The Quick & Dirty Guide to Personal Wikis

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Personal wikis were a big fad for productivity geeks for a while, just that seems to have toned downwardly a lot through 2008. Wikis are still incredibly useful, and tin can make you more than productive. You can think of a personal wiki like a bit of a take hold of-all binder.

Whether yous want to manage personal data, apply information technology every bit a freelance web-worker, or to manage your corporate work, this article volition introduce you to a few of the options out there and kickstart y'all with some ideas for getting productive using your wiki.

Personal Wikis Y'all Can Use

This is by no means a comprehensive list, and then if you lot have a favorite wiki, let united states know about in the comments section. Here are a few of the popular options. I've listed some web-hosted, self-hosted and cross-platform wikis. There are enough of cracking desktop apps for each major platform, but we'll discuss them in another article.

Luminotes is a personal wiki with both complimentary and paid options. The free option allows ane user account on your wiki and provides 30mb of storage infinite. It's WYSIWYG, so no demand to learn a whole new markup language.

Wikispaces offers free public wikis, and private wikis that toll between $5 and $20 a month. For a personal wiki, you'll usually want private, but $5 is pretty cheap.

@Wiki is completely free and offers WYSIWYG, file importing and multiple authors. If you're going beyond the traditional personal wiki and using it for team organisation, @Wiki allows yous to monitor your wiki through RSS feeds.

Wikihost is some other complimentary service that provides private and public wiki options.

TiddlyWiki is pretty unique in the field of wikis and if you want simple and minimal, this is the ane for yous. Your TiddlyWiki wiki will consist of i page, where you suspend entries and notes. Information technology has a skillful search feature for wading through the page and finding the correct info as your "wiki" gets longer.

Wikidot is another free wiki option. It's unique characteristic is AdSense integration, but since clicking on your ain ads is against Google's policies, this isn't likely to aid you much. ;)

MediaWiki—if you lot've got the know-how to get the software that Wikipedia uses running on your calculator and the patience to customize information technology, this may be a good one for you. You lot'll need to have a PHP/MySQL server running on your estimator, or if you want to use it in multiple locations, on your hosting business relationship.

Getting to Know Wiki Markup

Many of the options provided come with WYSIWYG editors, simply others don't. For instance, if you prepare a MediaWiki installation on your local server, you'll find yourself without one (I believe in that location are plug-ins that'll add together it, though). WYSIWYG or not, getting to know wiki markup is handy, even if it's just to troubleshoot pages that just won't behave.

Fortunately, Wikipedia has an extensive and comprehensive guide on the subject field. You lot'll want to pay attending to how links are done—internal (inter-wiki) and external links are ii different monsters.

Note that not all wikis use the same markup language and you'll have to see what your selected service is using. It's a hurting to learn a whole bunch of markup languages for the one purpose, so choose advisedly then invest the time in just one. Using a organisation that adopts the MediaWiki markup linguistic communication is a good move, since information technology's the one y'all're most likely to need if other people invite y'all to participate in their own wikis. Honestly, I wish wikis had simply used HTML and perhaps added some actress tags for wiki specific features, but you get what you're given. Unless yous're a developer.

Got I! At present What?

Now you've got your wiki, what can you lot exercise with information technology? There are all sorts of possibilities.

Empty your head—use your wiki to empty your head of thoughts and get them downwards then y'all don't need to worry nigh them. Insomniac? Try this! This is likewise a core principle of GTD, so if you're unhappy with your current method, this could work for you.

Note-taking—Evernote likewise much for you? Irreverence! Only kidding—a personal wiki tin exist a great note-taking app, whether it's for ideas throughout the day, meetings, or lectures.

Personal Knowledgebase—keep forgetting how that fancy tin can-opener works? Write the method down in your wiki (no kidding, I one time had a tin-opener that I kept forgetting how to use). What nearly moving business firm? There are a million and one things that need doing then—to the lowest degree of which is the countless list of companies and organizations you demand to inform that you've changed your accost. Get that list completed in your wiki and you tin check it off adjacent time yous movement.

Writer'south Desk—I know a freelance writer who used a wiki as a discussion processor and client tracker in Internet cafes until she could beget a computer of her ain. Unusual, merely effective!

Customer managing director—every bit I mentioned, my friend didn't only apply the wiki as a word processor, but to go on notes on clients. Go on your client contact details, invoicing dates, project details and past work in a wiki for like shooting fish in a barrel reference.

Articulation projects—work on documents collaboratively with colleagues, or a freelancer yous've teamed up with. It's non the best collaborative word processor always, but it'll get the job done.

Project Management—got a large project from a client or your employer to program out and execute? Mayhap you're planning a wedding ceremony and need someplace to continue track of all the annoying details and headaches involved (I wish I'd thought of this for my own!). Wikis can exist highly effective project managers.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/the-quick-dirty-guide-to-personal-wikis.html

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