If your organization is seeking to store, categorize, and link documents, information, and media a wiki website may be just the fit. Wikis are typically used as an encyclopedic store of data on a particular topic. You're probably most familiar with the software we use, MediaWiki, by way of Wikipedia. One of the largest and most visited sites on the Internet, Wikipedia, uses MediaWiki as the software behind the scenes. The Wikimedia Foundation supports Wikipedia and other major wiki-based projects by way of server hardware, press, and general management of the free, public services.
What is MediaWiki Open Source Software?
MediaWiki is a specific wiki engine. It was originally created for Wikipedia but is now used for several Wikimedia Foundation projects. It's also used by thousands of organizations around the world to house public or private stores of data. As MediaWiki is open source, it is freely available to the world. MediaWiki is the engine of choice for Daymuse's Wiki projects.
Wikis and Their Use
Your organization likely creates information and data everyday. This data may include text, images, video, or code. The context of the data could range from customer support processes to internal workflows. The trouble is, your organization doesn't have a way to store this information and make it available to the rest of the employees. Your business, as a collection of employees, gains knowledge everyday. A wiki helps provide a central location to store and publicize this information. Not only that, but the wiki provides revision data and collaboration tools. Wikis can be made private, available to only employees or a specific employee role, or made public. They can even be made private in some sections, but public in others. Think of it as your organization's library.
Wiki for Business & Companies
If your employees all worked from the same set of procedures, sales scripts, or workflows—you set consistent expectations for your customers and deliver on those expectations as everyone is working from the same "script". Having symmetric internal processes makes it possible to institute specific changes and then test the outcome. With this data, you can iterate, slowly evolving as a company where a profit incentive is found. A frequent problem within business is the knowledge loss attributed to retiring employees or those that have simply left the company. Wikis help maintain this institutional knowledge. Wikis help create these profits by allowing employees to use the knowledge gained by all the other employees day-to-day.
Wiki for Higher Education & Universities
Colleges, Universities, and locations of higher education produce massive amounts of research annually. It is estimated that the total scientific research output doubles every nine years. That's a lot of data, and it's increasing. This data needs to be stored, indexed; cataloged. While MediaWiki is generally an excellent tool for storing and categorizing data, it really shows its value to research-heavy use-cases by way of the Semantic Wiki extension. This tool, supported by our team, helps make it easier to retrieve information from MediaWiki websites. This can make it far easier for utilizing the data in future publications or initiatives, reducing costs and increasing access.
Wiki for Government
Did you know the US Government uses MediaWiki to create internal knowledge stores and libraries? Bureaupedia, utilized by the FBI, stores knowledge for analysts so that their insights aren't lost on departure. The Department of State utilizes MediaWiki to keep track of tradecraft, international affairs, and diplomacy data in their Diplopedia. Governments produce heaps of knowledge that can be lost by employee transfer, retirement, or termination. Wikis help governments maintain internal knowledge that may have taken decades to produce. These encyclopedias of niche topics are often a core value of the organization.
MediaWiki Install, Cloud Hosting, Maintenance Services
We provide complete installation, development, customization, and maintenance of MediaWiki-based websites. Whether public or private, we can deploy highly available, scalable wikis for your organization and we've been doing it for years. Our successful MediaWiki projects store thousands of records of information, are custom-branded for the organization, and utilize extensions, skins and custom code to match the use-case of each project.
Managed Cloud Hosting
Utilizing Amazon EC2-based cloud servers, we can create a MediaWiki instance to match your requirements. Whether you need a small public repository of information or a private, highly secure and highly available, internal system - we have the expertise. Our managed hosting service provided greater than four nines (99.99%+) uptime in the past year. Our team can also provide implementation to your on-prem server infrastructure or existing compatible platform.
Retained Maintenance and Support
Just like other software, and especially open source web software, updates are routinely delivered to the core MediaWiki software as well as the extensions or skins that may be in use on your site. Often these updates solve security issues newly found or extend functionality. Our team provides the option for us to keep track of these updates, test, and apply them to your wikis through retained support and managed hosting.
Is your organization ready to use MediaWiki on its next project?