Sharepoint 2013 : Wikis

A wiki is a web site that allows users to create and edit any number of interlinked pages. Wiki pages typically render as HTML, and users edit text and image content on wiki pages using WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get). The purpose of wiki sites is to foster collaboration of content creation and editing by allowing any user to edit the content, regardless of his or her security access. Wiki sites, like Wikipedia.com, have become trusted sources for information on the Internet because readers constantly vet and update the content.

Microsoft designed wiki sites in SharePoint for ease of use for the content owners and contributors. Like most other content containers in SharePoint, a wiki exists as a list in a site, and the pages of a wiki exist as the list items in the wiki library.

In SharePoint 2007, wiki lists were more of an afterthought, whereas wikis integrate better into the SharePoint 2010 and 2013 platform. For example, the new Team and Blank site definitions now default to use wiki libraries and pages for all content pages. This replaces the legacy Web Part pages of SP 2007, in which content owners would have to drop content Web Parts into specific zones of the page to host content. Content contributors now have free rein to place text content anywhere on the page and still use Web Part zones—determined by site designers in the page layout—thus wrapping text and image content around typical functional Web Parts.

Users create wiki sites in SharePoint 2013 much like any other site, and I shall demonstrate the steps in just a moment. Before doing so, I must distinguish between SharePoint Enterprise wiki sites and Blank or Team sites.

SharePoint 2007 Blank and Team sites used Web Part pages, which are ASPX pages containing HTML markup and Web Part zones for users to drop Web Parts. Site designers would need to use the publishing features and site templates if they wanted to provide page customization and web content management capabilities in SharePoint 2007. Sites created from the Enterprise wiki template in SharePoint 2010 and 2013 include a special library and publishing features typically associated with publishing sites—page ratings, managed metadata, customization capabilities, and so on. Sites created from Team and Blank site templates consist of the standard collaboration features, offered in the Foundation platform, and a Site Pages library, to contain wiki pages. SharePoint Blank and Team sites allow wiki-style editing of content and the placement of Web Parts without the need for Web Part zones, and rudimentary customization of the page, because of the free flow of content editing that wiki pages provide.

Enterprise wiki sites, in SharePoint, provide users with greater control of content, using the publishing features, and adhere more to web content management. Wiki pages in an Enterprise wiki site use page layouts and master pages, so designers may customize metadata on wiki pages, much like on publishing pages.

You may create wiki libraries by creating a new wiki site or by adding a wiki library to an existing site. The following steps demonstrate both approaches:

New wiki site:

1. Click the gear icon and click the Site Contents menu item.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the New Subsite link.
3. Give the wiki site a name and description.
4. Provide a subsite URL.
5. Click the Publishing tab in the templates section.
6. Your page should look something like that in Figure 1.

   

   Figure 1. Create an Enterprise wiki site

7. Click the Enterprise wiki site.
8. Click the Create button when ready to create the wiki site.

New wiki library:

1. Click the gear icon and click the Site Contents menu item.
2. Click the Add an App tile.
3. Find the Wiki Page Library app and click its tile.
4. Give the library a title and click the Advanced Options link if you wish to apply more options before SharePoint creates the library.
5. Click the Create button.

A wiki site is really just a team site with a default wiki library, with the Site Welcome page pointing to the main landing page in the wiki library.

Since both blogs and wikis consist of list/library containers to store content, site owners and collaborators may make use of all the tagging, notes, and rating social networking tools in the platform in conjunction with blog and wiki content.