Wetpaint is nearing an amazing milestone -- one million wikis! To celebrate this occasion, Wetpaint will reward the one-millionth site creator with the chance to give back to their community and the planet! For one year, Wetpaint will offset the carbon emissions of both the home and car of the creator of the millionth wiki. Wetpaint will also sponsor the carbon offset of a local school or non-profit organization selected by the lucky millionth site creator. Wetpaint is even taking it one step further by offering the package to the referrer of the millionth site, if it's created as a referral generated by an email or a website.
Could your new wiki be the millionth wiki on Wetpaint? Have you been thinking about creating a wiki on the Web? Maybe one for your family, your child's team, your hobby, your favorite TV show, your favorite team, your favorite charity, etc.? Why not create a wiki today on Wetpaint. If your site is the millionth wiki, you'll help the planet Earth plus help a selected local school or non-profit organization. I'd love to be the referrer of the millionth wiki on Wetpaint!!
If you want to know more about wikis, visit the Everything Wiki site. Then, just click on the "start a wiki" link that is displayed at the bottom right corner of any page. If you're ready now, you can create your free website from this blogpost.
Today on Father's Day, I cannot help but recognize the father of wiki, Ward Cunningham
Wikis are great tools for web-based content management and collaboration. They easily allow a community to collaborate and jointly create and edit content. The first wiki was created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, a Smalltalk developer, who conceived it as a quick way to create and share ideas when working. The first public wiki, called the Portland Pattern Repository, facilitates the discovery and discussion of software patterns. Ward's Wiki is still working today. In fact, on its tenth anniversary, it had over 30,000 pages! His site has a lot more information about the history of Wiki.
Most wikis today are really not their father's wiki though. There's been a lot of progress in the world of wiki since Ward Cunningham created the first. Some note key differences from the original wiki concept and often reference Wiki 2.0. The early wikis required technical expertise during their setup -- often requiring customization of open source code. Wikis were initially customized and installed by people with key technical skills and authorities. These individuals would often be labeled as techies, geeks, or nerds by some. After wikis were created, the community members often had to learn a simple, text formatting language, called wikitext or wiki syntax. The early wikis could be updated by anyone, with little to no protection of any pages. You could see the history of changes and revert content, but there was really no option to lock or to protect a page's content. Today, wiki hosting services permit the quick and easy creation of wikis on the Web. There are no technical requirements or expertise needed to create a wiki on the Web using a wiki hosting service. Hundreds of thousands of wikis exist today -- and most were not developed by individuals with technical skills. Most wiki hosting services support a rich text editor and provide a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) interface for its users. In other words, no tags! Wiki users are not required to learn or to use a text formatting language at all. If you can send e-mail or create a document with a word processing software package, you can create a wiki. The early wikis were primarily text-based sites, with many hyperlinks easing the view of related information. Today's wikis support templates and creative site designs, include multimedia, and permit widgets or small applications to be embed, permitting interactivity and dynamic content. Many wiki hosting services allow a creator to protect the content for selected pages and some wikis allow authorizations at the page level. Many wiki hosting services have enhanced community features, permitting its members to create profiles, to send messages to other members, to send compliments to others, and to identify their associations or friendships with other members. The wiki -- a truly great idea -- is continuing to evolve and open the Web to the nontechnical users.
Here are two very short videos by Wetpaint which discuss some of the differences between the original wiki implementation and the ease of creating wikis today on wiki hosting services.
Today, don't be old-school -- give wiki a try, but start with a wiki hosting service, like Wetpaint, to experience the true ease and power of wikis today.
If you've been wondering since my last post what "Wetpaint" and "PBWiki" are, then today the mystery will be solved. Both Wetpaint and PBWiki are examples of wiki hosting services. They are also often called wiki farms, that is, sites which offer wiki hosting. Wiki farms or wiki hosting services often vary significantly. Some offer free hosting and others offer fee-based hosting. Some require you to use wikitext, a simple text markup language. However, many now offer a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (or WYSIWYG) editor where no markup language, or tags, are required.
What’s the benefit of creating a wiki on a hosted service? Not having to deal with installing and maintaining complex programs to support the wiki functions. If you're not a programmer or if you don't own your own server, then a wiki farm or wiki hosting service is your best choice. Here's a short video from the Wetpaint crew that describes the benefits of hosted wiki services.
We all know that wikis are hot and the competition is often fierce in the Web 2.0 world. However, in a valiant attempt to demonstrate how social Wetpaint has become, today the Wetpaint crew sent to the PBwiki team two cans of paint and a set of new brushes to celebrate PBwiki's fresh coat or updated UI in the PBwiki 2.0 version in beta. PBwiki kindly responded by sending twenty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to the Wetpaint crew.
Gotcha! April Fools! All in the spirit of fun in this Web 2.0 world. :)
Wikis are websites where visitors can easily collaborate and add content without any technical knowledge. There are many wiki hosting services available. Most allow you to easily create a website very quickly. Many are totally free. Generally if you can send e-mail, you have what it takes to use and to create a wiki.
Wikis are perfect solutions for those who want to build a website to describe their passion. Wikis allow you to create a site that can be shared with people all around the world. You can easily create a site to be shared with a community of people that are also interested in your passion. Everyone can easily pitch in to add content, post ideas, ask questions, and communicate with each other. It's easy to add photos, videos, and polls. Music can be added to the site too. For example, maybe you'd like to create a fan site for your favorite band. You can have a music player on the site that automatically plays your favorite playlist of their hits. You can also add other neat features, like online chat, to many wikis. You can add a calendar to the wiki to show a calendar of events. Community members can create their own pages on the site too. Wikis offer so many opportunities for people to share their passion with creativity and ease.
Here's a neat video that describes how a wiki can be used. It describes how easy it is to create a wiki on Wetpaint. It also describes when a wiki might be a better way to share your passion compared to a blog or a message board.
Welcome to my blog.
Everyday is a gift and worthy of celebration. I enjoy blogging and hope that you visit my blogs on celebrating life, cake decorating with cut-up cake patterns (that I created), opinion research, making wikis, and wiki'd places to visit on the web. Hopefully you'll find something that interests, amuses, or informs you. Brighten my day: post a comment and share this blog!
