Wetpaint - The Cool New Way to Make Your Own Wikis

If you are working in a technology company, you probably have an intranet or a bundle of wiki pages where teams and colleagues share their documents, findings, project plans, timelines, tasks or just about anything else! But in this rapidly growing world of social networking, what if you needed to share a an online space with your friends or fans? Yeah, you'd probably write a blog, but that still doesn't provide you with a complete web portal, does it! In such a case, Wetpaint comes to your rescue. Just like wikipedia, your free online resource for almost any topic, Wetpaint lets you create your own personal wikis which is basically like a free website that you can share with whomever you want to.

I came across Wetpaint trying to find some online portals for technology stuff, and I was pretty happy with the way these wikis looked. A little more research told me that unlike other websites where you might need to have some HTML knowledge or know the way the web works, wetpaint wikis are very simple to create and in just 3 easy steps you are on your way to making your own website! It's pretty similar to a blog, so you should not find it difficult at all. But its more suited for people who just need their own page where they can share news, views or opinions, catch up on stuff, upload images and videos; basically, a true collaborative exchange where anyone (or the invited few) can add and edit any of the site's content.

The 3-step process for adding text, web links, photos and video to a Wetpaint wiki is highly intuitive, but there are video tutorials just in caseyou create a name and wiki name for your site, then you say whether you want to keep it open to all or just to a few invited members, then you select a cool wiki template (and I have to tell you, they really have some wonderful designs for templates!), add your contact information, send invitations to your friends, and click "Done"! You are all set to start putting up stuff on your webpage! I think it's similar to Google Pages, just better designed and offers more features. You can add more pages later, and it works similar to a blog, with the added advantage that you already have a discussion forum feature available for your readers. And of course, you can change your settings and permissions any time you want. I think it's really cool for making a family website, or adding more connectivity and reader feedback to your primary site by linking to your wiki and engaging people to start discussions and more.

Based in Seattle, Wetpaint was named as one of the 50 Best Sites of 2007 by The Time Magazine. It is basically an online hosting service that targets non-technical internet users who want to collaborate with each other. They have lots of categories to fit your wikis in, so try creating your own wiki and see if it works out for you! And while you are there, be sure to check out the big names like Food & Wine magazine, CBS for CSI fans and the one for AppleTV.


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