Wiki was a concept that was first used by wikipedia but after that it has become a platform for many webmasters like me.
Nowadays we find a lot of Wiki software’s that can be used for your site, for example MediaWiki, PHPWiki, PMWiki, TikiWiki etc.
But out of all these Media Wiki is most common among the webmasters. Even I was thinking of installing media Wiki but chose PMWiki over it after some evaluation. One of the prime reasons for me going for PMWiki was that it directly stores its data in a file system and does not need a database, thus making installations and backups very easy. PMWiki also has a lot of plugins, which helps me to do almost all the things that I want to do.
Over all I could make out that installing PMWiki will make my life much easier (maintenance wise and some other factors) than MediaWiki.
What do you say?
Nowadays WEB 2.0 is one of the most happening and discussed word on the web. But many people still ask “†It’s good that helping users learn is the key to creating passionate users….but you need to do a hell lot of extra work and who has time for that, who will make all that extra tutorial or do documentations?
The answer to this question is YOUR USERS. Just think about all those things that good user community can do for you: Marketing (Word of Mouth), new product ideas, training new users. Overall these all will help you saving a lot of money and you can budget for your site in a much better way.
Saying that building up a community is not all that easy especially for a new website. Here are some tips that will help you to build a strong user community:
- Have some kind of discussion board like forums, wiki’s, blogs and do whatever it takes to get people there as soon as possible.
- Look for other similar boards and recognize the big names there. Try to contact them.
- Try to make these members life time members and give them special designations as FOUNDERS. This will give them a satisfaction of being there at a place where nobody else will reach.
- Try to have rewards for participation (Not Money), these rewards could be status or some kind of special recognition. While giving rewards don’t only see the quantity of the posts also look at the quality.
- Try and include some fun activities, May be have one off topic forum.
- Encourage senior members to have there own private discussion place.
The above points are just few tips. There will be plenty more coming pretty soon. And also please don’t forget to add if you have any new idea.
