Wetpaint Wikis (2): Adding Stuff to Your Wiki

When a person creates his or her own personal Wiki, be it for personal or for work use (for example, having a classroom wiki so that both students and parents will be able to access their work from anywhere), it is important to start updating it regularly and keep it interesting for the site visitors. A Wiki can be seen as a sort of template which can be filled up collaboratively; it is alive and dynamic and ever-changing. Unlike a Blog, a Wiki can have several pages, and each page can have its own individual layout. Usually the first page is called 'Home'; that is where you write your introduction - the scope of your Wiki - and then you can have a series of pages linking to that home page.

But before we start talking about editing, a more important question arises: that is, Who is going to be responsible for the edits? Just because you have created a wiki, it doesn't automatically follow that everyone in the world will be able to view or edit it. Public wikis exist of course - the most common example is Wikipedia, which everyone can edit. We, as teachers, deal mostly with young learners, and safety online is often a huge concern of ours. You may want to have a Wiki which everyone can see and join in, but which only yourself and your students (or those whom you invite) can do the edits. You may wish to moderate discussions. Either way, the first thing to do after you create your wiki is to think about Permissions.


Site Settings

Before you start editing, it is important to take a look at your Site Settings. Click on Settings at the top right hand corner of the screen to access your wiki settings. We will go through them one by one in the order in which they appear.

• Communications: This is where you set your site greetings, messages and notifications. You can also set a profile template for your members to fill in.


• Templates: This is where the different page templates are. These are similar to MS Word or Powerpoint templates, and you can even customise your own.


• Name and Logo: Change your site name (logo) and description.


• Styles: Change appearance or site theme from here - you can choose from a selection of styles to suit the mood of your wiki.


• Statistics: You may opt to have an analytics widget installed, such as Google Analytics or SiteMeter. These help to keep track of who visits your site.


• Permissions: Although this is the tab before the last, its one great importance - for this is where you can manage who can view and/or edit your wiki. There are 3 levels of security regarding who will be or not be able to edit your site:
  Everyone, even anonymously - basically your wiki will be open to all, and everyone will be able to post, reply to discussions, comments, etc.
  Anyone who joins your site: There are no anonymous edits allowed, but anyone who joins the site can edit or add pages on your site.
  Only people I invite: There are no anonymous edits allowed, but anyone who joins the site can edit or add pages on your site.There are separate settings for posts and threads. The level of security you use will be determined by what you want to use your wiki for.


• Backups: Wetpaint allows you to back up the contents of this site by exporting the pages as HTML into a zip file.This process may take a while, especially if this site is large. Backups are important especially if you are writing your information directly onto your Wiki and not, for example typing first into a word processor and then copy and paste your text. REMEMBER: A Wiki is a cloud computing application, and therefore, all the information is stored on servers several hundred miles away from your home. If something happens to that server and you haven't backed up your work, all your data will inevitably be lost - so BACK UP regularly!

Adding Pages

After taking care of the settings, you can start adding pages to your wiki. On the left hand side of your screen you should see the navigation menu. If you haven't added any pages yet, there will be your Home page at the top. Click on Add a new page to have additional pages. You may choose from pre-defined pages (rather like we choose content layout slides in Powerpoint: You can have blank pages, calendar-of-events type of pages, etc. Remember to give a suitable name to your page - short and self-explanatory. Once added, pages can be changed or deleted by clicking on More Tools on the Edit Toolbar.

The Edit Toolbar

As the name suggests, the Edit Toolbar is the place where you will be doing all the editing. After inserting your pages, click on the page you wish to start editing and click on Easy Edit. The Easy Edit Toolbar will pop up, and you can start editing your page by simply clicking on it. You will notice all the familiar icons: Bold, Italics, Underline, Font Name, Spellcheck, etc. Apart from text, your page may contain Photos, Videos, Widgets and/or Content Modules.

Photos and Videos

Click anywhere in your page (whilst in Easy Edit mode) to insert a photo or video. Photos are pretty straight-forward. In the case of videos, you may opt either to upload a video from your PC or else one which resides on a remote server, such as YouTube or Google Video. In the case of YouTube/Google, all you have to do is click on the Video icon, and then on Add by URL OR Embed. Copy the video's Embed Code from the source and click on Add YouTube Video. Once you add your video or picture, you will be able to adjust its size and orientation. In the case of videos, you will only be able to play them when you exit Easy Edit mode.The photos and videos you upload will also be visible in the Photos and Videos pages (accessible from the top menu bar.) The Photos and Videos pages also offer the opportunity to create photo and video albums.You may also opt to add other widgets or videos from other sites other than YouTube or Google - but this, together with the Content Modules, will be dealt with in the next post :)

Now...What Next?

