Which Wiki?

Starting a new wiki isn't quite as easy as I was led to understand from the Public Libraries Web 2.0 course. Checking for a wiki comparison, I found Wikipedia had a comparison of wiki farms which listed the various features of the various wiki software packages. Looking for a wiki that was free and private was not that simple. General speaking, free wikis are also public. This can mean public in the sense that anyone in the world can edit the wiki or that the wiki cannot be edited by anyone except those permitted by the wiki creator/s but the wiki is still viewable on the internet by anyone.

In addition, free wikis do not tend to be ad-free. Private, ad-free wikis tend to cost between $5 and $20 per month but can range up to $8000 per month! In addition, free wikis have limited storage space, eg file storage of 2 GB and per file maximum of 10 MB.

WikiMatrix is a useful site which lists all the wikis available and enables you to compare them. Using the various wiki comparison guides, I located ClearWiki which offers a free, private wiki for up to 10 users and up to 256Mb of storage. If you need to allow more users or need more space, you can upgrade and pay.