What is a Wiki?

Wikis have no formal definition, originated from Ward Cunningham, who programmed the first Wiki, in released it to the internet in 1995, mostly used by the engineering community. it became a collectively owned space of content sharing and collaboration. In simple terms a Wiki is a collection of Web pages that anyone can edit. As with the online wiki encyclopedia (wikipedia).

Wiki engines open source software distributed for free along with access to the source code. Wikis has been compared to a pack of index cards, Wikis allow you to add information , write information, link information, sort and search as well as keep track of changes.

In chapter one of Understanding Wiki's: it is explained what Wikis are not: email, blogs, bulletin board or forums and they are not content management or web publishing systems.

Now that we know what Wikis are not here are some of the characteristics of a Wiki: The pages must be stored in a central, shared repository, anyone should be able to edit pages, editing should be easy and accessible not requiring any tools, formating information pages should be simpler than using HTML, along with a list of changed pages should be available.

Since 2006 now there are plenty of Hosted Wikis or Wiki Farms that allow anyone to create and edit wiki pages at JotSpot (owned by Google), WikiSpaces, Wikia, PBwiki, BluWiki and Fluxent all offer hosted Wikis, mostly based on open source software.

Watch Video about Wikis in Plain English

How to make your own Wiki

First you will want to start with WikiMatrix http://www.wikimatrix.org/ a website with an extensive menu of hosted wikis as well as wiki software packages. Another great feature is the WikiMatrix Choice Wizard that can help you find the wikis that help you find your personal needs. http://www.wikitree.com is a free simple yet powerful tool for collaborating with family and friends.

When choosing a Hosted Wiki consider the following criteria, ease of setup, user invitaions and limits, storage space, open to all comers or just for friends, page protection, cost, customization capabilities, number of wikis, and data export capabilities.

Using a hosted wiki is the fastest and easiest way to get a wiki up an running.

Get started with some of the hosted wikis available:

• BrainKeeper,
• Central Desktop,
• Cospire,
• EditMe,
• JotSpot,
• Nexdo,
• PBwiki,
• Seedwiki,
• Socialtext,
• StikiPad,
• Wetpaint,
• Wikia,
• Wikidot,
• Wikispaces.

The popularity of eikis has led to a collective experiement, wikipedia plus television http://www.tviv.org/ is an online compendium of television that anyone can edit, many more technological innovation exist among these TiddlyWiki http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ is a wiki for your personal computer, used for small notes, think post-it notes but electronically. WikiCalc takes the power of the spreadsheet, ability to format data or text and calculate data in a tubular layout combined with the flexibility of a wiki. WikiTree http://www.wikitree.org/ for family tree research of everyone who ever lived on automating the process of creating bloodline.

Watch Video Wetpaint Wikis in Plain English

Using Wikispaces:

A userfriendly hosted wiki that allows you to create a hosted wiki, to get started go to http://www.wikispaces.com/

1) Join for free

2) Pick username and password an

3) Enter email address

After that , in make a new space area, enter a name decide what kind of wiki you want and click create, you have three choices, Public, Protected or Private.

Start Creating pages, Editing pages, Linking pages, Invite others to your Wiki, you can change the look design of the wiki with the logo, header and footer, fonts , colors and layout, add images, video and widgets.

WikiSpaces offers a plan for organizations who want to setup their own space of multiple wikis. This option is called Private Label allows a whole space of wikis to be created one for each department of a company or one for each class in a school.