Using Wikis as a family bulletin board
Once a year, Better Homes and Gardens magazine has a suggestion for a crafty way to create a family bulletin board to keep track of all the stuff a family needs to smoothly function. But there's a much slicker, more modern solution: Use a family Wiki.
It started when we needed to organize a move and two trips, all of which were occurring in a two week period. I started using Backpack to have a central place where both Jeff and I could edit pages and keep them up to date with the latest schedules and lists of things to do. But having more than 5 pages in Backpack costs money, and frankly, I'm a bit of a privacy nut who trusts personal information to friends over companies, so I asked my favorite friendly administrator, cpeel, to set up a MoinMoin wiki on his machine for us.
So our family Wiki front page currently looks like this:
With the family Wiki, we can now store the following types of information in a spot that we can both update and edit:
Information about upcoming visits
Chez Ford is becoming a popular tourist destination, so it's handy to be able to quickly generate a calendar and color code it with when people will be here. This stops me from perpetually asking Jeff, "So when is so-and-so showing up again?" I use a TiddlyWiki calendar generator and then use macros in a text editor to adjust the formatting to MoinMoin's wiki formatting. (It's also not that hard to generate one by hand, but I prefer an automated method to pop out 3-4 months at a time. When I get a moment, I'll script up one that actually produces MoinMoin calendars from scratch.) Once I have a calendar, it's pretty simple to add color coding on each date, like so:
Then at the top of the page, I put a key of who belongs with which color and include any visit-specific notes.
Different types of to do lists
Right now, we have one page that's our page of things that need to be done before our first visitors arrive, conveniently called ThingsToDoBeforeVisit. But we also have a house improvement page (ToDoHouse), and miscellaneous page (ToDoGeneral) for things that need to be done but are less time sensitive.
Information about upcoming purchases
Currently, we have a GroceryList page, a ToBuyHardwareStore page, a ToBuyHouse page, and a ToBuyContainerStore page. Location-specific pages can be printed off before we head to that spot. The ToBuyHouse page is really a reminder of which larger items require preplanning or budgeting. For items that we research before purchasing (for example, the fridge), one of us can create a quick page where we pull together links and pictures that we want to show the other before making a final decision.
Vacation information
For vacations, we can store airline times and important addresses for upcoming trips or create planning pages that include proposed itineraries, links, images and prices.
We might eventually create other types of pages, too, such as RecipesToTry, MoviesToSee, or RestaurantsWeLiked. Other handy MoinMoin features include:
Page tagging to group similar pages together
MoinMoin has a concept similar to tagging, where you put pages into categories. You can then automatically pull links to all pages in that category onto a single page. So for example, we have a ToDo category, a ToBuy category, and an UpcomingVisits category. If I want to see all things that relate to upcoming visits, I can visit the CategoryUpcomingVisits page, and get links to calendar entries and to do lists all in one spot.
Subscription to pages
MoinMoin allows you to subscribe to a page and get an email when the page is updated. So for example, we might eventually migrate to having his and her to do pages that we can drop new items onto. (Presumably only with the other person's agreement!) Right now, I'm subscribed to the ToDoBeforeVisit page, so I notice if Jeff pulls something off the "either one of us should do this" list, or if he adds something.
Access control lists
Given that Wikis are traditionally open to all and editable by all, it's useful to be able to close it down so that only people who are logged in can see and edit pages. Beyond the basic idea of "family in, others out," if you have children, you might use access control lists to keep certain areas of the Wiki open only for the adults. (For example, around Christmas or birthdays.) Or, if you're planning a joint trip with friends, you could open trip-specific pages of the Wiki to them, but leave the rest closed.
I picked MoinMoin because it's useful for both of us to be able to access the Wiki during the day. But if you don't need multiple people to access it from different locations, or if you prefer to store such information on a local machine, I highly recommend TiddlyWiki, which is a Wiki lookalike that resides in one HTML page on your machine. (I use it for organizing non-family subjects.) It doesn't have the concept of subscription, but the need for access control lists is removed, and it has all the other advantages of a Wiki.
