard would it be to adapt existing weblog-ware to this task?

Comments

Choices

[McCarrum]

I havent seen any blogs really do that good a job at some like Content Management, but writing a plugin for such wouldn't be so hard.

A blog can be a good choice to start with though, as they'll handle the whole user authentification, security (if your blog of choice DOES security), templates, etc etc etc.

As a developer of Geeklog, we do have a security system, based on the typical *nix model of users and groups, along with the ability to use these through a quasi-friendly plugin api ... i say quasi friendly as I've yet to meet an api which IS friendly.

If it's a fairly open staffing/documentation setup over there, I'd recommend a wiki. PHPWiki is pretty good from experience, and now does handle user logins.

PostNuke

[Thalinor]

try PostNuke.

it does all phpnuke does plus

• is more secure (see bugtraq)
  
• allows posting from the desktop (Blogger API)
  
• has a wiki module
  
• has a clean architecture
  
• has a roadmap
  
• has dozens of able developers (phpnuke is a one man show)
  
• has live support over IRC
  

there is more, but i think you get the idea.

Re:PostNuke

[JabberWokky]

PHP makes things "easy": query string variables can be used naively as they are "magically" initialized variables.

FWIW, the first thing I do is turn off that behaviour - PHP can quickly be tightened down at the master configuration level, and loosened for 3rd party scripts that were written with the less secure model in mind.

For any script longer than a few dozen lines, you should lock down PHP, an easy task, but one that really needs to be done *before* you start coding.

--
Evan

General KM functionality

[Twylite]

I've put a lot of time into investigating KM and how people can derive benefit from it. Here are some things you should look out for:

• Accept that people are knowledge, stuff on disks and screens is data (unfiltered) or information (filtered).
• The most important criteria for benefitting from KM is getting people to use it - both to retrieve AND to store information that they know. If you don't get buy-in, forget it.
• The value of KM is best realised when people know what sort of information they can find in the knowledgebase, and how to find it. This means structure and education/buy-in.
• Hierarchical contents (book-style ToC) and cross-references (Wiki style) are orthogonal, and BOTH are required for successful KM. Information should also be able to appear in multiple places in the ToC.
• Make templates, and use them. Template structure individual pieces of information and make it easier to determine if they are relevant, as well as to absorb them. The template can be a simple text document with headings and "(add your info here)" statements.
• Related to the last point, try to have a title, summary, and list of references / similar information for every piece of information. An author, date/time and keyword list are also good ideas.
• You MUST have the ability to do a free-text search, giving preference to matches in keywords, titles and summaries.

Take a look at KeyNote, its a free note manager, and unfortunately not networked, but has many of the requirements for a really good knowledge manager.

PostNuke

[reddog1]

In your search for content management systems check out www.postnuke.com. It is a fork of the PHP-Nuke project. It is run much better. It is more secure, as seen in buqtrac, and they have rewritten the entire core. It is truly much nicer then phpnuke. Not to mention the fact that phpnuke is a one man show and postnuke has dozens of developers. With a little enginuity you should be able to get your weblog written as a module but it will require some coding :-) Good Luck!

TWiki

[DamienMcKenna]

Try TWiki, a perl-based system that adds version control, user accounts and a range of other useful features. The UI is a bit icky, but you can edit the templates to fix that.

Re:Wiki

[Anonymous Coward]

TWiki (twiki.org) can do this, it's specifically designed for corporate intranets. Every page knows what its "parent" is, and you can see the chain all the way to the main page, and you can also attach binary files to any page. Pages and attachments are kept under version control so you can easily see the history of a topic.

Re:Wiki Absolutely!

[metacosm]

I agree entirely with the above post, and, our IT department uses a wiki every single day, it has brought our group together and has become the knowledge center.

Features you really want in a Wiki/Weblog

• Revision History
  
• Login
  
• Upload
  
• Data/Article Connections
  
• Everyone can participate
  

Recommendations for getting it in use

• Seed the database with the data you control
  
• Create some good "general" pages like PhoneBook, SoftWare, Documents, ToDo, ScratchBoard, SandBox
  
• Put software and shared apps in it
  
• Put backgrounds or other goofy stuff related to your company up
  
• Let it be known it is an open-forum and EVERYONE is welcome to edit EVERYTHING.
  

My company personally uses OpenWiki backed by Microsoft SQL 2000 (you can leave it with the default of a Jet 4.0 database).

What I did to jumpstart usage is started a few good wiki pages, such as PhoneBook and SoftWare. Places where we could keep track of phone numbers, and upload all the software we deploy around.

That was about 2 months ago, and it started with around 10 pages, it is now well above 500 pages, and growing everyday. And many of the pages are long (50+ pages printed out) full of great documentation.