How to Use Google Sites as a Wiki and Collaborate on Projects

A wiki is a website which let’s a group of people create and edit a number of interlinked pages from the browser. Wiki’s are used by companies, bloggers and anyone who has a team of web workers and want an easy way to manage information on a privately accessible interface.

Wiki’s are powered by wiki software like Mediawiki, Dokuwiki and TikiWiki – which requires a web server to host the files and a database to run the wiki software. But if you are no geek and want to create a simple Wiki for a small organisation, Google Sites can be a good option.

How to Create a Simple Wiki with Google Sites

With Google Sites, you don’t have to worry about the software, database or other technical things. You just need a Google account and have to pick the right template for your wiki, powered by Google sites.

1. Log in to Google Sites with your Google account and create your site. Next, pick the “Project Wiki” theme and choose a decent color scheme for your wiki.

2.  If you want only selected people to add or edit information in the wiki website, select “Only people I specify can view this site”.

3. That’s it. Your wiki website is ready and now you can invite your friends to view it or add/edit information.

Adding Collaborators to Your private Wiki

Adding collaborators and members in the wiki is quite simple. Select “Share this site” from the more actions dropdown and enter the email address(s) of collaborators you want to add. The process is exactly the same as sharing your Google Docs documents. You can choose from two different user levels:

• Collaborators – these people can view and edit information in your wiki. They can edit pages and create new pages as well.
• Viewers – these people can only view your wiki but they cannot edit or delete any content or pages.

The person whom you invite will get an email notification request as shown below:

When the viewers or collaborators try to access the wiki website, they will be asked to sign in with the same email address where you sent the invitation request.

Subscribing to the Wiki and Getting Automatic Alerts on Changes

Once the website is up and running, you can add new pages to the wiki one by one. You can also embed Google docs documents, images, Google gadgets, videos and other media files in the pages. When the content and pages are ready, ask all the members to visit your wiki website and “subscribe to the site changes”. This will send them email notification whenever a new page is added to the wiki or an existing page is modified.

To subscribe to the site changes, select “Subscribe to site changes” from the more actions dropdown as shown below:

The feature set of Google Sites is very basic and you can not modify the design or edit the codes but considering the purpose of a wiki, I think Google sites does a great job. It’s simple and easy to manage and the best part is that you do not have to worry about the software or maintain it. Google sites also supports adding Google docs documents, spreadsheets and presentations and thus it can be a great way to collaborate on project ideas.

Tip: Use Google Docs to publish blog posts