You may wonder sometimes how can you start a Wiki style website by using a free wiki creator like Wikia, or you can host wiki site if you have website hosting experience.
Checkout the article to get the answer to your question. It takes a few steps to create Wiki Site of your own.
Methods to Start a Wiki Site
- Using Wikia
- Hosting Your Own Wiki
- Creating a Successful Wiki
Start a Wiki Site : Using Wikia
| Open the FANDOM Wikia site. | Go to http://fandom.com/ in web browser for a service allowing to create a Wikia-supported wiki for free. |
| Sign up or Login. | Select the profile of a person in the upper-right side of the page, click REGISTER in the drop-down menu, and enter the information: Email, Username, Password, Birth Date |
| Click REGISTER. | Press the blue button at the bottom of the window to create an account. |
| Confirm email address | Before creating a wiki prove the email address provided is valid by opening your email inbox, click blue button “Confirm your email” email from “FANDOM. |
| Click START A WIKI. | Press the blue button on the upper-right side of the page. |
| Enter a name. | Type in the title of wiki in the text box near the top of the page. |
| Create an address. | Adding a title will generate an automatic web address for wiki in the “Give your wiki an address” text box in the “www.[name].wikia.com” format. |
| Select a language. | Tap “Language of your wiki” drop-down box to press preferred language. |
| Click NEXT. | Placed in the bottom-right corner of the page. |
| Enter a wiki description | Type wiki’s purpose into the top text box on the page. |
| Select a category. | Press “Choose a Hub” drop-down menu to click a category for wiki with more specific categories after main category. |
| Click CREATE MY WIKI. | Scroll down to press blue button in the bottom-right corner of the page. |
| Select a theme. | Click the theme you wish to use while Wikia is creating your own wiki site. |
| SHOW ME MY WIKI. | Tap to visit your wiki’s page that has been created and published. |
Start a Wiki Site : Hosting Your Own Wiki
| Choose a software package. | MediaWiki is the most popular wiki software on the net. TikiWiki is the second most popular wiki software available, and has strong plugin support with forums, image galleries. |
| Upload software to the server. | If you wish to host wiki, you will be required to transfer the wiki software onto the server. Some hosts have wiki software ready to be installed, but it might not match the software that you wish to use. |
| Create a database. | MediaWiki supports MySQL and SQLite need to choose a name for the database and installed automatically. For running MySQL, you must download if it is not already installed, and create a new database. |
| Run the installer script from your browser. | MediaWiki files uploaded and database created, visit the index.php page on server through browser to run the automated install script. Fill out a form with wiki information: Wiki name, Contact e-mail, Language, Copyright and Licenses, Admin username and password, Database host, Database name, Database username or password. |
| Customize your wiki. | After base wiki up and running, you can change the visual appearance using user-made with the CSS code and user made skins or change the logo on the wiki. |
Start a Wiki Site : Creating a Successful Wiki
| Determine what wiki is for before creating it. | Wikis are used as personal pages, communities, to track life goals, create a product manual for business, collaborate on a project, create a newsletter or discussion place. |
| Check for duplicate wikis. | Aim of a wiki is to write together without isolation, ensure wiki services, one you’ve chosen, must be able to achieve it. So, check Wikia and Wikidot for duplicacy. |
| Make a team before creating wiki. | To get timely advice and motivation, talk to people about project and make people follow you to contribute towards creation of the wiki and feel like co-creators. |
| Adjust your permissions. | Set default permissions for access and edit especially for business settings to determine who can post or edit, both on a wiki-wide scale and on a per-post scale. |
| Start creating content. | As soon as your wiki is created, try to work writing articles. Good content will drive other people to your wiki. Ensure a well-versed topic with comprehensiveness. |
| Create the categories. | Category pages contain lists of related pages to the main content and “Organization” categories themselves can have sub-categories by categorizing a category page. |
| Create a policy guide for your wiki. | Helps in laying rules for the writing on your wiki and allow contributors to get information about representing the site to the readers with article noteworthiness standards and aid in patrolling and editing articles as a guide is better than verbal reprimand. |
| Brush up on wiki syntax. | Create more efficient articles with basic wiki syntax with an ability to edit pages directly without using guided editors to adjust the layout and style. |
| Copy from the other wikis. | Although copying content is plagiarism, whereas reusing the styles and the templates of other wikis is encouraged. Templates are easily appended to pages. |
| Patrol the site. | The main draw of a wiki is that anyone can edit it, but this is also its biggest challenge but Wiki software allows quick rollbacks of articles to previous versions and be as much tolerant as possible. |
| Promote active community members. | People are enthusiastic about wiki and dedicated ones must be given more control over the site. Be supportive and nice to editors and be a helping hand to guide and to motivate them. Create admins from community, Set up forums and talk pages to permit community members to discuss, allow admins to vote on policy and style changes. |
| Get the word out. | Do everything to spread word about the existence of wiki. Describe wiki on WikiIndex of wikiindex.org. Search and suggest collaboration. Advertise wiki on social media. |
| Expand as you grow. | Popular, continuous features that benefit site like forums, chat rooms, polls, calendars, etc., add good functionality to wiki. Be creative and ensure a good content by updating to the newest version of wiki software package whenever possible for security and layout features. |
| A wiki is a collaborative, community effort. | Enjoying the community while creating with wiki helps to strive for better. The Internet helps in facilitating communication and wiki is currently is the most effective environments for collecting and sharing information. |
Congratulations on starting your own Wiki with the help of above stated steps and various other facts provided through it.