Wikis for Worldbuilding

Writers, especially fantasy and science fiction writers, have a lot of things to keep track of. Traditionally, we keep track of them in notebooks. However, an increasing number of writers are turning to personal wikis to keep track of details about characters, places, and events.

Setting up a personal wiki ranges from the easy to the challenging. In this hub, I will walk you through some of the options.

Wikis are great organizational tools. You can use their systems of categories and subcategories to make it easier to find related pages, as well as including hyperlinks to related information within the text of articles.

Wikis are also easily searchable. Instead of sifting through pages and pages of notes to remember a character's eye color or the name of the Grand Vizier's youngest daughter, simply run a quick search.

For those interested in collaborative writing, wikis are a great way to share information across a long distance, and many wiki software programs record detailed information about who edited a page when, and even why it was edited, as well as page histories that track the evolution of your ideas and make it easy to undo changes.

The easiest option is to start a private, remote-hosted wiki. There are a number of websites that host free public or private wikis for individuals. These websites are often called wiki farms. Two of the most popular wiki farms include PBWiki and Wetpaint.

Remote-hosted wikis have many advantages. They are easy to set up, and usually have WYSIWYG editors or easy wiki syntax. Most offer excellent privacy features, so nobody can see you work until you want them too. They can be accessed from any computer with internet access, anywhere in the world.

However, they are usually not as full-featured as privately-hosted or desktop wikis, and some have limits on the size (either in number of pages or Mbs) of free wikis. If you are interested in collaborative worldbuilding, they may have limits on the number of people who can contribute to the wiki. Some wiki farms are supported by ads, which you might find unattractive or annoying.

Finally, remote-hosted wikis are dependent on the continued existence of the wiki farm. If your wiki farm goes under, you may lose your work with it.

This is the most expensive option, but also the most flexible. In order to host your own wiki, you must have have a website of your own, with at least one MYSQL database. There are many different domain hosting and registration services, but an average full-featured service will generally run about $100 per year. I personally have used, and recommend, Dreamhost.

Dreamhost, and many other quality web hosting services, has one-click installs of a number of popular software programs, including MediaWiki, the software that Wikipedia is based on. MediaWiki itself is open-source and completely free.

If your webhost does not have one-click installs, you will have to download the MediaWiki software (or other wiki software of your choice) and upload it to your website, then follow the instructions that come with the software.

Hosting a wiki on your own website offers more security and flexibility than a wiki farm, but is also more technically complicated, as well as being more expensive.

The third option is to set up a desktop wiki directly on your own computer. Depending on the wiki software, desktop wikis can be rather complicated to set up. However, they are naturally secure and private. It will be difficult or impossible to access a desktop wiki through the internet.

There are a number of open-source and commercial desktop wikis available. However, I am personally a fan of the MediaWiki syntax, so I choose to set up a WAMP server and MYSQL database on my computer, and run the MediaWiki software there.

I used Geek to Live's Set Up Your Personal Wikipedia tutorial to set up my private wiki with WampServer2 and MediaWiki. Another method is described here: Running MediaWiki on Windows. If you require more portability, you can also install MediaWiki on a USB stick.

For a less set-up intensive desktop wiki, try the Bitnami Installer, or another software program. One of the most popular options is the open source TiddlyWiki, which does not use the MediaWiki syntax. TiddlyWiki also offers a wiki farm at TiddlySpot.Mac users should check out the (commercial) VoodooPad.

Be sure to back up a desktop wiki regularly in case of hardware problems.