Making a Wiki / Social Website

The End

2010-12-22T09:04:00.002-07:00

This was a fun experiment. I learned a lot from the exercise, and appreciate the feedback I received. As you can tell from the dates on the posts, this blog has ended and won't be getting more posts.

Thank you.

Gedan

Designing a Structure for the Wiki

2007-05-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

To get started with the wiki, we need an initial structure. Some of the obvious questions are:

How should we design the categories of how2why4.com?
What should our contribution policy be?
What should our privacy policy be?
How do we want to encourage contributors?
How do we entice visitors (consumers)?

For this post, I'll just cover the first question: how do we decide on the categories? First, we have to realize we don't need to be perfect! A wiki is modifiable, so if we get it wrong, we can adjust (sometimes with more work). Second, let's get an idea of what people are looking for. I'll do that by using amazon.com and looking up such how-to guides as the "Idiot's Guide to..." to get an idea of popularity. I'll post the results on the site and update this post when they're ready to look at.

Umm, why not just go with youtube?

2007-05-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

At this point, we've created our site, populated it with some how2why4 content, and are searching for the true purpose to help guide the design further.

We have some competition out there, and we have to distinguish our site from the competition to get enough users to come to our site.

One of the big competitors is youtube.com. It has a category of "DIY" videos. Many of them are very good, so why do we think we can do better when it seems to have the google position on DIY/How2?

Fortunately for our site, there's substantial room for improvement because of a problem I talked about in my other blog and called the single viewpoint problem. The problem is that if you're trying to learn something or get useful information off of a site, you don't want only one person's opinion. And you probably don't want to go around reading everybody's opinion to inform your own, because that's too much like a research paper. More importantly, you are not in a position, if you're trying to learn something new, to judge whether something you find on the web is correct, or not.

That's the niche that how2why4.com can fill. By the nature of wikis, blogs, forums, and multimedia, multiple opinions can be integrated to provide a higher likelihood of truth. It also can integrate the best of other sources, like youtube and wikipedia with commentary to improve not just the how2 part, but also the why4.

I'll contrast wikipedia with our site in a future post and then we can move on to more detailed design.

Editing the Home Page

2007-05-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try something new beginning with this post. I'm going to start making CamStudio movies of the changes I make to our TikiWiki site, how2why4.com. I will post the movies to youtube.com and reference them on the how2why4.com site. I'll even post a video about how to post a video.

The first video will be about how to edit the home page. You can find the video at

http://how2why4.com/tiki-index.php?page=Editing+the+Home+Page.

The next video, shows how to add a video.

I made the video using CamStudio (see sourceforge.org) using the .avi format. Then I uploaded to youtube.com. There's a little spot on youtube.com where it gives you a funky, yet unique, name for your video. Copy that into the following and put it on the wiki page for the red colored text:

{FLASH(movie=http://www.youtube.com/v/ggSdKBcMSBQ,
width=>425,height=>350,quality=>high)/}

See the result at http://how2why4.com/tiki-index.php?page=Adding+a+youtube.com+video

Then
Let me know what you think.

King and Kingmaker

2007-05-09T19:56:00.000-07:00

Content is king. That is a mantra of the entertainment business.

In Web2.0, content is still king, but users are the king maker.

There are at least two types of users we need for how2why4.com, contributors and consumers. If the stories told around the web2.0 campfire can be believed, the bulk of wikipedia.org was built by about 1000 users. That's out of what I estimate to be 100's of millions of users or about 1/1000% of the total community.

In spite of these wild differences in the size of the two groups, contributors are essential to the success of the site, for without them, no content. And no content, means no consumers, at least after the first visit.

How do you get contributors? I'm going to explore that option in real life, and I have a few theories about motivation.

Some people, like me, need only the adoration of others. We like to show off how smart we are and get others to take notice. It's ok if you disagree about the smart part, too, because if you don't that just shows you're not as smart as you think *grins*.

Others of us are motivated by contests. Maybe if I gave away an ipod in a random drawing to one of the first 100 contributors, or maybe the highest ranking contribution. I don't like this option because I have to get an ipod from somewhere and I don't want to use my money.

Still others are enticed by the idea of money. I think that's a pretty powerful motivator. Going back to the previous paragraph, I don't like it when it's my money, so how do I get others money to give away? I would like to explore this option more. Especially if I get to keep a little on every transaction. Any ideas?

