User blog:Jody Bartosiewicz/How to grow your wiki quickly

Have you ever imagined how hard it is to start actually starting with a wiki? It may take you a long time to get everything ready for your wiki to be official. Here are some tips to improve a wiki you just made.


 * Start off setting up the Main Page to look like the start of a big wiki. You can quickly make it look great by adding the slider, which goes around pictures and takes you to specific articles. Even though you will have to have some articles done for it to successfully link, the tool is very useful and neat-looking for new users to explore your wiki.
 * Add a rules page before hiring anyone. That way more new people will know how to behave on the wiki properly, saving you a lot of time on trying to punish them if they didn't.
 * Design your wiki using the Theme Designer tool. You can change the looks of the whole wiki, including the background, logo, and even add a favicon for the tabs!
 * Turn on wiki features in Special:WikiFeatures that don't come by default, so that then the wiki looks more advanced at the beginning in just a few changes.
 * Notify users to visit the Community Corner by adding messages to MediaWiki:Community-corner. This will encourage more users to know the wiki and contribute to it.
 * Add annoucements at (yourwikiname).wikia.com/announcements/ to make more people interested in what is happening at your wiki.

Remember that you can quickly visit any of these at any time in your Admin Dashboard by clicking "Admin" link in the toolbar on your wiki.