Week 7 #16 - Choosing a wiki

I've been working hard this week evaluating one of the wiki software we downloaded. We've installed it locally for the moment so I can show you all yet. It's called Wikka and I can do the following with it:

1. Hide the registration so that we don't have lots of spammers registering. We'll provide links to a form where people can register to become editors. I'm hoping that with the Learning 2.0 program people will feel confident enough to volunteer to help out.


2. Tinker with the style and layout.
   
   

It has a fairly simple text editor so you don't have to remember all of the complicated tags. You just point and click and the editor inserts the tags for you.

At first I'll transfer content from the existing Online Information and Links section but I'll also be adding some pages where staff can add tutorials for using the library resources e.g. searching for magazine articles, finding a book to read next etc.


Have you got any great ideasfor the Online Information wiki? Why not send me a comment.

Cheers, webgurl

Week 7 - #16 - Wikis

This week comes at just the right time. I'm currently evaluating wiki software to decide which is the best one to use for our online information links.

First up I went to WikiMatrix. This site has a Wiki choice wizard which guides you through the evaluation.

Questions asked include:

1. Do you want a page history?
2. Do you want a WYSIWYG editor (What you see is what you get)?
3. Do you want to load software on your server or have it hosted?

Some of the issues I need to consider are if the page editing process is easy and if there is access control. You want to have several levels of access for administrators and editors. I don't want everyone around the world editing. I want to set up a system where people register to be editors.

I had a quick look at the two main players in the hosted wiki arena; Wetpaint and PBWiki. If you want to have a look at the results check them out:

http://erlonlineinformation.wetpaint.com/
http://erlonline.pbwiki.com/

I haven't given up on hosting our own wiki either. We'll see what happens.

Cheers, webgurl