Hey there! I'm diving into the world of software development and I want to create my own internal knowledge base for my team. Right now, we have a jumbled mess on Confluence and a public knowledge base for customers that only shows limited info. This new system will be specifically for internal use, allowing our customer support agents to easily access troubleshooting steps and relevant information. Since I'm new to programming, I'm considering this a learning project, but I'm a bit lost on what programming language to pick. I'm open to taking classes to boost my skills, but I'd love your recommendations on which language would be best for building a simple article viewer with search functionality. Any tips on development as well? Thanks!
4 Answers
Honestly, if you're mainly doing this for the learning experience, I'd recommend Python with Wagtail. It's built on Django, which is pretty popular and there are tons of resources available online. Plus, the admin interface is user-friendly which can keep you motivated! It comes with great documentation, rich text editors, Markdown support, and user role management—all handy for what you're trying to create. Just be careful not to overwhelm yourself with features at first; focus on the minimum viable product!
Why not consider setting up a self-hosted solution like MediaWiki or DokuWiki? These are tried and tested options which could save you a lot of hassle, especially since you’re starting out and learning as you go. While it’s great that you want to learn programming, the project might be a bit much for a beginner. Bitnami offers plenty of pre-configured virtual machines that would only be accessible to your internal network, which could be a good way to go.
You might want to look into a JavaScript framework like React. Just keep in mind that this project could be quite challenging. While it's a good way to learn, creating something user-friendly, stable, and efficient is not easy, especially if you’re planning to replace Confluence more or less.
If you want to go with a more customizable option and still keep learning, you could think about creating a basic web server setup. This way, you can build and tweak things as you go along but still have a functional solution running. A more complex project can indeed offer great learning opportunities, but make sure it's not too overwhelming!
I really appreciate the suggestion! One of the things to consider is the specific data we handle, which means we can't use software that stores information outside of Europe. That's part of my motivation to create something internal. Thanks again for your input!