BlueSpice free

BlueSpice Icon (2011)

BlueSpice is a free Open Source Enterprise Wiki. It is based on the Wikipedia-Software MediaWiki and extends this with lots of features for quality management, process support, administration, editing and security. The software is written in PHP and compatible for Windows and Linux systems. BlueSpice is published under the GPL v3 license and therefore free of charge.

Field of application

In the first instance, BlueSpice and the BlueSpice software packages have been developed for using a wiki in the intranet. The solution is primarily used for online documentations. But also lots of web projects choose BlueSpice.

Important features

• Visual editor (WYSIWYG) The integrated visual editor (TinyMCE) makes it possible to work with the wiki without using wiki tags. It is especially useful for creating tables and inserting images.
• Insert Link, Image, File and Category Upload and insert files using a dialog box. This is also available for setting a category to your article or insert a link.
• Imagemap Segments of a picture can be defined and provided with links for every segment.
• RSS Import/FeederThe RSS Import enables you to show changes in blogs and websites on your wiki page. Use the RSS Feeder to follow single pages and never miss any changes in articles, namespaces, categories or watch lists.
• Customized menu bars The, so called, "Fokus" gives every user the possibility to customize an individual menu bar or side bar.
• Extended Search BlueSpice integrates the search engine Lucene. This enables the user to retrieve the wiki also in titles and full text, as well as in categories, namespaces and attached files (Office, PDF). It also supports faceted search for further filtering of your search results.
• User, group, namespace and rights management Create and maintain your users locally, manage rights and passwords at special administration pages. It is all organized and controlled with visual administration features at a central place. This means that the management of the wiki is simple and clearly arranged.
• Page templates Use predefined templates for your pages to structure the content.
• Review Simple workflow management for your wiki.
• Responsibility for articles Set reviewers for every article you want. The reviewers are contact persons and supervisors for these articles.
• Universal Export Convert single pages into the PDF format in best quality.
• Shoutbox Comment an article in this box at the end of the page content.
• Autor informationThe pictures of the authors of an article are shown at the end of the page content.
• etc.

Functionality

The BlueSpice extensions expand the functionality of MediaWiki - but MediaWiki remains without any changes to guarantee the compatibilitiy for updates and upgrades.

System requirements

The system requirements can be found on our helpdesk: View the system requirements here

Compatibility with other applications

Connect to other applications with modules for a charge, like:

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
• Elgg
• Wordpress
• StatusNet
• facebook (Facebook app)

About the software

Idea and history

BlueSpice is a result of multiple MediaWiki projects. The starting point was the development of a company-wide wiki for IBM Germany in 2007. This project, called "bluepedia", was initialized by Gunter Dueck. The supplementary software components were first distributed under the name HalloWiki Sunrise. In 2010, the Hallo Welt! - Medienwerkstatt GmbH decided to publish the free wiki solution with the new name BlueSpice for MediaWiki.

Business model

The project finances itself from services like installation, support, customization, etc. as well as from distributing additional modules and the subscription of BlueSpice pro. In addition to that, Hallo Welt! GmbH coaches project customers. Whith those, highly customized and very indiviual wikis have been implemented.