Wikis For Dummies®

Chapter 8. The Four Dimensions of Wiki Design

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Structuring your wiki’s content

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Creating logical navigation for your wiki

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Filling the blank pages

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Dressing up your wiki with colors and graphics

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Designing a wiki means putting together all your wiki skills and knowledge to create a useful form for your wiki. The best wikis look a lot more like a Volkswagen Beetle — that is to say, utilitarian — than a sleek Ferrari, but they are beautiful all the same. Ideally, the design of your wiki should help people find what they want and join the content creation process if they feel so moved. To help you create such a design, throughout this chapter, we discuss the four dimensions of wiki design:

1. Find the right structure for your information. When designing your wiki, the key thing to remember is that the structure of the information being captured must be in charge. Information architecture — taxonomy — is a fancy name for organizing the content of your wiki. Whatever the name you give this process, finding the right structure for your information is the secret sauce to making a wiki sing.

2. Create a clear way to navigate a wiki. Everything you see when you encounter a wiki, from the front page to all pages deeper inside, must keep reminding you where you are, what sort information you’re looking at, and how you can find your way around. Of course, the reason ...