Comparison of wiki hosting services
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A wiki farm is a server or an array of servers that offer users tools to simplify the creation and development of individual, independent wikis.
Prior to wiki farms, someone who wanted to operate a wiki had to install the software and manage the server(s) themselves. With a wiki farm, the farm's administration installs the core wiki code once on its own servers, centrally maintains the servers, and establishes unique space on the servers for the content of each individual wiki with the shared core code executing the functions of each wiki.
Both non-commercial and commercial wiki farms are available for users and online communities. While most of the wiki farms allow anyone to open their own wiki, some impose restrictions. Many wiki farm companies generate revenue through the insertion of advertisements, but often allow payment of a monthly fee as an alternative to accepting ads.
General
The following tables compare general information for several wiki farms; however, more than 100 wiki farms have been created.[1] The Alexa traffic rankings are not accurate for those wiki farms that allow some of their hosted wikis to have separate domain names. In those cases there may be some additional Alexa rankings listed below for some of the larger individual wikis in a wiki farm. The wikis are normally provided with a standard layout, or a choice of layouts, usually known as skins. Some wiki farms allow the layout to be customised using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
| Wiki farm | Alexa rank as of October 2009[update] (lower = higher traffic)[2] | Cost? | Ads? | Content license |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central Desktop | 13,313 [3] (October 7, 2009) | Non-free Nonfree | ? | |
| Confluence Hosted | 12,658 [4] (October 7, 2009) | Non-free Nonfree[5] | ? | |
| CustomerVision BizWiki | 5,357,869 [6] (October 7, 2009) | Non-free Nonfree | ? | |
| Ourproject.org | 336,594 [7] (October 7, 2009) | Free | No | Copyleft (choice of Creative Commons, GNU FDL, other licenses) |
| PBworks | 2,605 [8] (October 7, 2009) | Free/paid | No | |
| Socialtext Workspace Hosted | 47,176 [9] (October 7, 2009) | Non-free Nonfree[10] | No | Wiki creators can set their own. |
| Wetpaint | 1,894 [11] (October 7, 2009) | Free/Paid | AS | Creative Commons |
| Wik.is | 91,967 [12] (October 7, 2009) | Free/paid | ? | |
| Wikia | 236 [13] (October 7, 2009) | Free | Yes | Creative Commons |
| Wikidot | 3,687 [14] (October 7, 2009) | Free/paid | Yes/No | By default Creative Commons, GNU FDL, other licenses as requested |
| Wikispaces | 3,443 [15] (October 7, 2009) | Free/paid | Yes/No | Choice of Creative Commons, GNU FDL, other licenses |
| XWiki | 371,193 [16] (October 7, 2009) | Free/paid | No | Any |
| Wiki farm | Alexa. Approximative rank according to Alexa Internet. Click on the rank to get the last figures. | Cost? | Ads? | Content license |
Technical
| Wiki farm | WYSIWYG editing | Features | Base wiki engine | Multilingual support | Syntax support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central Desktop | Yes | Access control, full-text search, calendaring, single sign-on to multiple projects, project templates, RSS enabled. | [?] (custom) | HTML,[1] CSS/templating No formulas | |
| Confluence Hosted | Yes | Wiki markup language, plugins, SSL, file storage, permissioning, WebDAV. | HTML plugin script plugin No formulas | ||
| CustomerVision BizWiki | Yes | Access control, page templates, domain mapping, solution templates include Sales Support, and Learning Support. | [?] (custom) | ||
| Ourproject.org | Yes | It offers freely a wide collection of services for multi-purpose free/libre projects (not only free software: free knowledge), including wikis, mailing lists, forums, FTP, subdomains, hosting, ddbb, email alias, backups, CVS/SVN, Task management... | MoinMoin | Supports English, Spanish, French, and many other languages. | |
| Socialtext Workspace | Yes | Enterprise Wiki. Supports text, rich text, embedded images, video, and attachments (including from email). | Derived from Kwiki | ||
