Starting and Running a Wiki Website/Overview
From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection
Before deciding to start your own wiki, if you plan to write about something that may be of general public interest, there is a good possibility that there is already something similar online. Remember, a bigger wiki (with more participants) is often more fun. If, or rather, when you get hit by spammers and vandals, having a big community and others willing to help out can be invaluable. Perform extensive research using search engines to make sure that a suitable wiki does not already exist. A Google search for 'wiki' currently returns about 419,000,000 results; duplicating efforts is very unhelpful - it only means some helpless soul will end up confusing the two wikis at some point in the future.
Some good places to find out if a wiki already exists include:
[edit] Hosting - self or external
If you still want to run your own wiki, you will either need to run your own web server or have someone else manage a server for you.
- "from scratch": you install whatever wiki engine you choose. You control everything. (Either on your own hardware, or on any suitable web host).
- "hosted wiki": most technical decisions and support issues are handled by someone else, and you handle the social aspects of growing the wiki.
If you already have a web server, but your web host does not specifically say they host Wikis (for free or a fee) just see if they support the scripting language that the Wiki software you want to run requires. Many wikis require just PHP, Perl, or some other common server-side scripting language that most web hosts provide. Other wikis require a database (e.g. MySQL database) and/or have other requirements.
