Pros & Cons of Using a Wiki for Local Blogging
by Matt on Apr 6, 2009 in Blogging, Guest Posts, MY BEST POSTS
(This is a guest post by Andrew Moore, a hyperlocal blogger from the Kansas City, Missouri area. In addition to being the editor of TheKCGuy.com for over a year, he has been a software engineer for most of the last decade.)
I have made what appears to be a rather foolish decision. People often ask me why I built my blog out of a wiki. I didn’t mean for it to happen this way, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I like it, and you might like it, too.
When I first set out to build TheKCGuy.com, I didn’t realize that I was making a blog. I was shooting for something more like a regular web site that could serve as a guide to the things to do in Kansas City. I thought I was building an encyclopedia about my town. So, timely posts like you’d find on a blog were less important to me than articles about restaurants or attractions that might be periodically updated. Using a wiki as my content management system didn’t seem that extraordinary.
As time has progressed, I’ve seen the benefits of posting regular articles as is typically done on a blog. Not only does the constant stream of updates on the front page help build recurring traffic, but the other bloggers are more likely to recognize my site as a blog and include it on their blogrolls and RSS feeders in addition to sending me regular links. The daily posts aren’t as important as the actual articles about attractions in my town, but they fill an important void that used to exist in the site. Through a series of small changes to my site, I’ve essentially built a blog off out of my wiki. I’m glad I have, and I’d do it again if I were going to build a similar site.
Pros of Using a Wiki
I already alluded to one of the greatest benefits I have seen in using a wiki tool instead of a blogging tool to build my local web site. Many of my pages, such as those about restaurants like Blue Grotto or d’Bronx are rather timeless. They may see many updates over time, but no notable publication date. Most blogging tools seem to focus a lot on the date that an article was published, but that’s not really useful to a reader who stumbles across one of my restaurant pages. In fact, seeing a publication date from last year may make them less likely to be interested in the article, even if the information is still valid. Using a wiki does not emphasize the publication date, but just how this article relates to others.
That’s not the only advantage I have seen, though. There are many others. The MediaWiki software that I use has a pretty good search tool built into it. It allows me to group articles into categories, much like some blogging tools use categories and tags, but these categories each get a page that allows me to describe them a bit and give supplemental information. MediaWiki pages do pretty well in search engines for a few reasons: The article titles appear in the URL, they make reasonable uses of HTML tags, and interlinking of articles is encouraged. I also like using the wiki syntax a bit better than using the markup for many blogging tools. It makes it quicker for me to include features like bold, headers, images, and links in articles.
Perhaps the feature that I’ve made most use of, though, is being able to include templates into articles. A good example of this is how I build the “infobox” for restaurant pages. I have a template that makes a box that includes useful information about a restaurant. On the page for a particular restaurant, I’ll include that template and populate it with the particular details for this restaurant, such as the phone number and location. This makes all of my restaurant pages look similar and makes it easy for me to edit them in the future. Being able to include articles and templates into other pages is also what helps me build the front page and have it change every day on its own.
Cons of Using a Wiki
Buiding the web site out of a wiki was not all rainbows and ponies, though. There are some real downsides that I fight against. For instance, I can’t use most of the fancy plugins for Wordpress or other blog tools that many bloggers use. There are many extensions for MediaWiki that help me, though, such as those that help make Google Maps, embed YouTube videos, and use Google AdSense. There’s also not a very good commenting system built into it. I’ve chosen to use a third party blog commenting system, IntenseDebate, which is satisfactory, but not perfect. I also had to do a bit of work to build in calendaring logic, such as displaying this month’s calendar and all of the posts for the last seven days. These types of features are never missing from a modern blogging tool.
Perhaps the biggest drawback, though, is that some people just don’t understand what kind of site it is. For instance, bloggers aren’t sure they can add it to their blogrolls. Although I built an RSS feed on the site, people don’t typically think to add a wiki to their feed readers. I think that working to make the front page look either more like a blog or more like a traditional newspaper would mitigate this downside. I have already done a lot of work to make it look less like a wiki, such as removing the “edit” links and the default toolbox in the sidebar. This is one area that I need to continue working on in order to make my web site more accepted.
Final Thoughts & Resources
Having a site that doesn’t look exactly like every other blog out there and the other drawbacks aren’t enough to make me wish I had a regular blog. I truly think that using a wiki as a content management system to build a site that acts very much like a blog but has some additional benefits is well worth it. I encourage you to consider it, and if you’re interested to try it out. I even welcome you to contact me to let me know about your successes and difficulties in such an experiment.
MediaWiki is available at http://www.mediawiki.org. A useful page of MediWiki extensions can be found at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_Matrix. IntenseDebate is at intensedebate.com.
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6 Responses to “Pros & Cons of Using a Wiki for Local Blogging”
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That’s very interesting, thanks for bringing another option to the table when it comes to hyperlocality.
[...] Pros & Cons of Using a Wiki for Local Blogging This is a guest post from Andrew Moore, a hyperlocal blogger in Kansas City who’s using MediaWiki as a local blogging platform instead of the more traditional options. He shares some pros and cons about using wiki software for this purpose. [...]
Reading the article I was intrigued, but after perusing the site, I guess I remain partial to the blog format. I especially like what used to be a called “blog site” – the typical WP design with both posts and pages.
I wonder about adding a wiki as a page to a WP blog. I haven’t looked into it, but assume there is a plugin? Anyone have favorites?
I can see the value of wikis for community-driven sites (think anyone in town being able to submit restaurant reviews, etc.). But for blogs published by an individual, it seems like a square peg in a round hole.
I’m curious if TheKCGuy plans to open up the community editing and posting features of his wiki in the future. I think that could be really powerful.
(BTW, I’d love to see a future post take a look at hyperlocal sites that are community driven. What’s the technology behind them? How do you encourage and support the community? How do you prevent abuse? Etc.)
Hi Susan – I don’t have any plans to open up editing to the public. I actually tried that for a while on another site and found it to be rather difficult to keep useful to people.
KCGuy – I’d love to hear more about that. Maybe you can convince Matt to let you do another guest post.