What's a Wiki? Part II

As I discussed last time, you may not be able to recreate Wikipedia for your own business. Nevertheless, there are several things that a small business can do with open-source wiki software. Consider wikis to be a content management system that can be deployed for purposes far afield from their original use.

By organizing your information in a wiki rather than a traditional Website, you gain two major advantages:

First, you don't need a central Webmaster to update the site for every single content change. Typical Websites require all changes and updates to go through a single person responsible for the tedium of formatting and uploading pages. With a wiki, you can set it up once and then allow designated people (if not the general public) to make their own additions and changes to the live site. As the site owner, you can audit what they do and revert if necessary, but, for the most part, it can be self-managing.

Second, wikis are uniquely tailored to appeal to search engines, which tend to give priority to pages having a monomaniacal focus on a single keyword or key-phrase. Search engines thrive on hierarchical outlines, where each link goes to a separate page about a given sub-topic. Wikis are uniquely suited to allowing you to create such structures, and you don't have to be technically minded to do so.

Here are the different types of wiki you might consider:

MediaWiki, the open-source software powering Wikipedia, can be freely downloaded, installed, and used for your own purposes. If you're not the technical type, you can have a professional hosting service (WikiSpaces among others) run it for you. Alternatively, there are several other open-source wiki engines that may be more suitable for your needs, although those may not receive the same level of updates, security, and available maintenance.

Wikis do have their limitations in terms of granular access control and integration with rich media formats, but even the off-the-shelf versions have the potential to lower the cost to small businesses of maintaining an informative, up-to-date Web presence. As such, it's a technology worth exploring.

— Ivan Schneider recently set out to start his own business, ivantohelpyou, helping others with theirs. Follow his ongoing adventures here.