This article was derived from information provided in the Ask a Techo forum on 15 August 2003
I don’t know about you but I get a bit overwhelmed with the variety of tools “out there”. I also get frustrated by the complicated explanations I’m given when I dare to ask about something that’s new to me but obviously “old hat” to others. You can imagine how pleased I was to find this simple explanation of WIKI’s and how to set them up.
- How do you explain a WIKI in a non techo way to bunch of non-techos?
- Have you any recommendations for which ones to use?
- Are they like Blogger where you can use their server, or do you need your own server space?
- Could techno-challenged people set one up without too much hassles?
Answer 1: Briefly a Wiki is a collaborative web based workspace where anyone can update the pages. Our resident "Ask a Techo" techo Shaggy (aka Peter Shanks) has a short page describing a wiki on his wiki Mindmap (which also has a few useful links and some more detail).
Answer 2: The exact wiki software you use depends on your web server. If the server runs IIS and ASP Shaggy recommends OpenWiki. There are also excellent implementations in Perl (UsemodWiki) and Python (MoinMoin) which will run on most Unix/Apache setups. You might like to have a look at Bloki which is easy to set up, remotely hosted and free.
Answer 3: Depending on what you want to use your wiki for, you may be allowed to add pages to an existing wiki (like the Wikipedia) but generally you need to set up your own server. There's a listing of public wiki sites at c2
Answer 4: If you can set up a web server, adding a wiki to it shouldn't prove to be too difficult.
And, just for fun, we've looked up the word "wiki" on wikipedia for you.
