Question & Answer: What wiki platforms would you recommend for getting started with wikis?

Many wikis are available on the market today and they offer a wide range of capabilities. Some are hosted solutions and well suited for small teams who want to get started quickly and easily without IT support while others are enterprise solutions that can be setup within the company firewall and would require IT support.  

Here are some examples of wikis that we mention in some of our collaboration workshops:  

• PBWiki (http://www.pbwiki.com/)


• Central Desktop (http://www.centraldesktop.com/)


• Social Text (http://www.socialtext.com/)


• Confludence (http://www.atlassian.com/)


• Twiki (http://www.twiki.org/ and http://www.twiki.net/)  

Many of the above wikis have free trials available and Twiki for instance is an open source solution which you can download and install on your server for free.

For an exhaustive list of wikis (more than 100 of them) and comprehensive feature comparison, refer to http://www.wikimatrix.org/  

By the way, if you are already using Microsoft SharePoint, one of the templates that are available is a wiki template. This allows you to create a new team site that is a wiki. While this is not a full featured wiki like the above mentioned platforms, it can serve your basic needs and can be a good starting point until a full featured wiki platform is in place.   

Additional Resources  

• Recording of the Structured Wikis at Work by Peter Thoenylunch & learn webinar at the “Accomplishing more with less” group on Facebook
   


• Are you still wondering how a wiki can help your team better collaborate? 
   


• Wikimatrix.org for wiki comparisons

Founder and principal of People-OntheGo, has more than fifteen years of experience in the software industry. Pierre has founded several companies including a financial software company in 1987 (Computer Trends, Inc.), an e-CRM company in 1995 (Imparto Software Corporation), raised several multi-million dollar funding rounds, and completed two successful acquisitions. In the last few years, Pierre's interest centered around bridging the gap between technology and people. He founded People-OntheGo to help corporate users manage e-mail and digital communication tools more effectively, and Digital-OntheGo to help organizations take full advantage of the new advances in digital video and web distribution, both part of the OntheGo Technologies L.L.C. Pierre holds a Master's degree in Engineering from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan), and has completed several Executive Education programs at the Stanford Graduate School of Management (Stanford, California).

Pierre Khawand

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