[edit] Brief Description

[edit] Wiki description

This is a wiki about wiki in the wiki-based software guide. If you feel confused, blame it on the weather man. Or on me

Description

Wikis are applications of the 1995 that become more popular two years ago. The wiki mania started with the so popular Wikipedia that uses a wiki tool and user edits to create one of the most valuable source of information on the web. Now Wikipedia is huge and everyone knows how and why to contribute

So what are they really? They are server like applications that let users to collaborate for the creation of projects or web pages. With the help of a wiki, content of any kind can be created based on collaborative trust. The most simple wiki applications have just text and link features and the more advance ones can enable the users the use of images, tables or even interactive applications on site

You may not know that in Hawaian, wikiwiki means move your butt. Just kidding. It means move your butt fast. It's because the interface is so easy to use that users fly on it. You may already have experienced that on ITerating, if not feel free to edit this page. At any time, a user can preview what he's creating before and after his work is done. A user doesn't have to know any markup language like HTML or CSS to use wiki editing. This ease in creating and updating a page is specific to wiki applications. The final pages are usually open to public but in the enterprise world their access is restricted. Private wiki servers require user authentication for write and read privileges

Structure

In general, the structure and the format of one wiki page is created with a simplified language also called wikitext. The style and the syntax can vary from one implementation to another, some of them have HTML tags in the wikitext syntax. That's why, the user has access to HTML and CSS only (Cascade Style Sheet- represents basically the syntax that tells the page how to look like). The user has access only to some parts of the CSS so that the unitary look and feel remain for that particular project. Another advantage of the wiki pages is the lack of Javascripts which can code pages hence create vulnerabilities in the security of the page

Lately ,the wiki edits are made using WYSIWYG (just a simple acronym that means what you see is what you get) accessible to users through Javascript or ActiveX control that translates the formating language inserted through graphical buttons (bold, underline, italic) into HTML tags or wikitext just like in text editors

For an already created page, a user can add extra information about the changes he had made ( small text summary). These comments are saved with the article and they represent a history of the page

Wikis main advantages

We all know already that they are great piece of software that enables anyone to build a great website or a great knowledge base where anyone can contribute with fresh content. The installation of it does not require any special programming skills, just basics which can be easily understood from the user manuals. So let me remind you once again why should use a wiki to build your project

• Publishing an article or a page is very easy to do, even for non expert users
• With the help of a wiki you can develop a big website where anyone can contribute and add content
• There are plenty of free solutions out there, tested and with high activity communities
• The installation procedure is very easy, sometimes can take less than 10 minutes
• Anything can be edited so you can always add or correct something later
• The look of the website can be customized to your own liking
• Access it from anywhere at any time with a internet connection and a web browser
• You always have the archive of the document because the history is kept

As you can see, using a wiki on public servers is big plus as you can take advantage of the world's expertise!

How to Choose

Once you decided you need a wiki, the choosing part is not a simple task. Because they are so helpful, many wiki software tools have been build and the challenge to use the one you really need is not easy.

Which wiki software to choose for your project?

If you want a complete website, it all depends on your hosting solutions.For instance, if you bought a cheap hosting solution you might not have a database structure included and that's why you have to choose a tool that does not require a database. Then it depends on the traffic you expect getting, the level of security you need and the features that come with the tool

The wiki we are using for this website is an "in-house" solution built with semantic tools that enables us to keep things structured. It's actually not a wiki, but a striki (structured wiki) were we keep our data in order. Licenses, Operating Systems, Programming languages are keeping open source, free, commercial , hosted software applications in the right places. For the wiki pages we have a simple WYSIWYG that's easy to remember and use

The attributes to look for in a wiki are

• The ability to secure the pages (for some users or to lock articles completely)
• Installation procedure
• Page change alerts
• Page history with the option to roll back to a previous version
• The ease of editing pages with a simple syntax
• Database support

Some other features you might consider looking at are

• System Requirements
• Statistics and Reports
• Security/Anti-Spam Features
• Outputs (XML, RSS, PDF)
• Media and Files (Embedded Flash, Embedded Video, File Attachments, Image Editing)
• LinksLinks ( Backlinks, Image Links)
• Hosting Features (Ads allowed, Topic restriction)
• Support User Groups (Mailing lists, Support Forum)

Using a complete list of features you can compare wiki solutions with the wiki matrices at the compare tab (Update: Wiki Matrices are Broken and are in the process to being fixed. Please be patient) or try http://wikimatrix.org

Here's a small part of the TikiWiki mapping:

There are three types of wikis. Below you'll can read some information on most popular solutions in each class and what's there to know when you have to decide to use any of them. Pick carefully and never forget to back-up your information!

Types of wikis

Wiki applications can be classified in three main categories: public wikis, personal wikis (desktop like) and enterprise wikis. Each has its own special features and its top players

Enterprise wikis

When big companies like Yahoo!, Nokia and Disney started in 2004 to use wikis internally for improving efficiency, enterprise wiki servers become very popular worldwide

In the enterprise field, the "wiki application" may also be used in the context of Content Management System (CMS). Wiki servers are actually websites where users can collaborate and create pages of content. With a CMS application you can create this type of pages, but a CMS is actually a system that organizes any type of content for a website: files, images, audio and video files, documents, web pages

Here's a list of features that sets apart wikis from CMS

• Simple and specific language that is used in text formating and links to other pages
• Users can create content directly and independently
• Simple navigation between the pages
• Templates can be created easily
• Easy method to avoid the intermediary steps in accepting content

