What Is A Wiki

Creating a business or personal website can be quite a complex business using a range of software, programming skills and a web server to store the site files.

In order that basic websites could be created easily and quickly the Wiki was developed. Wikis were originally intended to be collaborative workspaces that can be accessed anywhere that internet is available. The best example is probably Wikipedia (click here) which is a massive online collaborative encyclopaedia. Wikipedia is created by mostly volunteer editors adding their own expertise to the wiki to create a knowledge base. Anyone can edit Wikipedia.

The word Wiki comes from a Hawaiian word meaning 'quick'.
The picture shows the Wikiwiki shuttle bus at Honolulu airport where the inspiration for Wikis reputedly came from.

Wikiwiki2008.jpg

Wiki Software

Wiki software is used inside a web browser, like Google Chrome or Apple Safari. Pages are created by using the correct syntax (computer code structure) to make the wiki operate.
Mostly it just needs normal text typed in but there are a number of special codes needed to format text, insert and position images and include video.

The wiki software saves the content and structures it produces to make a working web page.

Is it hard to do?

Basically it is not much harder than using a wordprocessor for text.
Images and video need a little more knowledge to install and format but most wiki hosts provide Help documentation.

The more sophisticated features of websites, such as link buttons, cannot be added without some knowledge of computer code.

Seniortech Wiki

This wiki is made using Wikidot. This company provides software and online storage for wikis.
This is called 'hosting' because the wiki you create is stored or 'hosted' on the Wikidot server (online computer)

Wikidot can be found at Wikidot

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