Software Request: Open Source Personal Content Repository

Posted by Glen Coulthard
Sep 11, 2018 at 02:28 PM

It seems that your use-case is becoming more and more popular these days. As a professor, I’m in a similar situation of content production and curation (and textbook authoring). Either self-produced or downloaded, I am often swimming in PDF, PPTX, XLSX, DOCX, PNGs, mindmaps, and other file formats. I’ve tried to get a handle on indexing content through my file system using X1 Search and Copernic, but haven’t been satisfied with the “discoverability” or “surfacing” of past data.

If it helps, here is what I use as a Windows/Linux user:
1. Dokuwiki - for wiki content that I moved from ConnectedText (oh, how I wish CT was still a going concern!) Wikis are great for text-based content and research links, revision control, searching, and quick editing/updating.
2. Markdown - for note-taking on various devices (Win/Lin/Mobile), synced online through Dropbox, Nextcloud, and/or Simplenote.
3. Cintanotes (Win) - for quick notes, web clipping, tagging, and most of the things I used to do in Evernote.
4. Scrivener (Win) - for serious writing, idea formation, and mapping out blog posts, lectures, and book chapters.
5. MindManager (Win) - for brainstorming, conceptualization, lecture production, and more. (I like the fact that I can attach links and documents to branches and then export out as a Word outline. I also have a lot of content in TheBrain, but have a tough time using it as a daily “trusted home” for my data.)

As a CRIMPer, I still have content stored in traditional outliners like myBase and MyInfo, but haven’t used them as much these days. The reason that I like Markdown is that I can easily generate searchable static websites and/or ebooks from the content (see MKDocs or Docusaurus), or I can convert the content into WordPress posts. I also host my own home-based unRAID server with GitLab (for markdown docs and revision-control), Nextcloud, Dokuwiki, and document shares - this lets me access the same content from any desktop, laptop, tablet, and/or phone (both within my home network and externally through a VPN.) Much of this server data is also synced with the cloud for backing up…but that’s another post

Anyway, hope that helps.
Glen