Self-Hosted Wikis: BookStack vs Wiki.js vs Outline for Documenting Your Homelab
Every homelab accumulates knowledge that lives nowhere except the operator’s head: which VLAN the NAS is on, the three commands that fix the thing that breaks every few months, why a particular port got forwarded and whether it’s still needed. That’s fine right up until a drive dies, a service needs rebuilding from scratch, or someone else in the house needs to get the Plex server back online while the usual person is on a plane. A self-hosted wiki is the fix: a place to write procedures, network maps, and inventory down once, searchable, so “how did I set this up” stops being a question only your memory can answer. BookStack, Wiki.js, and Outline are the three most commonly run for this in a homelab context, and they take different enough approaches that picking the right one matters more than it looks like it should. ...