A few months ago there was a big thread on documentation and I said I was convinced that markdown files and an SSG was the way to go, with some kind of web CMS that auto gits for the non technical people. It got a huge amount of upvotes but also got quite a few nay sayers some of whom said something along the lines of “businesses don’t care about portability” to which I said “they absolutely will if one day atlassian hikes the prices, gets acquired or the product is discontinued”. Well here we are. Keep it simple and keep it non proprietary wherever possible otherwise you are always running the risk of being held over a barrel.
Use markdown files and a SSG. It is literally free. It makes documentation quick and easy to write which means devs are more likely to actually do it. The “markdown is not very good for tables” issue has been solved long ago with either plugins such as “advanced table plugin” for Obsidian or apps like the £10 one off payment app “TableFlip” by Brett Terpstra.
Have a look at the following stuff:
- AstroJS: SSG that allows you to use any JS framework you want.
- Docusaurus: React SSG designed specifically for documentation
- SSGs in other languages: Hugo(Go), Zola(Rust), Jekyll(Ruby)
Then just Google “git cms” for a list of different options on that front. I believe Netlify cms is probably one of the most popular.
- Alternatively just write, sync and publish all in Obsidian using the Obsidian sync and publish services.
You’re a bit quick to jump to “I told you so”. Implied in the replies you received was “portability isn’t worth the cost, financial or otherwise”. From my experience of peoples use of Confluence, your suggestion would not be even close to a like-for-like alternative for the majority of cases.
As is always the case when trying to find viable alternatives for Atlassian products: this is harder than it seems.
Use markdown files and a SSG. It is literally free. It makes documentation quick and easy to write which means devs are more likely to actually do it. The “markdown is not very good for tables” issue has been solved long ago with either plugins such as “advanced table plugin” for Obsidian or apps like the £10 one off payment app “TableFlip” by Brett Terpstra.
Have a look at the following stuff:
- AstroJS: SSG that allows you to use any JS framework you want.
- Docusaurus: React SSG designed specifically for documentation
- SSGs in other languages: Hugo(Go), Zola(Rust), Jekyll(Ruby)
Then just Google “git cms” for a list of different options on that front. I believe Netlify cms is probably one of the most popular.
- Alternatively just write, sync and publish all in Obsidian using the Obsidian sync and publish services.