Setting up a wiki

[Bobtheduck]

Wikis are open source, right? I like the organization setup of wikis, and am thinking about making one. I would like to have an encyclopedic resource for my fictional world, and a wiki is a great resource to do that with, but I would be unable to do such a thing on Wikipedia as it would be advertising. That being said, I have a few questions...

1. Is it relatively easy to set up a wiki? Do I have to understand PHP or any complex coding to set it up?
2. Can I lock other users from contributing unless I give explicit permission... I know most non wikipedia wikis are fansites, and this may be viewed as vain on my part, but I want a wiki for ease of use for Cross-referencing, and that's the only reason I want it to be a wiki over a plain website. It is much easier to type [[ article in question ]] than it is to type "<a href="www.whatever.com/articles/article_in_question">article in quesion</a>"

[Mithrandir]

Hmm... It sounds like you want to do some of the more complicated things you CAN do with wiki's, but you don't want it to be too complicated to setup.

Are you looking to host it yourself, or do you want to pay someone else to do it? There are lots of options like drupal that *would* do what you want, but I don't know if you really want to go through the trouble of setting something that powerful up for what you want to do.

Sorry!

[Bobtheduck]

Hmm... It sounds like you want to do some of the more complicated things you CAN do with wiki's, but you don't want it to be too complicated to setup.

Are you looking to host it yourself, or do you want to pay someone else to do it? There are lots of options like drupal that *would* do what you want, but I don't know if you really want to go through the trouble of setting something that powerful up for what you want to do.

Sorry!

I plan on getting a paid site, say 20 bucks a month (not now, not until I have a good job)

I don't really know anything about coding, PHP, CSS... I'm barely learning HTML... I can't really set up a whole webpage from scratch yet... I've never heard of Drupal... So, I guess it is difficult to set up? I can't just upload the wiki code into my space once I get it? That's more what I was wondering... If I get the wiki code somewhere, can I just upload it all to the server? I'm guessing not, based on what you're saying...

[Mithrandir]

Well, there are "wiki-ish" items written in just about every language imaginable. Ironically, you can get the scoop here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_software

If you are looking to learn PHP/MySQL, MediaWiki looks like a good choice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki

I don't think you need to know a lot about using it, but you probably have to know a little to get it set up.