Are you looking to create a wiki website for your topic of interest, game or community?
Are you looking to move from Mediawiki, Mediawiki templates, mediawiki skins, and Mediawiki extensions to WordPress’ incredible ecosystem of themes and plugins to create a wiki website?
Do you want to document all the information about your products? Are you looking for a system in place to answer all your customer’s questions so that you could reduce your support tickets?
Do you want to build a platform for your internal team to access all the necessary information about the work in a single place? Do you want a collaborative platform for your team to work? Do you want to create and store information on your niche and want multiple authors or users to add content?
Well, can you believe me if I say the solution for all the above needs is the same? Yes, creating a Wiki website satisfies all of the above concerns effortlessly and quickly.
So, How do I create a Wiki website? Do I need to be a good programmer to create a Wiki site? Not at all. Using WordPress which is a Content Management System (more on it here: What is WordPress ), you can create your own wiki site with zero programming knowledge.
So, what next? Do I need to learn WordPress now to create a Wiki Site?
Well, I don’t have time for all of this, better I hire a freelancer and pay him to build it.
If that’s what you have been thinking, please throw that thought away and not waste your money. Why? We have done that job for you.
In this article, we will see “How to create a Wiki site using WordPress with zero knowledge on programming or WordPress”. Just follow the steps below, and you will be right on the spot for creating a robust wiki site on your own.
Six simple steps to create your own Wiki site using WordPress:
- Set up a hosting account and get a domain name for your website
- Install WordPress
- Download and install Helpie Kb Wiki Plugin
- Add a Wiki page and set up a Wiki Home Page
- Collaborating users by allowing them to add and edit the Wiki from Front-end
- Make navigation simple and restrict access of certain content to certain users
We have written a brief article on : How to set up a hosting account, getting a domain name for your site and Installing WordPress. Kindly check this article which will get you all done in 10 mins.
So now, let’s not waste time and jump into the next important step which is to download and install a Wiki Plugin.
3. Download and Install a Wiki Plugin:
In WordPress there are software know as ‘Plugins’ which gives specific features to your WordPress website.
The easiest way to create a WordPress wiki website is to use a WordPress wiki plugin. There are several plugins available, but we recommend Helpie Kb Wiki plugin. The reason we recommend Helpie for wiki is that it’s the only plugin which has all the wiki features together in a single plugin while every other plugin offers only specific features. Helpie is the full Wiki package which contains everything needed to create a Wiki site. Let’s go ahead to learn how to download and install the Helpie Wiki Plugin.
See Helpie WordPress Wiki features
Downloading the plugin:
Enough said on that, let’s dive into downloading the plugin. Just go to www.helpiewp.com. In this website, you can find the features of the plugin and see the different demos created using Helpie. You can also try your own demo for free by just clicking the “Try it now button” which you can see while scrolling down.
Now to purchase the plugin, you will see three license plans, near the Download Now button. Choose the plan of your choice. If you are planning to create more than one wiki go for 5-site or Multi-site license.
You can also find an elaborate pricing plans on the same page like in the image shown here. Just click ‘Buy Now’ button of your preferred plan, and it will take you to the checkout page. Give all the payment details and buy the plugin. After the purchase you will receive an email through which you can download the Helpie Wiki Plugin. Download the zip file and use it for installation.
Installing and Activating the plugin:
To install the plugin, you need to go to the backend or the admin area of your WordPress website. To access the backend, type your website URL and type “/wp-admin.” For example “www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin.” You would have been asked to give a username and password to go to the admin area while installing the WordPress. Just provide the details here, and you would have entered the admin area.
In the admin area, you will see an option called Dashboard in the left corner. Under Dashboard -> Plugins -> Add New. Inside this page, you will have an option to upload the plugin. You need to upload the helpie.zip file which was inside the Main files folder here. Once uploaded, click the Install Now button and click the Activate Plugin button.
So now, the plugin has been installed and activated. Let’s go ahead and create articles and set up a Wiki Page.
4. Add a Wiki page and set up a Wiki Home Page:
Adding a wiki page:
Once the plugin is activated, you can see a new Helpie KB Wiki column on your dashboard (Admin area). Under Helpie Kb Wiki select Add New Article button.
Note: If you could not see the “Add New Article” button, just hard refresh it once (Cmd+Shift+R) or (Ctrl+R).
After refreshing, you will find the “Add New Article” button now. Select it to enter your first article. Add the title in the Title space and fill the content in the content space. Now if you want to assign this article to a particular topic or a category, select the “Add New Wiki Category” which you can see in the right corner. You can add a new topic/category there, and once that category is selected, this article will be assigned to that topic.
