
Raneto – Markdown Knowledgebase Platform - iamdeedubs
http://raneto.com/
======
bastijn
My favorite for now stays mkdocs
([http://www.mkdocs.org/](http://www.mkdocs.org/)). For relative small ones
with the material theme ([http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-
material/](http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/)) and bigger ones
(because of top bar) with bootswatch theme ([http://mkdocs.github.io/mkdocs-
bootswatch/](http://mkdocs.github.io/mkdocs-bootswatch/)). It works the same,
just builds a site from your MD files but creates a static site which can be
hosted anywhere (e.g. github/gitlab pages via auto CI). Editing and creating
your own theme is also easy and documented.

Installation is easiest I found for docs sites (pip install mkdocs) and it's
blazingly fast. Comes with good themes and proper responsive design (saw some
issues in Raneto on my ios). Has proper live reloading and build in serve
functionality.

For large projects (enterprise size) we have made our own version based on
what I learned from the Polymer docs
([https://github.com/Polymer/doc](https://github.com/Polymer/doc)) but removed
the GAE requirement. Also, we are considering if using SO Enterprise is a good
solution. Personally I'm in favor for in house docs and knowledge sharing for
that. It's so flexible and people are already used to it. But that is a
different ball park considering the OP.

To end with a positive note. Raneto seems to support much of the same as
mkdocs or any of its alternatives. It looks good and whilst static site is
something I want I understand it is not a deal breaker for all. In addition,
Raneto mentions authentication is built in which is a nice thing if I want to
host for internal stuff on a public domain so external customers can also use
it without requiring a VPN account. Overall, nice work! Not for today, but I
have bookmarked it.

~~~
squidfunk
I'm the author of the Material theme which actually has a top bar, a feature
called tabs, see [http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/getting-
started/#...](http://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/getting-
started/#tabs)

~~~
bastijn
Great! Thanks for letting me know. You made a great theme.

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drew-y
Looks great! One thing that would be nice would be the ability for Raneto to
act as a static Docs generator. Looks like you have to use nodejs as the
server as it stands. I'd like to be able to use a simple static http-server.

~~~
aizatto
I've been using Phenomic [https://phenomic.io](https://phenomic.io) for my
personal site [https://www.aizatto.com](https://www.aizatto.com)

~~~
carussell
It looks like something that could be handled just as well using Heckle by
Marijn Haverbeke. It reads content and layouts from a Jekyll-like directory
structure. Naturally, it uses CodeMirror for syntax highlighting.

[http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/heckle.html](http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/heckle.html)

------
olav
I wonder what makes this a _knowledge base_ as opposed to a flat file CMS?

A few months ago I left Evernote for my own implementation because I felt that
Evernote gave me too little expressive power: No hierarchy, no typed
relationships, no plugins. Basically, I was looking for a combination of
outliner and concept map, combined with easy image handling. Plus, I wanted to
easily add _applications_ like an ebook library, journaling, timelines of
events, and generation of static websites and presentations.

I am a huge fan of simplicity and even toyed with PicoCMS by the same author
as Raneto. Ultimately though, at least for me, a combination of a simple mysql
database with markdown as content format gave me the power I wanted for my
personal knowledge base, [https://knowfox.com](https://knowfox.com)

~~~
dgfgfdagasdfgfa
> knowledge base

I just figured this was a new term for a searchable FAQ. What do you think the
difference is?

~~~
qohen
The term has a long history - as the Wikipedia page [0] points out, "knowledge
base" was used to distinguish systems that could actively reason about data
using rules (and a rules-engine to run them) -- e.g. expert systems -- from
databases, where the data just sits there. However, these days, it's used
differently:

From the Wikipedia page[0]:

 _Knowledge management products adopted the term "knowledge-base" to describe
their repositories but the meaning had a subtle difference. In the case of
previous knowledge-based systems the knowledge was primarily for the use of an
automated system, to reason about and draw conclusions about the world. With
knowledge management products the knowledge was primarily meant for humans,
for example to serve as a repository of manuals, procedures, policies, best
practices, reusable designs and code, etc. Of course in both cases the
distinctions between the uses and kinds of systems were ill defined. As the
technology scaled up it was rare to find a system that could really be cleanly
classified as knowledge-based in the sense of an expert system that performed
automated reasoning and knowledge-based in the sense of knowledge management
that provided knowledge in the form of documents and media that could be
leveraged by humans_

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_base](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_base)

------
drhayes9
I've been starting to suffer from Markdown fatigue and investigating tools
that support RST or asciidoc. I wonder if this system might support those
tools in the future?

~~~
pspeter3
Any reasons for the markdown fatigue?

~~~
WorldMaker
Having used a lot of markdown and reStructuredText, I can see the arguments
that the lack of common standards in markdown is a huge pain. There's still a
lot of variety between markdown implementations and while Common Mark and open
GFM standards are helping to a point, you still can't always count on a
markdown engine to have things as basic as definition list support or HTML
anchor support (linkable ids for sub-headings), and there are still some weird
subtle implementation differences in those things.

There's also a lot to be said about the way that reStructuredText provides
standard plugin spaces in the markup. While it may look over verbose at first
glance, it is a great thing when you start to pick up that a lot of
reStructuredText is based on the same plugin markup and there's a consistent
way to work with new plugins. Something like that could be hugely useful to
Markdown, and probably could have stymied some of the complications in
standardizing things like Common Mark and GFM had that consideration been
baked in from early on.

------
mcone
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832991)

------
staticvar
I love markdown! A similar project but without the need for a custom
buildchain or serverside software is MDwiki.

```

mkdir my-site

cd my-site

curl [http://mdwiki.info](http://mdwiki.info)

echo "# Hello World" > index.md

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

```

Now visit [http://localhost:8000](http://localhost:8000) in your browser and
it's live. Publish to Github Pages and you're golden.

------
EddieRingle
Why something like this instead of—for instance—a wiki?

~~~
FutureSpec
A wiki would require a backing database and server process (I think). This
platform is flat files.

~~~
Spivak
Dokuwiki is flat files only.

------
ivanceras
Shameless plug, I'm working on Github flavored Markdown editor with graphing
plugin[0]

[0]: [http://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown-
editor/](http://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown-editor/)

~~~
nullify88
Your app gobbled up all available RAM and caused my laptop to slow to a crawl.
I had to switch virtual terminals to kill the tab responsible for your site.

I'm running Chrome 59.0.3071.115. Fedora 26 64bit.

------
igravious
What makes this a knowledge-base rather than a lightweight CMS?

------
helpsite
For people who value full control and self hosting, Raneto looks like a good
starting point to build from.

After having had to build knowledge bases in each company I worked in or go
through the pain of implementing something bloated like Zendesk, I built a
SaaS version of what I really wanted: the simplest knowledge base out there
that stays out of your way.

[https://HelpSite.io/](https://HelpSite.io/)

Don't have Markdown support (yet) but we have a generous Free tier including
custom domain (CNAME) support.

