What is Tesria

Tesria is a wiki that you run yourself. This page explains both halves of that: what a wiki is and why teams keep one, and what it means to run it on your own machine rather than paying someone else to. For a tour of what Tesria can actually do, see Features.

What a wiki is

A wiki is a website that the people who read it also write. Everyone on a team can add a page, fix a mistake they spot, or bring an old page up to date, straight from the browser. Nothing has to be emailed around or saved as a file.

It sounds simple, and that is the point. Think of the knowledge every group of people builds up: how to set up a new laptop, who to call when the heating breaks, why the team chose one supplier over another, what the rules are for booking the meeting room. Without a wiki it ends up scattered across chat threads, email, documents on someone’s computer, and people’s heads. When someone leaves or goes on vacation, some of it goes with them.

A wiki gives all of that one home:

• One current version. There is one page about the heating, not five copies of a document with different dates. When something changes, whoever notices updates the page, and everyone sees the new version.

• Easy to find. Pages are organized into spaces (one for each team or project, say), nest under each other like chapters and sections, link to each other, and can all be searched at once.

• Nothing is lost. Every change is kept. You can see who changed a page and when, compare versions, and put an old one back.

• Written together. People comment on pages, mention each other, and can even edit the same page at the same time.

Why run your own

Many wikis are rented as an online service: you sign up, pay per person each month, and your pages live on the provider’s computers. Tesria is different. You install it on a computer you choose, and it runs there. That is what self-hosted means. It suits you if:

• Your information should stay with you. Your pages, files and backups are stored on your own machine, not on another company’s. For many organizations that is a requirement, not a preference.

• You want it on your own network. Tesria can run on a home or office network and be reached only from there, by every computer, tablet and phone on it.

• You would rather not pay per person. Tesria is free and open source, under the Apache License 2.0. Adding the twentieth person costs the same as the second: nothing.

• You like to be in control. You decide when to upgrade, who can sign up, and how long backups are kept.

What running it involves

Running your own software means someone looks after it. Tesria is built to keep that small, but it is fair to know what it means before you start:

• A computer that stays on. Tesria runs on it, so if it is switched off or asleep, nobody can reach the wiki. See System requirements for how big it needs to be.

• An install, once. Tesria runs in Docker, a free program that runs software in self-contained packages. The Quick start walks you through it, and a guided setup asks the rest in the browser.

• Backups, which are mostly automatic. Tesria backs itself up every day on its own machine. For real safety you also keep a copy somewhere else, such as a cloud bucket or a network drive. See Backups and recovery.

• Upgrades, now and then. Installing a new version takes two commands, and your pages are kept. See Upgrading.

• On a home or office network, trusting the server once per device. Browsers are wary of servers that are not on the public internet, so each device is told once to trust yours. See Trusting the local certificate.

A few words you will see

• Instance: one installed Tesria, with its own people and pages. Yours might be at wiki.example.com or studio.local.

• Space: a home for a set of pages that belong together, with its own page tree and its own list of who can see it.

• Owner, administrator and user: the owner is the person who set Tesria up and holds the keys; administrators help run it; users read and write.

• Draft: a page that is still being written and that only its writer can see, until they choose Publish.

The Glossary has the rest. When you are ready, go on to Prerequisites.