Friday, November 27, 2009

MediaWiki and Wikkii


Though there are others out there, MediaWiki is the best wiki-creation software there is. Not familiar with it? Just go to Wikipedia or Wikia, and you're seeing MediaWiki in action. For site owners, it has nearly limitless options for customization. But then comes the First Law of Computer Software: more customization, less simplicity. If you want to install MediaWiki, you have to do all this advanced installation stuff that an average person doesn't know how to do. Even if you go to the MediaWiki website, most of the terms they use in their installation guide wouldn't be familiar to you. So what should you do when you want to start a wiki?
When most people want to start wikis, they go to popular wiki-hosting sites like PBWorks, Wikidot, and Wikispaces. But there's a catch: none of these hosting services use MediaWiki; they all develop their own wiki software. This means that you have to learn a totally different syntax (simple language used for formatting) than the one used on MediaWiki wikis like Wikipedia.
That's where Wikkii comes in. Just go to their website, register, and create as many MediaWiki wikis as you wish. Since Wikkii gets all of it's money from ads (which aren't even that annoying), most of it's features are unlimited, and all of it's features are free. Probably the only problem with Wikkii is that they have an older version of MediaWiki and don't upgrade. So get out their, create a wiki, and make it as large as Wikipedia.

And a happy Thanksgiving, too!