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TheWestbrooks Document Management System
Welcome to the TheWestbrooks Document Management System or DMS. I am using this wiki for the storage and retrieval of various documentation, procedures, hints, tricks, and how-to's that I find useful. And if others do as well, that's great!
While I use Wordpress for my blog, it doesn't really flow well for me for writing step-by-step procedures and guides. And since I'm one to try new things and experiment, I've gone ahead and installed MediaWiki alongside my Wordpress blog. This originally came about when I decided to write up my experience with Ubuntu and document the steps I took to install and configure it.
Use the side bar links to navigate to the documentation you need. Or consult the "How To" guide for information on using the DMS.
[edit] Getting started
[edit] Purpose
The purpose behind installing MediaWiki was primarily to test out how useful it would be to have standards and procedures online, where they could be more easily retrieved and utilized then the current systems, and also be quickly created and/or modified.
For instance, storing these documents in a database requires having a client of some sort installed in order to read and update them. Or keeping documentation in a Word document obviously requires having Word installed. How about if you're performing a process on a server? Well, you can't open a Word doc on a server since Office is not installed, nor can you open a database since a client isn't installed in most cases. So that means having to print the document to have a physical item to work from.
That brings up a few issues, such as:
- you cannot copy and paste detailed code that may be documented;
- you cannot update the document on the fly with any changes or updates you find as you follow the documentation;
- you cannot easily create documentation on the fly, including screenshots, code, or other useful information;
- and finally you now have physical documentation that will need to be destroyed after you're finished.
In addition to this, I had issues with:
- no single warehouse of documentation (sometimes in Domino database, sometimes in a Word doc or Excel doc, documentation not being kept in the same file server, let alone the same area on a single file server, etc);
- documentation being downloaded to a workstation for updating, which in turn doesn't make it back to a central storage location;
- having duplicate but slightly different documentation sources;
- no consistent and automated method to track changes.
Having documentation online with a wiki makes it:
- easily retrievable;
- easily created and updated on the fly;
- no additional software required beyond a browser;
- updated documentation is immediately available to all users;
- arbitrarily enforces centralization of documentation;
- and keeps an automated history of all changes to documentation, including ability to easily view all changes.
Additional benefits:
- trivial to back up (MySQL database dump and the web directory zipped up);
- fast recovery time for DR/BCS purposes (less then 2 minutes on existing hardware and less then 15 minutes including OS build with Ubuntu);
- wonderful print function that keeps all formatting intact.
The synopsis to this is that having a wiki as an online area for standards and procedures will make documentation retrieval and updating much more efficient while allowing for historical changes to be tracked and logged.
