Evaluation of alternative Wiki environments

The team's first objective was to make a suitable choice amongst the numerous wikis sites that exist today. The team narrowed down the search to three (3) wikis: A critical assessment was done on each of the three sites to find which one was the most appropriate for use in this project.
 * 1) Wikispaces
 * 2) Wikia
 * 3) Wordpress

Wikispaces
Wikispaces is a hosting service (sometimes called a wiki farm) based in San Francisco, California. Launched in March 2005, Wikispaces is owned by Tangient LLC and is among the largest wiki hosts, competing with PBworks, Wetpaint, Wikia, and Google Sites (formerly JotSpot).

The following table summaries the pros and cons of wikispaces. Con
 * "Although the wiki software is easy to use, students with older equipment, those who do not have easy access to the Internet, or those whose only computer access is on campus find that contributing to the wiki is burdensome" (Farabaugh, 2007 quoted in Matthew, Felvegi and Callaway, 2009, p53)
 * There is a limit when using the Settings and Preferences.
 * More advanced wikispaces charge money for their use.
 * Multiple users are unable to edit the same page simultaneously.

Wikia
Wikia, formerly known as Wikicities, is a wiki farm started by one of the founders of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. A wiki farm is a single website that hosts multiple wikis, usually allowing users to request new wikis. Wiki farms are popular because they combine smaller communities into one larger community and usually allow users access to multiple wiki sites with the same account. Wikia is a wiki farm with subjects ranging from books to politics to health to finance.

Pros: Cons:
 * Strong wiki farm with good user participation
 * Single login for thousands of wikis
 * No support for Open ID
 * Search feature sometimes brings up pages for requested sites
 * Tensions can run high amongst group members who may be working on the same document on the application due to a number of reasons- conflicts of goals or personality are examples. Extra effort is needed by member- politeness, patience and consideration.

Wordpress
WordPress started in 2003 and is a free and open source blogging tool and content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. Its function is to enhance the typography of everyday writing and contains many features such as a plug-in architecture and template system

Since its design, Wordpress has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

Pros:
 * There are many products and services that involve a long learning curve for the users, but the WordPress platform is not one of them. If you get WordPress hosting, you will have absolutely no problems with getting a blog post on the Internet immediately.
 * At first, you can easily get a hang of the main, necessary features of WordPress. As you get more experienced with the platform, you can add more complex things to your blog, such as widgets. Also, you can alter the look of your blog if you have knowledge of CSS.
 * Not only is WordPress easy to use, but the process of turned a free website into a WordPress hosted website is very simple and requires very little technical ability.
 * WordPress can be downloaded for free at WordPress.org, has customisable themes and features which are free such as polls, forms, calenders and photo albums etc.
 * It is a content management system, has search incorporated, has numerous supported plugins and can be customized to your specific design requirements.
 * There is an administrator element in that you can create different user account with different access levels. This will make it easier to get anyone involved with the site and keep it current.
 * To update content on WordPress all you need is any device with internet access and a browser to conduct updates.
 * Backups are done via Wordpress Hosting and are at no cost to the consumer.

Cons:
 * The backend constanly updates as does PHP. In order to stay current, the software needs to updated on a frequent basis. You will also need to make frequent backups of your database and carry out testing. A wordpress is also more difficult to move to another server than a regular static site.
 * As WordPress has become so popular, more hackers are targeting WordPress sites. This is why it is important to keep updating the software to plug security holes.

Final Choice
The wiki site called Wikia was chosen out of the three described after careful deliberation. The sites offer alot of the same features but Wikia was chosen for its superior design and very user-friendly capabilities.

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