For now, I'm going to appeal to the vanity of all potential contributors, and set up a site where they can get praised to their hearts' content.

Changing the look

2007-05-09T04:34:00.000-07:00

We have our site up, but it looks rather plain.

Tikiwiki allows for different themes. There are a large number of built-in themes accessible through the admin interface. For how2why4.com, we'll use one of the built-in themes. Login as admin and select the admin interface.

Select "general" from the list of icons. We'll be back many times to this page as we load other features.

You can browse through the themes, but for how2why4.com, we'll select the white-blue-grey theme. It's got pleasing colors, good contrast, and a nice layout.

And click the change button.

The resulting interface makes the home page look like the following:

Users may also change the theme for themselves without changing the main theme. Other themes are also available at themes.tikiwiki.org

We still need to get some content on here with pictures. We'll do that in the next post.

Please refer to the family of tikiwiki help sites at tikiwiki.org

Going with a simple security model

2007-05-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

For any site, there's a balance between total openness and its possible chaos to total restriction and the possibility of no users.

Tikiwiki allows a rich permissions model that we'll use as we enable each feature. For now, let's just deal with how we allow people to register for the site, balancing openness and restriction. We'll reuse the existing user classes of "unregistered" and "registered". As we'll see, we can give basic reading permissions to "unregistered" and then greater permissions to the "registered", such as create and edit wiki pages, leave comments, etc.

The first place to stop is "admin home" and then "login".

You'll see the following form:

Clcik on the highlighted items. First, you want to let users register. Next, you want to prevent spam bots from registering. This option forces an anti-bot code to be entered. Finally, check the "validate users by email" to capture an email address. Not only will this help prevent spam, but it's handy for the users when they forget passwords or you need to communicate with them.

After checking these boxes, drop down to the bottom of the form and save your settings.

That's all you need to do to setup a reasonable registration model. Users who register will then be in the "registered" group (go figure, huh?). As you add features, such as blogging, forums, and wiki pages, you can grant permissions to the registered users.

As a warning, this is no "field of dreams" and even though you have built it, it's no guarantee that anyone will come to register. We'll have to deal with website advertising in a future blog. For now, get your friends and coworkers to use your site.

In the next post, we'll deal with deal with attractiveness. At this point, we have only a plain home page.

High-level site design - Decide before you configure

2007-05-06T20:31:00.000-07:00

Tikiwiki has a very high number of configuration possibilities. This flexibility is at once attractive and also daunting. The purpose of this blog is not to explain all the options, but to work through a single design, showing how choices are made to support the design. As we go along, comments and questions will help to direct us to the critical deicisions and clarifications.

Design is what saves us from a total melt-down. What do we want this site to do?

The overiding purpose of the site is to provide a collaborative environment to create useful how-to knowledge. Breaking that down, we need tools for collaboration and tools for capturing and sharing knowledge. Background requirements are the same as those that any site needs: an attractive, easy-to-use design, with clear information that invites and keeps a community.

In the old days, a lot of Q&A of potential users would occur to make sure that we design exactly what the users want, the equivalent of laying out the sidewalks in advance. In these, *ahem*, modern times, we're going to plant grass. Then we'll wait to see where users walk, and then, instead of putting in the sidewalks, we're going to hand them a pile of bricks and tell them to build their own sidewalks. Then we give them concrete, and flagstones, too.

If that metaphor confused you, here's what I mean. As long as we give our users tools that are easy to use for collaborating and for building knowledge structures, and possibly some help with using the tools, they should be able to build what they need organically. As long as they don't say, "Who wants to walk there anyway?" You have to give them enough value to stay and build the sidewalks, and the stairs, and the walls, and the ... you get the idea.

What tools are we talking about? Going back to the list we used to select tikiwiki, they're the following:

and Tikiwiki has some others that we'll explore as we go along.

As you explore a new piece of software, it's a good idea to break it down to pieces of activities you can do piecewise, rather than try everything at once. One reason is because it makes it easier for you to learn, and it helps you isolate problems when things don't work the way you think they should. We'll tackle the task in the following way:

User security model
General attractiveness
Wiki pages
Forums
Blogging
Social networking

After configuring these options, we'll take stock and see where to go next.