Well, creating your very own Wiki of course! You have more than enough to get you started with your wiki project. You can also access one of my previous posts, an Introduction to Wetpaint Wikis, at http://teachersandcomputers.blogspot.com/2010/04/introducing-wikis-wetpaint-part-1.html, to refresh you memory. Log onto http://wetpaintcentral.com/ to start off. Have fun :)

Introducing Wikis: Wetpaint (Part 1)

Until not very long ago, if a person or an organisation wanted to create a webpage or website, they generally asked someone else to do it - someone with the knowledge required to create and upload it. One needed to know how to use web-authoring software, perhaps a bit of programming and most importantly, one needed the physical online space to upload a website. This was in the era before we started to talk about Web 2.0 and cloud applications, of which Blogs and Wikis are a prime example.

A blog - or Web-log - is on online diary where people post diary entries about their personal experiences or talk about things that interest them. Blogs became popular because of the ease with which people could upload their posts - usually requiring little more than simple word-processing and e-mailing skills (typing, uploading of photos, attaching files). Popular blog hosting websites include Google's Blogger and Wordpress. Below is a short video which explains in simple layman's terms what a blog is all about:

Another popular and relatively easy way of publishing online material is through the use of Wikis. A Wiki is similar to a Blog in terms of accessability and usability, however it encompasses much, much more. For starters, whilst Blogs are usually made up of one 'page', where a person uploads his or her own personal 'diary' (with the posts appearing one after the other in chronological order), Wikis are usually more complex and are made up of many pages and sub-pages. Furthermore, Blogs are inteded to be used as online diaries, usually maintained by one or a very selective group of people. On the other hand, Wikis are not inteded to be led by just one individual; they have a much greater emphais on collaboration and are regarded as a social interaction and networking tool. The popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia is a prime example of a Wiki in practice: thousands of collaborators from all over the world have joined the site and collaborate regularly on articles to create this vast web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project. Perhaps two of the most popular Wiki sites (especially with Educators) are Wikispaces and Wetpaint. Both sites provide free, online hosting and allow users to create simple websites in a matter of minutes. Today I am going to take a look at the basic features of Wetpaint Wikis: below is a short video which gives an overview of what can be done with it:

Wetpaint: Creating an Account

Like with any other online service, the first thing to do is create an account: go to http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/, click on the large green GO! icon and sign up (if its the first time you access the site) or Sign In if you already have an account. You can also opt to sign in with your Facebook, Twitter or Live account. Once your Wetpaint account is activated, you will be able to register and sign in not only on your own Wiki (which you can create from Wetpaint homepage) but also sign in to other public or private wikis (one to which you have been invited to). After creating your username or signing in, all you have to do to create your wiki is go to Wetpaint Homepage (http://wetpaint.com), enter a site name on Name Your Site, enter your chosen URL on Choose URL, and you are ready to create your own website in minutes.

Basic Features and Navigation

Upon loading, your Wetpaint site should look something like this:

You will notice your Site Name on the header on top; and a list of menus at the bottom of this header. This is where you can make changes to your wiki. Below is a list of the menus and what they do:

• Home: This will take you back to your Home page (easy!) To add additional pages to your wiki, you must click on Add a new page on the top left hand side sidebar.
• Discussions: This is where you post, reply to and follow discussion. To start a new discussion - Post Thread.
• Photos and Videos: This is where you can upload photos and videos. Also, any videos or photos uploaded anywhere on the site will be available for viewing here as well. Photos can be grouped intogalleries; videos into Collections.
• Updates: A summary of all the updates performed and by whom. Very very useful when doing a collborative job!
• To-dos: Quite simply, a to-do list required for the page. If you want someone to do a particular edit, make sure to post a to-do on the page.
• Droplets: These are basically widgets that you can add to your favourite social networking site or aggregator, so that you will be able to follow your wiki's updates more easily.
• Members: A summary of the members of the wiki, with a list of page edits performed as well. By clicking on he member's names you can add them as friends and send them private messages.
• My Profile: Change your profile details, view messages, compliments, manage your account.
• Promote: Get tips on how to improve traffic on your site
• Settings: Last, but most certainly not least, this is the place to change your site settings: from layouts, to templetes, to privacy settings and who can access and edit your site.

Inviting Collaborators

The Scope of having a Wiki is not to build it yourself, but to have collaborators who together work to create a common website. At a basic level, one can have three types of Wikis: A wiki which everyone can edit, even unonimously (100% public); a wiki which only members can edit; or a 100% private wiki, which members may only join by private invitation from an administrator. In the case of private wikis, there is also the added advantage of it being relatively ad-free. Unfortunately at the time of writing this post, the invitation feature for private sites is temporaly disabled; therefore to invite people to join your site, temporarily put the site as "public", share the site's URL with your collaborators, and ask them to click on the Sign Up icon at the top right hand corner of the screen. As soon as everyone has joined, the administrator can put the site back on Private.

In this first part we have only just touched on the basic features of Wetpaint WIkis: What they are, how to create them, and how to invite collaborators. The second part will include more information on how to build up your wiki by adding pages and widgets. Stay tuned :)

Sites to remember:

Blogger: http://www.blogger.com

Wordpress: http://wordpress.com

Wikispaces: http://www.wikispaces.com/

Wetpaint: http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/