Which wiki to choose

To select the tool that's right for you and your team, it's important to know what your options are and how to evaluate them. Wiki software is a type of software that allows users to collaboratively create, organize, and edit content online.

The term comes from the word "wikiwiki," which means "fast" in the Hawaiian language. There is a wide variety of wiki software solutions to choose from, and while they share a name, they solve very different problems. In this guide, we will go over the main wiki types:. Private wikis also known as internal wikis are accessible to a limited number of editors and readers. Private wiki software is used by teams and organizations to share information privately among its members.

Learn how to create a private wiki or an internal wiki. On the other hand, public wikis — such as Wikipedia or Wikia — are publicly accessible on the internet. The content of a public wiki is collaboratively created, updated, and consumed by the public, with little to no access restrictions. MediaWiki powers some of the largest wikis in the world, including Wikipedia.

You can be up and running within one business day. Still, before you onboard teammates, we suggest you create at least a work-in-progress information architecture. What your information architecture will look like will depend, in large part, on which wiki solution you choose. In Slab, information exists in two ways: topics which are like folders and posts which house the content itself. So if your team uses Slab, your information architecture is how you organize your topics.

Once your architecture is in place, you can add content to your internal wiki. If you have existing documentation like in Confluence , Notion, or Google Docs , you should import this content into your new wiki before you officially launch. At Slab, we make it easy to import content from a variety of tools , as well as from markdown and HTML files.

You should also add any critical new content into your wiki before your official launch. A few posts that teams frequently launch their company wiki with include their employee handbook and a guide to navigating their new wiki. As we mentioned earlier, your team likely uses a handful of tools to store important information. Consider what information should live in your wiki, and what information should be connected to it.

Some content deservedly belongs in a tool other than your wiki. For example, engineering teams that use GitHub can sync markdown files and embed issues and pull requests from GitHub to Slab. That way, they can continue using GitHub for their workflow while easily contributing to their company wiki. Now you can plan your launch.

Your announcement should introduce your new wiki to your team, explain why you are using it, and clarify the expectations and next steps each team member should take.

Please do this by DATE. You can sign up for a session here. Look out for another note from your team lead with the next steps for creating content in Slab! If you have any questions, please reach out to your team lead. Your wiki helps foster a culture of writing and knowledge sharing. But which wiki you choose matters. Choose a wiki that makes documentation seamless and straightforward.

No one should have to jump through hoops to contribute their know-how and expertise. Work Smarter. And that was in We earn a referral fee for some of the services we recommend on this page. Learn more. Whether your wiki is for a hobby or for team collaboration, you have plenty of options for software. Wiki software is remarkable for its ease of use and powerful features.

If you have a large amount of information that needs to be accessible to and editable by a group of people, you might be considering some type of Wiki software implementation.

If so, what do you need to launch your own Wiki? What do you need in terms of web hosting? Wikis are also content management systems — as its name implies, the goal of a CMS is to manage your content in a way that makes it usable for people. A large dump of files, for example, is not particularly useful, especially if no one can find what they need when they need it.

Wikis do not tend to be static resources that can only be edited by a select few though you can certainly implement something using this model.

Rather, Wikis are dynamic collections of docs that evolve over time. One of the more popular websites on the internet is Wikipedia, which is a user-curated, user-edited series of encyclopedia articles hosted using a Wiki. Whenever you are creating a Wiki, you are essentially creating your own Wikipedia just on a smaller scale.

Journalism, as a wiki? Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, speaks about his newest venture: WikiTribune. Find out about it now. There are many different Wiki options out there, so which ones are worth your time and which ones are not? It can be tough to narrow down the list of available options, so below, we cover some options we think you should definitely consider when deciding on the right Wiki option for you.

As you read through the options we present below, you will notice that all are open source and are therefore free Wikis. However, the downside to this is that you are responsible for getting the Wiki up and running and making it available to the world via the internet. Most importantly, this means that you will need to seek out the web hosting and other infrastructure needed to serve your Wiki. Depending on the Wiki software you choose and the web hosting provider you use, installation could be as simple as clicking just a few buttons in some cases, it may even be a single button or it could be a labor-intensive process involving lots of file transfers and manual configuration.

DokuWiki is a PHP -based Wiki engine that is lightweight in its demand for system resources and does not require a back-end database all files are stored in plain text.

Currently, DokuWiki supports over 50 languages , is device independent meaning it is accessible regardless of the computer or mobile device you are using , and is open source and free to use. DokuWiki is versatile and easy to use. Browse the DokuWiki site to see the plethora of tutorials and how-tos.

Maintaining and backing up DokuWiki, as well as integrating it with other apps, is fairly easy in DokuWiki. Furthermore, the product ships with access controls and authentication connectors so that it can be used in certain Enterprise settings. However, IP address-based bans, which is typically a built-in feature, can be added to DokuWiki using a plugin.

To customize DokuWiki, there are a large number of extensions and plugins you can integrate and use with your setup. The Node. Originally built for use with Wikipedia, MediaWiki is now also used by several other Wikimedia Foundation projects, including Wiktionary and Wikimedia Commons. MediaWiki is designed to be highly scalable, comes with more than configuration settings , and over extensions that change existing features as well as add new ones.

If you need a Wiki that can handle even complex projects that see high levels of traffic, you cannot go wrong with MediaWiki. The biggest caveat to using MediaWiki software, however, is its public nature.

If you need a Wiki that protects your content from unauthorized access, MediaWiki may not contain sufficient access control features for you. However, you do get public displays of user IP addresses , so people using the Wiki are identifiable. PhpWiki is the open source implementation of Wiki Wiki Web which itself was the first available Wiki option. It is written in PHP , and generally speaking, it is used to edit and format paper books for publication.

Users can make edits to existing pages using an HTML form. PmWiki that looks and function like normal web pages. However, each page has an Edit link that lets your users modify existing pages and add new pages to the website using basic editing rules. Access control lets you set permissions on who is allowed to edit your pages and who is not. Whoever has site administrator privileges can change the appearance and functions of a PmWiki site using skins and HTML templates.

You can either make your own or download a pre-made skin that you would then modify. PmWiki ships only with essential features, but if you want to customize your implementation and add additional features, there are hundreds of extensions which PmWiki calls recipes available from the PmWiki Cookbook. Are you not interested in doing the legwork required to set up a Wiki? In addition, its wiki functionality allows you to upload articles and photos in real time and to brand the wiki with your own logo and other identifying information.

Unlimited links also ensure you can structure your wiki exactly as needed. DokuWiki is an open source wiki program that lets you edit the text directly instead of having to use code. The interface used within DokuWiki is similar to what Microsoft uses in its Office series of programs. It uses indexing features to keep information in check while making it easier for people to organize the data they come across.

Extended access control lists also keep edits limited and trackable. PmWiki is another popular free wiki tool. PmWiki gives users access control over individual pages. That means you can set it so some pages are accessible only to specific people in the workplace based on their credentials and what they understand about certain topics.

Different passwords can be used for a variety of pages to ensure this. It helps centralize access to organizational files, documents and how-to articles ensuring they can be accessed across multiple devices and platforms. Comment by Essekia Paul on May. Publishing Capabilities ability to control who can edit, publish and review content 3.

Revision system and the ability to go back and forth 4.