New Media Fun

I am in the process of finishing up a new website for Alberta Network of Professional & Organizational Development (ANPOD.ca). One of the requirements for the site was to have wiki functionality.

The college isn’t set up to host our own wikis, so I needed to do some research to find a hosted Wiki solution. There were a couple of considerations I had to keep in mind when searching for a wiki solution:

• It had to be FREE
• The Wiki needed to be hosted
• Ability to add custom design
• Private viewing for registered members
• Control on creating and editing the entries

There where a couple of viable options:

• Wikidot
• Wikispaces
• Wikia

I ended up choosing Wikidot because it seemed straight forward and the ability to modify the design to compliment the ANPOD website design.

I won’t get into the particulars about using Wikidot; rather I will offer a handful of tips I have figured out while working with this website tool.

• Design: Keeping in mind that the structure of the wikis is set, however there are a handful of templates already constructed. I recommend extending an existing template and just modifying the CSS. It is easier than building a template from scratch and it allows you to do simple modification to the layout and color scheme.
• Modifying the Navigation: It wasn’t to clear how I could edit the navigation, the trick is to click on “edit this panel”. This will bring the navigation into the main content part of the page and then you can choose the edit button to modify the HTML for the navigation.
• Google Analytics: Under 3rd party tools, you can add your Google Analytics profile key for tracking traffic on your Wiki.
• Accessing Admin: To make changes to a Wiki, you need to go to the admin part of your site. You can access it by clicking on the “Site Manager” link. To get direct access to the site manager, you need to be logged in and add “admin:manage” to your wiki URL.

I am still getting used to this website. But it seems to hold a lot of promise, just not as straight forward as building a website with WordPress or DreamWeaver.