Fossil

Since I started using Fossil for source code management, I've become such a devotee that I'm using it for everything. Over the years, this site has been a Django site, a static site, a Nikola blog (also static HTML), a Hatta wiki, and maybe a few more iterations I can't remember.

Fossil definitely isn't flashy, and it's not exactly ideal for hosting a personal site, but I like it because:

• The revision management also hosts the content. No need for a separate content management system
• The wiki, though very sparse, is quick and good enough for my needs
• I can make changes offline and know that everything will sync correctly later. (this is a big deal, since I have minimal/slow/flaky internet at home)
• Fossil is a big enough project that other people are invested in making sure it lasts
  • All content is stored in SQLite, which is a proven archival format
  • The developers care about security and defense against robots and spammers
  • Fossil aims to be low on resource requirements and easy to deploy (it is a single, statically linked binary). This is very important to me, since I can run many sites on a cheap server. And as a user, the bandwidth savings are good for those of us on crappy connections.
• It can handle email alerts for changes and announcements
• The forum is decent enough
• A minimalist built-in web editor works well enough for editing documentation files online
• It has a robust permission system to allow for different classes of users
• It can store binaries in the repository (within reason. 1MB jpegs work fine; 1GB videos would be a terrible idea)
• It scales to large repositories (hundreds of thousands of files), with some caveats...

Basically, it's a reliable tool. It's not the best at any of its individual features, but it's good enough, and tries to get out of the user's way.

As a personal site (or dedicated discussion forum), it's a little clunky, unless you use permissions and a bunch of configuration to hide some of the programmer biases. And the editors can seem foreign or antiquated to people used to writing content on facebook, etc. It's definitely made for and by programmers, but I don't think it's totally inscrutable to the average user. It's just that most people aren't going to put in much effort to learn how to use a new interface.