Control

In the normal systems for content control there's a person who's job is to accept or not changes in an already created article or a new article. The whole process can be simplified with a wiki, where content can be published by users right away. This enables speed and flexibility for the project. For the enterprise world, a certain level of control is required. In the absence of the classical reject/ approve system , the wiki characteristic methods are used:

• Control of the recent edits
• Spam control
• User access control

Recent Edits Control

Simple wiki that only rely on firewalls, use recent edits control for every page. Except this method, that checks each edit made, a method for rolling back to the previous version is also needed. Both seeing edits and controlling them is a useful way to prevent content from vandalism

Spam Control

There are many ways to prevent spam on a wiki:

• Blocking some words or phrases using a predefined list of words and expressions
• Blocking IPs with intensive activity
• Blocking IPs that are known to spam the server
• Using moderators for some sections or pages

Access control

When you call a wiki, an "enterprise wiki" it generally means that the user access is controled on different levels, usually just two: registered and unregistered users. The users that are not registered don't have access to editing or creating content. In the last period, user management for this type pf applications has been improved and we have different types of access for users. Group of users can have access for writing, editing , creating or rolling back articles to previous versions. Some of the wikis just restrict the user access to some of the sections of the site, others to just parts from the site (for instance to some pages only some users can add external links to an article)

For better user management, advanced wikis have high level of security (LDAP, Active Directory)

The conclusion is very simple : even at first sight you might think that a wiki is very vulnerable to spam attacks, content vandalism or other threats, the simple control methods keep wikis a safe environment to work on. They are content management applications that use another way to handle the content generation process and they choose flexibility and speed over strict control. To implement successfully a wiki application then you have to look at things from a different perspective and try to choose the best solution for your company or project

Wikis with the required features are:

• TWiki
• MoinMoin
• XWiki
• TikiWiki CMS/Groupware

Personal Wikis

Personal wikis are not wikis that are not used for collaborative work but for content management and personal information management. They are also called "Desktop Wikis"

Multi-user editions with personal editions:

• MoinMoin with personal desktop edtion
• TWiki with Twiki for Windows Personal

For personal use, wikis have different features than a normal wiki: faster handling, macros constructors, drag and drop support for images, graphics and math formulas, dynamic tree views of the wiki, multimedia embedding

Personal Free Wikis:

• DidiWiki
• Pimki
• TiddlyWiki
• Wikimono integrated into Facebook

Personal Commercial Wikis

• ArtificialMemory
• VoodooPad

Web Wikis

Mainly, when you say wiki software you think of the multitude of the tools necessary to run the entire wiki, including for instance the server it runs on (for instance Apache)together with the engine that implements the wiki technology. Some projects include them both in one package (wiki engine and Apache ) to simplify to installation

Most of the wiki applications available are open source under GPL license. The major solutions , like Media Wiki and Twiki are very modular wikis with an API that enables any programmer to create a new feature without knowing the rest of the application code

Even though it's pretty hard to determine which is the most popular application (because of the free distribution) we know that there are 5 big players in this field:

• TWiki

TikiWiki CMS/Groupware is a free collaborative solution that has everything: wikis like the MediaWiki, blogs like WordPress, forums like PhpBB, map servers like Google Maps, image gallery like Flickr, bug tracker like Bugzilla, articles like Digg. And did I mention it's all free?

• MoinMoin
• PmWiki
• DokuWiki

PHP based wiki, DokuWiki is a simple powerful wiki solution intended for developer teams, workgroups and small companies. Because all the data is stored in plain text, no database is required.It includes multilanguage support, interlink wikis, uploading and embedding images

• MediaWiki

Collaborative editing software that runs Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and many other projects. MediaWiki is a free powerful solution designed to handle a large number of users and articles. The popular web based wiki software is written in PHP and can use either MySql or PostgreSQL database. It has a rich core feature set and it's modular structure allows developers to add more extensions without knowing the rest of the code. MediaWiki includes features like: discussions, edit tracking, search, index of content items, easy file uploading and much more! Check out the rest of the features on its feature mapping page. It's the most popular wiki solution and its interface is translated in more than 70 languages

On ITerating you can find a complete list with other wikis with users reviews, download pages , wiki pages even, forums and features. If you think there's any wiki not listed, feel free to expand the list

There's also the option to use free or payed online hosted wikis. You don't have to download anything, you just control it from your browser

WetPaint is a free solution that lets you build your wiki in a matter of minutes. You can choose from a multitude of templates how your wiki's gonna look like and also choose the features you want to includ or the users that can edit your wiki (it can be public or not). Basically, its a highly user-friendly wysiwyg type wiki platform that became very popular since march 2006 when it first opened its doors. You might be bothered by the ads they put on your pages but there's always a price to pay for a solution

StikiPad is a good commercial solution to host your project. It's simple but powerful, with plans starting at $5.

JotSpot is a free wiki hosted solution that was aquired by Google. Currently the registration is closed for new users as it's currently migrating to Google system but as soon as it open its gates there's no doubt it's gonna be a big competitor to WetPaint

Wikispaces is a wiki solution for everyone, super simple and with many cool features. It was said that if Google would make a wiki then it would look like Wikispaces.For personal wikis you have to pay a small fee but public wikis are free. At the beginning of 2008 they launched the widgets that you can add to your pages like tag clouds, top contributors and lists of discussions

Wikia is about creating wiki communities on every topic they are passionate about. Operates on MediaWiki solution and anyone can create a new community on its highly populated servers

Commnunities

• Wiki general forum

See Also

• List with all wiki software tools with user review, ready for download or to be used online
• Compare wiki solutions with side-by-side features
• Website and Communication Applications