I was initially sceptical about Confluence from Atlassian as I didnt see the need for a commercial wiki.

However having played with their demo site I have to admit it really is an exceptionally cool web application. Which it rightly should be since its from Atlassian.

My OSS project NeuClear is a very complex project in the financial and commerce space. It requires some pretty heavy conceptual shifts and thus excellent documentation is vital. I had started documenting it on a Movable Type blog like the one you’re viewing now. But I knew from the beginning it was wrong and I went searching for a better approach.

Confluence has allowed me to setup what will be a very complex site in a very short time. It is slick, very professional looking and easy to use. The installation of it was fairly painless as well. I am glad they went with Hibernate and not the old ofbiz entity engine craziness they use in JIRA it seems to have made the installation process a bit simpler.

With respect to the NeuClear site. I am using 2 spaces. One for the non technical aspects such as conceptual thoughts, legal and business aspects etc. The second space NeuClear Tech will hold all the technical aspects of NeuClear such as implementation howtos, standards documents etc. This tech space is currently empty as I am trying to make the non technical space useful first.

BTW. Thanks to the folks at Atlassian for giving us and other OSS projects a free license.