Wikis For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Finding a Hosted Home for Your Wiki

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Sampling the hosted wiki tasting menu

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Comparing hosted wiki features

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Choosing the right hosted wiki for you

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For the first seven or so years of the history of wikis (1995–2002), the only people who could use wikis were those who could set up their own server, install the software, and get a wiki engine running. This barrier to wiki adoption goes a long way to explain why during this period, wikis were mostly used in engineering departments and other organizations that were highly technical. Starting in 2002 and accelerating in 2005, this situation changed to bring wikis to the rest of us. Many different groups of people with various motivations got together to create hosted wikis — wiki engines that are installed and hosted on public servers, removing the administration burden associated with running your own. Hosted wikis also provide design templates, so that you can literally have a wiki up and running within an hour. Hosted wikis, also known as wiki farms, opened the floodgates of wiki usage and are speeding the way forward for wikis to become part of the mainstream. Now you can choose from scores of hosted wikis. A wiki in every pot!

No Wiki Academy exists that dictates just how wikis should work or even what a Web ...