Free wiki hosting

Wikis are great ways to structure knowledge together with other people. Wiki means fast in Hawaiian, which is for a reason. I've written a little overview of free wiki software, now it's time for free wiki hosting. Unfortunately spammers have also found ways to use wikis, mainly for black hat SEO linkbuilding purposes. This makes it pretty hard to keep a community wiki running.

mwzip.com

mwzip.com: Free Wiki Hosting, Simple managed hosting for wikis large and small. Powered by MediaWiki for pure awesomeness.
They're hosting for example the Marxistpedia. There are no ads.

Wikia

Wikia is by far the biggest, it was founded by the founder of Wikipedia. Naturally it's running MediaWiki. It's also quite full of advertising. The plus side is that you can download database dumps which would make it easy to set up shop elsewhere, which is exactly what happened with Hitchwiki (although Wikia insisted on keeping the old content and trying to retain editors).

Wikidot

Wikidot is an interesting option. They let you earn some of the advertising dollars.

Localwiki.org

Localwiki is a great project, a non profit 501(c)(3), started by the folks who started the very successful DavisWiki. The idea is to help local communities through wikis. So if you want to run a local community wiki this could be a great place for you. Unfortunately the platform offered is not based on MediaWiki.

Wiki.yt

Wiki.yt is a project by author. Cool wikis are welcome for free hosting. Less cool wikis can pay. Also available for MediaWiki consulting services.

Wiki.yt is hosting nice wikis such as Couchwiki, for hospitality exchange, Trashwiki for dumpster diving and Veganwiki about veganism.

Cheap MediaWiki hosting

It's also possible to keep full control over your wiki by setting up an installation with hosting providers. The following offer convenient ways of installing MediaWiki:

  • Dreamhost offers one-click MediaWiki installation through the admin panel, starting from 8.95 US$ per month.
  • Bluehost is another good shared hosting company, also with convenient MediaWiki installation and slightly cheaper, especially if you pay ahead for 3 years.

More information

  • Wikipedia has an extended overview of wiki hosting services.

Read more about:

Free wiki software

Hardly anyone who surfs the internet has not seen Wikipedia. Still many people are unaware of the etymology of the name. The term wiki was actually coined by Ward Cunningham in 1995 when he wanted to create a website for common programming patterns. He chose the word "wiki" which means fast in Hawaiian, a dying language. Ward's wiki was a big success and is still used today. Six years later Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia, which was actually a side project of Nupedia, which was supposed to be a serious encyclopedia written by professors and PhDs.

Caught by money

Money. We need it. We think. We grow up and it seems as if we cannot function without money. Because there's always money. Money is needed to live, to have a place, to eat, to travel. It seems as if we even need it to breathe. Is that really so?

Moneyless world

A moneyless world

A moneyless society is a very utopian idea. Nevertheless human beings were living in a world without money at some point in the past. According to Wikipedia money emerged already around 12,000 BC. Though the first coins have been created quite a bit later.