The father of wiki

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.

Mac vs PC Parody - Wiki 3

As posted on YouTube by wpseattle

Mac vs PC Parody - Wiki 2

As posted on YouTube by wpseattle

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.

So many wiki choices - how do they compare?

Now that you've thought about what you'd like from your wiki hosting service, you may be anxious to learn what wiki hosting services are available to you. We'll be covering many in this blog. However, if you'd like to jump right in and learn of the various available options now, I suggest that you visit one of my favorite sites: Wikimatrix. From Wikimatrix, you can view detailed information about wiki engines and wiki hosting services. Today, it notes that it has information on 102 different wiki engines and wiki hosting services. Don't worry, you are not required to read all the online descriptions of each wiki engine and wiki hosting service. From Wikimatrix, you can compare selected wikis in a side-by-side table. It also has a forum so that you can talk online with other wiki users. However, one neat feature is the "Wiki Choice Wizard" which helps you find wikis that meet your personal needs. By simply answering a few questions, Wikimatrix will suggest the wikis that may be best for your specific needs. The questionnaire doesn't cover everything that you'll need to consider, but it will definitely introduce key questions and provide some example wikis to review.

Image credit: Wikimatrix

Questions to consider in selecting a wiki hosting service

So I've convinced you that a wiki hosting service is the solution for you, but you are looking for the right direction you should take? Well, you can easily have a wiki created in just a very few moments using several wiki hosting services. However, before you take that plunge, take a few minutes to think about what you want from your wiki hosting service.

Here are just a few questions to ask yourself:

1) Are you looking for a free or free-based hosting service?
2) Will you be creating a single site or do you think you might create multiple wikis, if all goes well?
3) Do you want to learn wiki markup (or wiki syntax or wikitext)? Or, do you want to use a hosting service that does not require you to learn and to use tags?
4) Do you have a problem with ads being placed on your wiki by the hosting service?
5) Do you need a private wiki that only those you invite should be able to view?

6) Are you hoping that other users of the wiki hosting service might see your site and join your community too?
7) Do you want to be notified when updates are made to the site content?

8) About how many people do you think will be using your wiki?

9) About how many pages do you think will be created?

10) Do you want to use multimedia (e.g., images, videos) on your site?

11) Are you interested in community features (e.g., member profiles, member messaging, discussion forums) on your site?

12) Do you want to place other applications or widgets on your site (e.g., to conduct a survey, to conduct a poll, online chat, guestbook, music player)?

These are just a few questions to help you start thinking about what you want on your wiki and what features you expect from a wiki hosting service.

Post a comment if you have other general questions that you think should be considered when selecting a wiki hosting service.

Free website hosting on wiki farms - what's the catch?

Wiki farms are sites which offer wiki hosting services. Some offer free hosting and others offer fee-based hosting. Yes, I said free hosting. You may ask, what's the catch? Like me, you've likely observed that there aren't many things in life that are free. As the sign in the posted photo shows, to get free stuff you usually must buy other stuff. And, often you sometimes don't need or even want the other stuff that you had to buy, to get the free stuff!

However, I've got great news for you. I've used three free wiki hosting services and am delighted to report that all indeed have been totally free. I've not been hit 90 days later with an offer to extend my website hosting for a small monthly fee, with my content held hostage until I posted a payment by credit card or PayPal. I've also not been bombarded with pop-up ads or other annoying offers flooding my in-box. You can believe it, there is really such a thing after all as hosting services offering free wikis.

If there's no actual cost, you may be wondering about how the wiki hosting services can afford to be so generous. Well, the free wiki hosting services will depend on the proceeds from the ads that they place on your wiki pages. Many wiki services offer a fee-based service where no ads are posted on the wiki pages. Some fee-based wiki services allow the wiki creator to arrange for ads to be placed on the wiki with revenue going to the wiki organizer instead of the wiki hosting service. If you're planning to create a wiki site for an education institution, but can't host a website which displays advertisements, don't worry. Many wiki hosting services offer ad-free wikis to educators after completing a brief application process.

If you're interested in creating a website, but you aren't a geek and you don't want to sink any cash during the process, a wiki may be your solution. It's a win-win too if you want to work with a group or a community in creating your website.

Stay tuned to this blog for more information on features of wiki hosting services and how to select a wiki hosting service. If you just can't wait, visit Everything Wiki, a wiki site with everything you'd probably want to know about using wikis.

Image credit: http://carolune.ca.funpic.org/blog/?p=28

Benefits of wiki hosting services

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.


As posted on YouTube by wpseattle

Image credit: www.hostready.net