It started when we needed to organize a move and two trips, all of which were occurring in a two week period. I started using Backpack to have a central place where both Jeff and I could edit pages and keep them up to date with the latest schedules and lists of things to do. But having more than 5 pages in Backpack costs money, and frankly, I'm a bit of a privacy nut who trusts personal information to friends over companies, so I asked my favorite friendly administrator, cpeel, to set up a MoinMoin wiki on his machine for us.
So our family Wiki front page currently looks like this:
With the family Wiki, we can now store the following types of information in a spot that we can both update and edit:
Information about upcoming visits
Chez Ford is becoming a popular tourist destination, so it's handy to be able to quickly generate a calendar and color code it with when people will be here. This stops me from perpetually asking Jeff, "So when is so-and-so showing up again?" I use a TiddlyWiki calendar generator and then use macros in a text editor to adjust the formatting to MoinMoin's wiki formatting. (It's also not that hard to generate one by hand, but I prefer an automated method to pop out 3-4 months at a time. When I get a moment, I'll script up one that actually produces MoinMoin calendars from scratch.) Once I have a calendar, it's pretty simple to add color coding on each date, like so:
Then at the top of the page, I put a key of who belongs with which color and include any visit-specific notes.
Different types of to do lists
Right now, we have one page that's our page of things that need to be done before our first visitors arrive, conveniently called ThingsToDoBeforeVisit. But we also have a house improvement page (ToDoHouse), and miscellaneous page (ToDoGeneral) for things that need to be done but are less time sensitive.
Information about upcoming purchases
Currently, we have a GroceryList page, a ToBuyHardwareStore page, a ToBuyHouse page, and a ToBuyContainerStore page. Location-specific pages can be printed off before we head to that spot. The ToBuyHouse page is really a reminder of which larger items require preplanning or budgeting. For items that we research before purchasing (for example, the fridge), one of us can create a quick page where we pull together links and pictures that we want to show the other before making a final decision.
Vacation information
For vacations, we can store airline times and important addresses for upcoming trips or create planning pages that include proposed itineraries, links, images and prices.
We might eventually create other types of pages, too, such as RecipesToTry, MoviesToSee, or RestaurantsWeLiked. Other handy MoinMoin features include:
Page tagging to group similar pages together
MoinMoin has a concept similar to tagging, where you put pages into categories. You can then automatically pull links to all pages in that category onto a single page. So for example, we have a ToDo category, a ToBuy category, and an UpcomingVisits category. If I want to see all things that relate to upcoming visits, I can visit the CategoryUpcomingVisits page, and get links to calendar entries and to do lists all in one spot.
Subscription to pages
MoinMoin allows you to subscribe to a page and get an email when the page is updated. So for example, we might eventually migrate to having his and her to do pages that we can drop new items onto. (Presumably only with the other person's agreement!) Right now, I'm subscribed to the ToDoBeforeVisit page, so I notice if Jeff pulls something off the "either one of us should do this" list, or if he adds something.
Access control lists
Given that Wikis are traditionally open to all and editable by all, it's useful to be able to close it down so that only people who are logged in can see and edit pages. Beyond the basic idea of "family in, others out," if you have children, you might use access control lists to keep certain areas of the Wiki open only for the adults. (For example, around Christmas or birthdays.) Or, if you're planning a joint trip with friends, you could open trip-specific pages of the Wiki to them, but leave the rest closed.
I picked MoinMoin because it's useful for both of us to be able to access the Wiki during the day. But if you don't need multiple people to access it from different locations, or if you prefer to store such information on a local machine, I highly recommend TiddlyWiki, which is a Wiki lookalike that resides in one HTML page on your machine. (I use it for organizing non-family subjects.) It doesn't have the concept of subscription, but the need for access control lists is removed, and it has all the other advantages of a Wiki.