You can also add subtopics by creating a category and assigning it a parent category. By assigning that, this will be now a subcategory of that parent category/topic. You can also add a tag for that article.
Once you have created an article and assigned it to a specific category and tags, you can now view your article, click the publish button which you can see in the right corner. Once you hit the publish button, you will get a notification that the post is published and an option to view the post at the top of the article. Just click the “View post” button to see the wiki article.
Setting up a wiki homepage:
In that way, you can set up different Wiki and assign it to its particular topic. Do you want to arrange this all and set it up in a single place? Gathering every information and organizing it may be a hectic job. But Helpie does this automatically by collecting and organizing every wiki according to its topics in a single main page.
How do I view the Main page?
Now there are a couple of ways to do it.
- First, you can view it in Main page settings. Dashboard -> Helpie Kb Wiki -> Helpie settings -> Main page -> Visit Main Page (Under “Where is my main page”).
- The second way is to navigate via breadcrumbs. Just go to the Dashboard -> Helpie kb Wiki -> All articles. Inside that, you can see all your wiki created there. Just hover towards a particular article and click view. You will be taken to the wiki. If you have enabled the breadcrumbs, you can navigate to the main page by clicking on the link in the Breadcrumbs. To enable breadcrumbs, go to Helpie KB Wiki -> Helpie settings -> Components -> enable breadcrumbs.
These are the two ways you can access the Wiki Main Page. You can also customize this page by using the Main Page settings and Design settings under Helpie settings. Please check these articles to know more about it: Main Page settings and Design.
5. Collaborating Users:
Now, the Wiki is set up perfectly. So, now do you want to collaborate by allowing users to add or edit the wiki but you still don’t want them to access your admin area? Again, Helpie makes it simple by allowing users to do it from the Front-end without the need to access the backend.
Helpie has a powerful front-end editor which allows users to add content from the front-end.
How do I enable front-end editing?
Just go to the Dashboard -> Helpie KB Wiki -> Helpie settings -> Front-end editor. Here you will see an option to enable Front-end editing. Just enable it.
Once enabled, you will see an option in the top right corner of your wiki main page to add an article from the front-end itself. You will also have an option to edit the existing wiki page. In that way, you can allow users to work on your wiki collaboratively.
But what if I do not want anyone to access my wiki but only specific users who I allow?
What If I want them to edit but not to publish directly? What if I want the wiki to be approved first before getting published? Nothing is impossible with this powerful Helpie plugin.
Helpie has made this complicated process very simple using our dynamic capabilities feature. Helpie has three different capabilities: One is to edit, the other is to publish, and the final one is to approve.
Please check this article to know completely on how the Dynamic capabilities work.
6. Making navigation simple and restricting specific content to specific users:
Well, how do I navigate to an article directly without the need for searching in a thousand list of articles?
Helpie comes up with a robust search feature and also an excellent Table of contents that lets you navigate to any particular article with just a click.
You can set this TOC on any page as you wish, let that be on your Wiki Main page or on the single page of the article. It has more powerful customization options. If you want to know more about it, you can see it here: Table of Contents.
Access Restriction:
If you want to restrict access to your specific content from specific users to view it, you can very well do it by the “Access Restriction control” feature available in Helpie.
Say if you want to hide a particular topic from a particular user. You first need to add that user in Dashboard -> Users -> Add new user.
Then go to Dashboard -> Helpie Kb Wiki -> Helpie settings -> Dynamic capabilities. You will see the option “Can_view”. Under that, you can let anyone to view the content or set only the logged in users to view the content, or only certain users or user roles which you created above. You can also set no-one to view the content. (Remember administrator is the highest user role and can view every content. You cannot restrict content for Administrator role).
You can also restrict a particular category and even a particular wiki page. To know more about this, kindly check this article.
What if you want the user to see the topic but needs a login to access? Maybe you want him to pay before accessing the content. If that’s the case, you can use the “Password protection feature” which Helpie provides. By setting a password for the topic, the user can access the topic only if he has the login password to access it. To know more about the password protection, kindly check this article.
Conclusion:
One of the best things about a wiki is that it makes collaboration and sharing of knowledge very easy. To have a plugin that makes the process, even more user-friendly is the cherry on the cake. If you are looking to create a WordPress wiki site and to create a knowledge-sharing space, don’t delay any further, get the Helpie Plugin and start away directly.
Do you have any questions on how to create a Wiki with WordPress? Ask away in the comments below.
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