MultiJournal
Keeping this here for us, and for any other advanced geeky Linux or server admin types who want to install (and immediately upgrade the base PmWiki) a dedicated wiki journal application on a server.
For us, this is in case we accidentally delete our system's journal, but we're also happy to share our work with others as a PmWiki cookbook author. Use at your own risk.
We have started using a wiki "website" journal on our laptop by enabling PHP on our mac laptop and installing and tweaking PmWiki software to create our own journal application.
This is the homepage of our journal.
It's based on http://pmwiki.org software, just like Kinhost.org is. There are a few extra plug-ins added to extend the number of "color words" available, and add shortcuts and a few other goodies to the site.
Download & Set-Up
You can download a bare-bones version here. Then you can follow instructions on PmWiki.org to upgrade either the plug-in recipes from the Cookbook (in the pmwiki/cookbook folder) or the main application itself.
You will need to modify the pmwiki/local/config.php to change your password and possibly to properly point your browser to your website on your computer or on your webserver.
You can email us if you get stuck, or use the enormous help system both in the website application or at http://pmwiki.org — it's rather well documented.
Requirements
This is a website application and requires PHP and just about any type of website server. It doesn't require a database application.
You can either enable web services and PHP on your local computer (mac instructions), have a web server of your own (in which case you may want to use a subdirectory so that people can't easily guess your journal's URL as another layer of protection on top of the password, and you can add htaccess password or similar to access the directory), or follow the instructions to create a "Wiki on a Stick" thumb drive that you can plug your journal application into to your computer and everything will be saved on the thumb drive including the PHP application and web server.
Security
The public interface of the website can be made to require a password. As described above, our default package has a passworded public interface. Locking out read and edit permissions will stop anyone from accessing your journal through the website interface. Make sure you change the password from the default "yourpassword" in the package.
The other serious security issue is if anyone can access the server files on your server, thumb drive, or laptop/computer.
You can encrypt the thumb drive or your hard drive to protect your content; otherwise if someone has access to the file system they can read your journal entries — but they'll have to know it's there and/or search for words to find the files (who would think to look for your typed journal entries in your website folder?). All data is stored in flat text files, so you will probably want an encrypted drive or folder to store this journal in.
Make sure to back up your thumb drive version occasionally, too. Just because it would stink to lose your journal by losing your thumb drive or it breaking.
If you have this journal up in the cloud on a website, then use an obscure URL on your server like http://example.com/this/is/my/journal/ and bury it in folders to use it without people being able to guess where it is or stumble on it. Then they have to both guess your URL and your password to find it. Also be careful about external URLs — everyone collects referrer website data nowadays, you can be giving someone's Google Analytics a direct link to your journal. It's really much more secure to have your journal on your laptop or computer.
Learn How to Use It
In addition to all the documentation available on http://PmWiki.org and in the documentation section within your own MultiJournal website, we have videos available at our business website — click here and a cheatsheet we created for the base software. We do short videos on each topic in the tutorial, and there is helpful text below the video in case you can't see the screen.
We need to create a video showing how to use the Multijournal specific features, like a quick set-up guide, etc.
If your web server has PmWiki available on it, and you want it set up as a multijournal with the plug-ins & set-up we're suggesting, contact us and we'll make sure to package it as a recipe for already established installations of PmWiki.
Technical Info
This is not our own application, it's just a bundle: config files, plug-ins, sample pages, and "logo" over already-available PmWiki software. We have not created anything original for this package other than the "logo" and how it's all set up so that multiples have a way of creating visual "WikiStyles" for headmates and easily using shortcuts for styles to help facilitate faster conversations than would otherwise be possible if you had to color and style every paragraph of text manually.
We are a plug-in developer for PmWiki, but this set-up doesn't contain any of our recipes or original work. It's all GPL licensed. You can modify or share whatever you'd like so long as you don't violate the GPL license.
If the plug-ins or PmWiki have been updated since we created it, this package has not been updated. You may need to update items especially if you're going to use it on a live web server in the cloud.