| Wetpaint | Yes | WYSIWYG editing only, custom page hierarchies, Comment and Reply forums with comment ratings, access control, keyword search, tags, tag filtering, skins, RSS, page locking, profiles, site activity report, page and comment watching. No page permission settings. No changes preview. Supported browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox. | Java-based (custom) | No HTML,[1] Unknown script No formulas | |
| Wik.is | Yes | Access control, full-text search (including file attachments), document management, light project management, database, project templates, RSS enabled, stores in XML, Deki Wiki a full featured engine (a MediaWiki fork). Free account 50 MB. Paid account ($99/yr) 1 GB. | Deki Wiki | ||
| Wikia | Yes | Wiki hosting service created in 2004, formerly known as Wikicities. All wikis have common login and preferences. Single sign-on to multiple projects. Database download available. No means to close an inactive wiki, even if the community has moved elsewhere. Wikia domains, names, and identifiers owned by Wikia Inc, not the respective communities; in a recent change of policies, all communities are being migrated to .wikia.com subdomains. Will configure Semantic MediaWiki on request.[17] | MediaWiki 1.15.1 | All languages Wikipedia exists for (and some more); Community Support in English, Chinese, German, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese. | Some HTML,[1] JavaScript, Math formulas |
| Wikidot | Each site gets a subdomain on .wikidot.com (like mywiki.wikidot.com). Also there is possibility to map a custom domain (like mywiki.com -- if previously registered by the wiki owner) for free. One can optionally allow Wikidot to display ads on their wiki and get 80% of revenue. RSS import/export, private RSS feeds for Users (notifications and watched items), RSS for page changes and forum, customizable themes (every item can be styled with CSS), advanced forum for each Site. Custom page hierarchies, searching, advanced page (full/section/append) edit locking, blocking users and IP addresses. Private messages between users. Uses Ajax for clean and fast (no browser page-reload) interface. SEO-friendly. No limits on site size. Public and private wikis. Lots of widgets, that allow to embed a video from YouTube, GoogleVideo, photos from Flickr, chats from Meebo and many more). Each user can create up to 20 wiki sites and be a member of an unlimited number of wikis. | Modified Text_Wiki engine | English, Polish, Russian and Community support in French, German, ... more to come. | No HTML,[1] CSS styling LaTeX math formulas | |
| Wikispaces | Yes | Clean easy to use interface, users get a subdomain on wikispaces.com. Free version supported by Google ads - Wikispaces ads can be turned off for a fee. No limits on numbers of pages, spaces, or members. Full RSS support; easy space backups in zip and tgz. Blog import function/ integration with Blogger.com and Typepad. Themes and stylesheets can be customized. Private label service available. | [?] (custom) | Optional HTML,[1] Unknown script Math formulas | |
| Wiki farm | WYSIWYG editing | Features | Wiki engine | Multilingual support | Syntax support |
See also
- Collaborative real-time editor
- Collaborative software
- Comparison of wiki software
- List of collaborative software
- List of wiki software
- List of wikis
- Wiki software
Notes and references
- ^ a b c d e f "WikiMatrix - Compare them all" (selectable table), WikiMatrix, 2007, webpage: wikimatrix-org-main.
- ^ Approximative rank according to Alexa Internet. Click on the rank to get the last figures.
- ^ Central Desktop traffic rank
- ^ Confluence Hosted traffic rank
- ^ Free for charitable nonprofits and open source projects
- ^ CustomerVision BizWiki traffic rank
- ^ Ourproject traffic rank
- ^ PBwiki traffic rank
- ^ Socialtext traffic rank. Few wikis appear to be on the socialtext.net domain / or most are not public wikis, so the Alexa rating doesn't seem very relevant.
- ^ "SocialText Packages & Pricing". Socialtext.com. Retrieved 2009-06-10.
- ^ Wetpaint traffic rank
- ^ Wik.is traffic rank
- ^ Wikia traffic rank
- ^ Wikidot traffic rank
- ^ Wikispaces traffic rank
- ^ XWiki traffic rank
- ^ "wikia.com, Help:Semantic MediaWiki". wikia.com. Retrieved 2009-07-22.