Installing TikiWIki

2007-05-06T19:49:00.001-07:00

Using siteground.com, it's not too tough to install tikiwiki. Once you have your domain name set up, you have access to your cpanel. Cpanel is a utility that allows you to manage your site without knowing unix or programming. To find cpanel, login, and click as shown below.

You'll see the following options. Click on cpanel and login.

When CPanel comes up, ignore most of it for now. Click on Fantastico at the bottom.

Fantastico is a installer. You'll use it to install tikiwiki. Once fantastico comes up, click on tikiwiki.

Then, select new installation. Notice that tikiwiki has been installed on karateforge.com. This same tool is used for future upgrades.

Choose your domain to install. In this case, the one we are building, how2why4.com. Then click install. Notice that the administrator login is set as admin with password admin.

If all goes well, you'll see something similar to the following, and can click "finish".

The next item of business, after fantastico installation, and you should do it right away, is to change your admin password before someone else does. Go to the site how2why4.com and login:

Use the admin login and admin password. The system will force you to change the password as follows.

Tikiwiki is installed and you're set up as the administrator.

Now, to tell the whole truth, I actually had a little trouble. I am installing not my first domain, but one of several on my account. I purchased the domain name how2why4.com for $14.95, but I forgot to purchase a domain slot. So, I set up a subdomain, when I should have set up an addon domain. I could get to the site by a more complicated path than the domain name, but I couldn't get to the domain name itself. This frustrated me.

If you've followed the path, you know that I got the problem resolved. It's not unusual to have some problems. What's unusual in my experience, is the level of support I got from the help desk at siteground. Once I filed a trouble ticket, they turned it around in a matter of no more than 3 minutes. They explained to me what I did without calling me names, and I got it fixed.

In the next post, we'll talk about what we want to do with the site, so we have an idea about what configuration options to choose.

Choosing a Wiki for Web 2.0

2007-05-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

The essence of web 2.0 is for your visitors to contribute their own content. The appeal of this from a website's owner is that:

It makes for a richer user experience
It relieves you of the responsibility for all the content
By working together, people accomplish amazing things

Some of the hallmarks of a web 2.0 site are:

So we're looking for a system that can support these features.

When I first got started, all I wanted was to be able to create a wiki. I thought wikipedia was pretty neat and I love creating knowledge, so I thought, "why not use mediawiki?" MediaWiki is the software behind wikipedia. I was ecstatic to find that siteground offered installation with their package and I was very tempted. But I noticed that there were other options, including PHPWiki and TikiWiki. There was some description on siteground that lead me to investigate more.

I came circuitously to a comparison page on wikipedia which showed me many more wiki software options. I also came to the feature page of tikiwiki, which opened my eyes to the other options outside of just wiki pages that I would need to accomplish the site I wanted to create. I was also led to the open source community, sourceforge (which inspired the name of my site KarateForge.com). These pages led me to create the feature list above, to which I added the following requirements:

Must be free (very important);
Must be easy to administer;
Must install easily on my hosting service;
Must be seamless among the modules;
Must be supported by a large enough community to protect the investment of my time, and to help me when I got stuck.

I won't take you through all the evaluations. I signed up for wikipedia, made some changes. I actually installed mediawiki myself, which is not straight-forward, and also found it a learning experience everytime I wanted to administer something. I read blogs, and I installed tikiwiki, too.

The upshot is, tikiwiki had

All the features that I needed and more;
It was free;
The modules are all built-in and maintained for each release - so nothing breaks when you upgrade. So far I've upgraded several times from 1.9.4 to 1.9.7 without a problem;
It was much easier to administer than mediawiki;
It installed easily on siteground;
It had a large developer base of about 350 contributors and is actively supported;
The community, especially the mailing list on sourceforge.org, has been very helpful.

I installed and began using tikiwiki.

My next post will talk about the installation experience for our new site, how2why4.com.

Creating a new web 2.0 site: choosing a domain name

2007-05-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

I decided on a new site for building "how to" and "why for" information for do it yourselfers. I wanted a cool name for the site that also is descriptive and easy to remember. The hard part isn't really coming up with a name, it's coming up with a name that's available. I went back to siteground.com:

I typed in h2y4. That came back as unavailable.

I went to that site, just out of curiosity. I'm not sure what's going on there - some sort of personal family site.

I still liked the idea of the name, so I thought a bit and typed how2why4 into the box and pushed purchase. It came back as available, so I put in my credit card information.

