How do I start?

Congratulations on picking wikis! Wikis are a great solution for collaborating with others, managing information or knowledge, and managing web-based content. To get your feet wet with wikis, we’re going to take the easy route and cover how to start by creating a wiki using a wiki hosting service or wiki farm.

Pick your wiki hosting service

If you don’t want to install any software, then this is the route you want to take. You can then focus on your content and working with your community. There are many hosting options available. Review the wiki farms available and what you should consider when selecting a wiki hosting service. Why not start with Wetpaint, the host for this wiki?

Create your website

Most wiki hosting services boast how quickly a wiki site can be created -- varying from 15 seconds, 5 minutes, to the time it takes to build a sandwich. It’s generally very simple and often requires that you complete a brief form which provides you a home page using some default template.

Add content

Adding content is generally very easy to do. You can generally easily edit the default page created when the site was generated. You can often easily add a new page by selecting an “Add a new page" option from a menu or by creating the name of a new page within your text and then clicking on a link to it. Many wiki hosting services offer a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor and does not require you to use wiki syntax or wikitext, the simple text markup language.

Pick a license

One of the first things you may need to do is to select the copyright license. On some sites the copyright license is automatically set for you. If not, some say that, legally, it may be difficult to change the license without written consent from those who have posted on the site. Before changing the license, some wiki organizers have posted notices on their sites and requested feedback for some duration. Others wiki organizers simply post a statement such as “By hitting Save you put your text into the public domain” on the site, right from the start.

Publicize your wiki

To have a successful wiki, you need to find people with similar interests to work on the wiki with you. This may be easier said than done and often is a challenge. It’s often easier to get readers, but more difficult to get contributors. Some approaches are recommended, where others (e.g., spamming) are inappropriate.

Care for your wiki

Managing a wiki's content requires some commitment. On most wikis, you can set up content change notifications (e.g., by e-mail, by RSS) to stay informed on the site changes. Also, most wikis have some content management functions (e.g., view pages last changed, view revision history) that will allow you to watch for malicious updates by vandals, if you are hosting a public site.