History Source of this version Current version
| 1 | --- | |
| 2 | title: Running a wiki | |
| 3 | tags: [Running] | |
| 4 | --- | |
| 5 | | |
| 6 | Anyone signed in can ask for a wiki. The site admin looks at every request; once it's approved, whoever asked becomes the wiki's **owner**. | |
| 7 | | |
| 8 | ## Settings | |
| 9 | | |
| 10 | Owners and admins change these under **Settings**: | |
| 11 | | |
| 12 | - **Identity:** the wiki's name, a one-line tagline, and a logo (also its favicon). | |
| 13 | - **Theme:** a brand colour and a neutral, or an **advanced theme** with your own colours for light and dark mode (or only one of them), named colours for components, and a background image, plus the **page width**: standard, wide (more room for tables and galleries on big screens), or full width. Buttons use a deeper shade of the brand colour where they need one, so the text on them stays easy to read. | |
| 14 | - **Sidebar:** groups of links to pages, dragged into order. | |
| 15 | - **Home page:** an article shown as the home page; without one, the home page lists every article by tag. | |
| 16 | - **Editing:** who can edit and how (see [[Editing and moderation]]). | |
| 17 | - **Discovery and rating:** whether the wiki is listed in the directory and open to search engines, and whether it's rated general or mature. | |
| 18 | | |
| 19 | ## A good first week | |
| 20 | | |
| 21 | - Set the theme and logo, so the wiki looks like itself from day one. | |
| 22 | - Write the main page and the few pages everything else links to. | |
| 23 | - Make an infobox and a navbox for the wiki's main kinds of page ([[Writing components]]), and put facts used on many pages in [[Wiki Data]]. | |
| 24 | - Upload the images you'll need in one go (**Files → Upload several**). | |
| 25 | - Give your regular editors the trusted role, so they can review new editors and write components. | |
| 26 | - Keep an eye on **To-dos** for broken links and missing pictures. | |
| 27 | | |
| 28 | ## Leaving | |
| 29 | | |
| 30 | Communities own their work. A wiki's text is CC BY-SA 4.0 and can be exported whole, so a community can always take it elsewhere. |