@matpacker All I can say is, go public! I debated the same thing when I got started. I just checked on my private wiki: it has two tiddlers in it and was last edited on 1/17/2019. My public wiki, however, has mushroomed. If you decide to go with a hosted Node.js install, the best way I know of is to follow the great instructions @joshsullivan wrote up. I'm going to use those and move mine to its own domain (hopefully this weekend). Join us!!!
@twelvety You're right, I think public is definitely the way to go. As a someone who basically just hacks around with html, css, and a little bit of php, going down the node.js route looks a little "scary" to me. I'm half tempted to use DreamHost's one-click mediawiki installer, even though it's more server intensive than TiddlyWiki. Arghhh
@matpacker My technical background is similar to yours and I had the same fears about Node.js, and I still have no idea how it works other than following the steps to get TiddlyWiki running. I also have DreamHost for my old, neglected blog, and can understand the attraction to MediaWiki because it would be easy to start, but I gotta believe TiddlyWiki is more fun. No pressure, though. Just saying!
@twelvety haha ok, ok, I'll give it a go...I might even see if I can get it going on DreamHost as I've already setup the subdomain I'm planning on using. I ran through and did the MediaWiki install, it's up and running, but my goodness it's so slow on their Business VPS product. Frustratingly slow, to the point where I would probably end up abandoning it...which totally defeats the purpose of what I want a wiki for in the first place!
@matpacker @twelvety Although it is more SSH activity to set up TiddlyWiki on a DO droplet, I've found their speeds are great. I've been using them since 2015 when I had used a hosting company to host a WordPress install, and it was so slow. I moved to DigitalOcean, and it insane the change in speeds.
I would recommend using DigitalOcean although I've heard Linode is also fast. Also, I've submitted a OneClick app suggestion for TiddlyWiki with DO, and with the new marketplace I've been looking into how much effort it would be to create one myself and submit it, but no promises.
@joshsullivan @twelvety make sure you let us know if you go down the one-click route. Side note, I found out why my install of Mediawiki was slow, along with another website I host on DH...somehow in the original deployment, the MySQL server was in a different data center to the web server, the additional latency was slowing it all down. Fortunately it was easily resolved.