I decided to start playing around with some Wiki Engines last night. I wasn't very picky, I wanted the following features:
- Written in .NET
- WYSIWYG editor
Okay, so that's it. I went to CSharp-Source.net and picked two off the list to try.
EDIT: I must apologize for the appearance of the pictures in this entry. I have recently started using Windows Live Writer as my blogging tool, and I'm still adjusting to how inserting pictures works. I will try to correct these ASAP.
1) Perspective Wiki Engine 
This engine looked pretty decent. Their website actually has a sandbox allowing users to play with the features before downloading. I played around a little bit, but didn't have a great idea of all the features I should try testing. So I downloaded it, installed it, and here's what I found:
The Good:
1) AWESOME WYSIWYG editor!
2) Easy to create new pages
3) Page commands (New, Edit, Save As, etc) are easy to find on the right
4) Linking to other pages in same collection is easy
5) Supports Windows Integrated Authentication (nice since I'm already using an Active Directory Server)
The Bad:
1) Took a while to figure out how to assign users to collections
2) Linking to other pages in wiki that are in different collections requires external link
3) Cannot find pages once they have been created (searching wouldn't even work)
4) Everything is managed through pages, which is quite confusing after awhile
5) Cannot find pages once they have been created (yes, I'm aware this was repeated... it was annoying)
6) Documentation is sparse and incomplete
Overall: I may need to work with it a little more, but my overall impression is that Perspective is not intuitive to the new Wiki user. This would be fine with me, if they didn't say on their homepage:
"Traditional Wiki engines have been written 'By technical people for technical people'. Perspective is different because it provides a number of features necessary to operate in a much wider arena."
Anyway, I'm going to keep trying with that one. The other package I tried was:
2) ProntoWiki 
This is the Wiki engine to make me give up on Wiki engines, even after trying only 2. Unlike Perspective, ProntoWiki's website did not have a sandbox. This seems like a "duh" feature for a Wiki engine. This product seemed promising at first due to:
a) Written in ASP.NET 2.0
b) Customizable via WebParts and ASP.NET themes
c) Based on SQL Server 2005 database, which is more scalable than file-based
I was wrong.
The Good:
1) Fairly easy setup. I had to create the ASP.NET content database, and modify my machine.config to point to my SQL Server 2005 box, but once that was done, it was simple.
2) Highly configurable through ASP.NET tab in IIS Manager (which for some reason does not show up on my server... another frustration for another day).
3) Highly extensible through ASP.NET 2.0 web parts & themes
4) Site layout is customizable by drag-n-drop
The Bad:
1) Configuration options are set in the ASP.NET tab in IIS Manager (read #2 under Good)
2) Documentation is lacking at best
3) I cannot create a new page!?!?! This is a fairly essential part of a Wiki engine, rendering ProntoWiki completely useless. The documentation says nothing :(.
4) Password requirements are waaayyy too strong (requiring NON-alphanumeric characters) and validation message is a little vague.
5) WYSIWYG editor isn't quite WYSIWYG... it surrounds words with standard Wiki commands instead (eg. the text ''italics'' would give you italics)
ProntoWiki's worthless WYSIWYG editor
Overall: While this engine looked promising, the fact that I couldn't figure out how to add a page is abysmal. Like I said, it made me want to give up the search, after only looking at two products! Maybe I was missing something; anybody please feel free to correct me.
So I'm back to square one. Although I will probably play with Perspective a little bit more, I'm going to keep looking for a good engine. I did take a look at FlexWiki, which has everything I want except a WYSIWYG editor. I'm going to keep looking though. If I can't find what I want, I may need to move to a PHP-based engine. That's okay with me, as long as it's not Java.
-Joe
P.S. If you're ever looking for a Wiki engine a great site to check out is WikiMatrix. This gives you the ability to compare any of their listed Wikis (of which there are quite a few - both of the products reviewed here included) along with a Wiki Choice Wizard to guide you in choosing the correct package for your needs.
P.P.S. Given this is my first public review I need to add the disclaimer that I really am a positive person, I'm just being honest about these products to help others make their decision.