How to Create a Wiki: 7 Sites That Make It Easy and Painless

Do you want to create a wiki? There are quite a few web apps that can help. Some require you to pay for the service; others let you make a free wiki.

If you’re wondering how to create a wiki, here are several sites you should check out today because they’ll make the process a lot easier.

1. MediaWiki

MediaWiki is one of the most popular wiki platforms on the web. It is entirely open source and lets you create a free wiki.

Originally used on Wikipedia, the site now also provides the backend for many other common wiki sites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata.

The platform’s biggest selling point is its impressive customization options. There are more than 1,900 extensions, 900 configuration settings, and support for 300 languages.

Other notable features include support for rich content, edit tracking, namespaces (so multiple pages can exist with the same name), and templates.

To use MediaWiki, you need to have a server that runs PHP and a compatible SQL database.

2. SlimWiki

Lots of people don’t have the time nor the technical expertise to use a complex wiki platform like MediaWiki.

If you want a more straightforward way to create a wiki, check out SlimWiki. The site makes it easy to make a wiki for your company, group, or project.

The wiki owners can choose who is able to change the content—other users can either be editors or have read-only permissions.

Content on SlimWiki follows a Collections to Pages hierarchy. You can group as many pages as you want into a Collection.

SlimWiki is free for up to three users. Thereafter, each user costs $5 per month. Paid accounts also offer custom domains, page exports, public pages, and 1 GB of storage space per user.

3. Wikidot

If you want to create your own wiki but you don’t have any knowledge of HTML, PHP, JavaScript, et al., Wikidot is another site worth looking at. After its launch in 2006, Wikidot is now one of the largest wiki sites in the world.

Under the hood, Wikidot is a wiki hosting service—a.k.a., a “wiki farm”. On a wiki farm, a single instance of the wiki’s code runs on an array of servers. The site’s admins are responsible for maintaining the servers and managing individual wiki’s spaces.

Let’s talk about features. Wikidot offers unlimited pages, an unlimited number of revisions, custom CSS themes, backups, and an unlimited number of members of public wikis.

The free version supports five private users. Each user gets 300 MB of storage space in the free version. For $49.90 per month, the storage limit rises to 30 GB, and the number of private users increases to 10.

The most expensive plan costs $239.90 per month. It offers an unlimited number of users and 200 GB of storage.

4. Tiki Wiki

Tiki Wiki is a Open Source wiki-based content management system like MediaWiki.

If you’re using Tiki Wiki to make your own wiki, you’ll be able to enjoy a WYSIWYG editor, complete revision history retention, revision comparison tools, and wiki RSS feeds.

You can organize pages by category and/or tag. Tiki Wiki also lets you organize groups of pages into a hierarchy. If needed, the wiki’s admins can lock particular pages to prevent further editing.

As you’d expect, you can embed content, easily manage backlinks, and manage user permissions. You can adjust the permissions based on the type of material to be edited.

You don’t need HTML knowledge to create a wiki on Tiki Wiki, but if you have the skills, HTML editing is available.

Tiki Wiki has an impressive library of plugins. If you need to add extra functionality to your wiki, you should be able to find what you need amidst the hundreds of extensions.

Tiki Wiki is free to use.

5. DokuWiki

At first glance, DokuWiki is very similar to MediaWiki and Tiki Wiki. However, it boasts a much easier learning curve. If you’re not tech savvy and you value ease-of-use, this could be the wiki platform for you.

Toolbars and access bars make editing pages a breeze, breadcrumbs are supported for easy navigation, and there’s a vast number of plugins to extend a wiki’s functionality.

DokuWiki boasts some cool automated features. They include future links (pages that don’t yet exist are highlighted in red), backlinks, tables of contents, and indexing.

The site also offers templates. First-time wiki makers will find them useful.

DokuWiki is Open Source and free to use.

6. Fandom

Fandom (known as Wikia until early 2019) is another easy-to-use wiki site for anyone who wants to create a free wiki.

The wikis are powered by the MediaWiki backend. This allows users to benefit from many of the platform’s benefits without worrying about hosting and other technical issues.

Fandom accepts wikis on any subject matter, but the majority of wikis on the site coalesce around books, films, video games, and TV series.

The original Wikia was founded back in 2004 by Jimmy Wales—the same person who launched Wikipedia. Indeed, Wikia (and thus Fandom) has often been referred to as the commercial, for-profit arm of the non-profit Wikipedia site.

It is free to create a wiki on Fandom.

7. Make Your Own Wikipedia Page

Anyone can register as a Wikipedia editor and create a Wikipedia page.

It’s easy to create content for a page that’s missing (denoted by a red link). Just log in with your account, add the necessary material and sources, and hit Publish Changes.

Of course, just because anyone can edit Wikipedia doesn’t mean there is a free-for-all. The site’s other editors will swiftly remove articles about yourself, your company, your band, your family, your sports team, etc. Before you know it, you might have a Wikipedia edit war on your hands.

Remember, new pages need to be noteworthy enough to go into an encyclopedia. Aside from personal pages, content such as essays and original research will not be accepted.

Create Your Own Personal Wiki With OneNote

Although it’s not a website, you might consider using OneNote if you want to make a personal wiki. The app offers many of the same features as the dedicated wiki sites, including wiki syntax, page linking, and tables of contents.

We’ve written a complete guide on how to create a wiki with OneNote if you would like to learn more.

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