Which wiki farm is best?

Posted by wcook

on 5 Jun 2006 4:10 PM

A wiki farm is a third party that hosts your wiki, a collaborative Web site that allows authorized users — or in some cases, anyone with an Internet connection — to rapidly and easily change the content of pages, as well as view a history of changes that others have made.

In TechSoup's article Exploring the World of Wikis, we review several public, private, and protected wiki farms, including BluWiki, EditMe, EditThis.info, JotSpot, PB Wiki, Wikia, and Wikispaces. Have you used any of these services? What was your experience?

If you are new to the concept of a wiki, Exploring the World of Wikis offers an overview of the medium, along with questions for evaluating whether a wiki is right for your organization. If, after reading the article, you have questions about wikis, share them here in our forums.

senior editor, TechSoup

Posted by calebjc

on 9 Jun 2006 7:32 AM

I love seedwiki.com. I'm on version 3.0 (graphics on every page) of a 100+ page training manual for a university library's 15 front desk staff. See: http://seedwiki.com/wiki/anewiki1/
Great group project for the last 6 months. Developed it on their free level, now spending $10/mo. Small company, responsive tech support. Writing a paper on it now for Internet Reference Services Quarterly. Click "About this Wiki" for a brief development story.

Caleb. Antioch New England Graduate School, NH.

Posted by meryn

on 11 Jun 2006 11:29 AM

"Your wiki engine could potentially be pushed out of the marketplace, making it hard (or even impossible) to rebuild your wiki's infrastructure, even if you've regularly backed up its contents."

That's an important thing to keep in mind when selecting a wiki engine, but this is also and even more true for wiki hosting. A wiki hosting company can cease operations if their hosting doesn't turn out profitable in the long run. In the spirit of the quote above, it would be wise to investigate the profitabiliy, cash flow, funding and other relevant facts of a wiki host before making a final decision.

Further more, if you choose an open source wiki engine of which afterwards the development goes stale, you can always choose to 'fork' the project or maintain the engine in-house (private fork). Although far from ideal, it does gives you more options.

Posted by karl_travel

on 13 Jun 2006 7:55 PM

I agree, but I think the choice of wiki software is crucial. There are so many wiki variants out there, you need to make sure the wiki variant you choose has a strong user community.

When we selected a wiki for a project team, I decided to use MediaWiki (the software underneath Wikipedia), since as long as Wikipedia is around, MediaWiki will be too. So make sure that the wiki software you choose has the features you need and enough sites and users to keep it supported for the long term.

Posted by calebjc

on 14 Jun 2006 7:26 AM

I wanted to use MediaWiki too, but our IT at the small univ. i work at couldn't support it and didn't want me to be the only one who knew the server, they're all Windows and Cold Fusion for web. So I went with seedwiki, hoping they last the coming weeding out of wiki hosters. I do back up which is every html file for every page, and I have all the images in one folder before I upload, so I could put the site back together if I had to on a new platform. Seedwiki is talking about being able to host Mediawiki for people and I would consider moving over to it in that case, but for now, things are good.

Posted by RobKohr

on 25 Aug 2006 12:21 PM

editthis.info is a free MediaWiki host, and they are really easy to set up (you just enter a name in a text box).

Posted by Susan_Tenby

on 25 Oct 2006 11:56 AM

Speaking of Wikis--

I wanted to remind you all that we will have an online event on Using Wikis for Nonprofits on NOvember 1-3, hosted by Adam Frey of Wikispaces. This one will focus specifically on innovative and basic uses of wikis for nonprofits. I would love to see you all post your wiki questions and stories there.

See you online, in this forum, next week, for the event,

Susan

Susan Tenby, Parernships, Online Community and Social Media Director, Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup.org.

Posted by leiken

on 9 Dec 2007 8:53 AM

I really like the glubase wiki.

Posted by Rog

on 29 Dec 2007 2:15 PM

Honestly, the "best" way IMO is to simply get a Dreamhost account and create the wiki yourself there. There you get tons of flexibility with little headache. It's what I do when someone I know wants some sort of vanity domain wiki and I do not want to mess with any of the crappiness of hosting a box for them.

(Actually, that would probably be a good TechSoup HOWTO article, in case no one else has done it)

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