Customize MediaWiki into Your Ultimate SMB Collaborative Website

Can’t convince the boss to shell out some bucks for Sharepoint server? Oh what’s that…He doesn’t trust Google with company resources? Ok well, you still need to figure how to set up a collaborative website/cms/wiki whatever you want to call it. In this case we will use the term “wiki” because that is the solution to your problem. Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor shows us how to set up MediaWiki to make you totally forget about Microsoft, Google and your cheap ass boss!

“The free MediaWiki software is best known for powering Wikipedia, but you don’t have to be writing an encyclopedia to put it to good use. Extend, skin, and customize MediaWiki to create any kind of easy-to-update, collaborative web site.

MediaWiki is arguably the most advanced, install-it-yourself, free wiki package available. A wiki is an editable web site; you can change each page's content without having to log into a content management system like WordPress or access the server via FTP or other means—you just hit the edit button. While MediaWiki is built for public web sites that anyone can update, like Wikipedia, you can customize it to limit access to certain users.

Like WordPress and Firefox, MediaWiki is extendable via plug-ins that add functionality. MediaWiki is also skinnable, which means your wiki can sport a custom theme so it doesn’t look just like Wikipedia.”