Domain name is the official name for a site name. Wikipedia.org has an article on domain name that probably tells you more than you want to know, but also fills in the blanks.

I then got the following thank you note, directing me to wait for an email up to one hour for the account to be created.

I waited (about 5 minutes), and the email came. It directed me to siteground.com and my pre-existing login. If you're new to siteground, you'll also have to create an account.

[Warning: sharp turn ahead]

I went in and created a subdomain for my existing account using cpanel.

WTH, you might be saying right now, I thought we were starting from scratch. Well, I can't really, without creating a new siteground account. So here's what I need you to do. Try it, and document your experiences for the rest of us. I'm not talking about the whole experience of creating a site. Try creating a new domain name through site ground, including account creation, and send me an email at gedanzuki@comcast.net documenting your experience. Our you can post to the comments. I will publish IMHO the best one as a guest blog, if you want, and include it on how2why4.com.

This is web 2.0, after all. We'll create a place on how2why4.com for the experiences to be documented.

While we're waiting for the site to be spread to all the DNS services, I'll write the next post about why and how I chose to go with tikiwiki.

Subsequent posts will deal with site creation and installation of tikiwiki.

PS: I really want this to be an instance of web 2.0. For more information on what that is vs. the Web, see the wikipedia article, as a starting point.

Selecting a web service

2007-05-06T04:41:00.000-07:00

December 2006 - before how2why4.com

My first task in creating a website was to find a service. I'd been on a plane to Chicago that diverted to Houston, so I bought a copy of Wired magazine and was looking through the ads in the back. One ad for a hosting service jumped out at me because of the price and features.

This service was siteground.com. I liked it, because at this time I was trying to learn without spending a lot of money, and because it had great features I was looking for. I want to say emphatically, I have no relationship with site ground except that I'm a happy customer of their service.

Here're some of the considerations that caught my eye, and why:

FREE Domain - they help you find a domain name for your site. Isn't that how we all start? If I just pick the right name...
250 GB Web space - I knew I would need lots of space since I was going to be successful. At the time, it was 40GB, now its 250. So far, I'm not even close to using 40GB with multiple websites - more about that when we talk about managing your site.
2500 GB Traffic - thought we just talked about GB, so what's up with this? Oh, yeah, this is monthly traffic - and since I'm doing videos to lots of people, yeah, this sounds good.
99.9% Server Uptime - I know this is important - websites are like parachutes, if they fail the first time someone tries them, they don't come back. I have to say, there have been very brief moments where my site hasn't worked, but just pushing "refresh" always brings it back up. I think that's 99.99, actually.
24/7 Top Customer Care - I've had great support - and even with a computer science background, it can be confusing. These folks are good.
CPanel and Fantastico - frankly, I didn't know what this stuff was and didn't care that much. I care now. It's good. I don't have to know unix to manage my site. And I was to meet both, again, very soon.
Immediate Activation - no lie.
Mediawiki installation, tutorial, servers, etc. - I had just read Wikinomics and was all juiced to start making lots of friends, build a collaborative website, and hopefully some side money. I even wanted my kids to help. That last part was just fantasy. Zing. I played around with mediawiki, but ultimately chose a different engine, also supported by siteground.com - tikiwiki. More on that later.

So you want to build web 2.0 website...how2why4.com

2007-05-06T04:26:00.000-07:00

I have this problem. I have a compulsion to share cool things with others. Now, as it happens, the web feeds this compulsion. My compulsion since Christmas 2006 has been to create a successful website that incorporates wiki technology. Why wiki? In the spirit of Christmas, it's nice to share.

Over the holiday break, I deliberately set out to teach myself how to create, manage, and drive traffic to a useful website, and ultimately create a site of high value to its fans. It's not enough to create a website - people have to visit it.

Please share your comments with me as I describe my past and ongoing experiences in learning about websites, web 2.0, wikis, tikiwiki, blogs, webrings, php, mysql, cpanel, youtube, webstats, email systems, RSS, public licenses, podcasting, open source, and all such related things.

Why am I doing this? I used to teach programming, databases, educational technology, and GIS. I miss teaching and conversations with others on topics like this. Please help.

How can I help? Participate in building a new site with me! Let's build a site called how2why4.com. This will be a site to answer how to do something and why for (pardon the grammer) you would want to do it. It's already in progress, so check it out!

~ Gedan