How to Arrange Affiliations
Ever wonder how to make your wiki more visible to the external community? Affiliate programs are a great way to boost your Google search ranking and increase your wiki’s traffic. Your wiki may be a lonely island, but swapping links with other wikis and external sites can quickly expand your community network and increase your visibility.
Sound complicated? It’s not. In fact, several anime wikis have already partnered to create an inter-wiki affiliate program that benefits everyone – check out the affiliate template at the bottom of Bleach Wiki’s landing page for an example. The True Blood Wiki has successfully partnered with many external fan sites to expand their network and reach more potential contributors.
So that’s all good and well, bu…
A Tour of Special Pages
Have you ever wondered how some editors find content quickly, track down obscure details with ease, and always know what to work on next? Well, it's not a secret super power. It's just Special Pages.
Special Pages is a collection of useful lists and tools that can help you better manage a wiki. To find this collection, just go to [yourwikiname].wikia.com/wiki/Special:SpecialPages. You may also want to add a shortcut to Special Pages on your toolbar (which is the useful strip of links at the bottom of your screen). Just click the toolbar's "Customize" link, search for the "Special Pages" tool, select it, and Save.
Depending on what kind of user you are, you may see different links on this page. Logged-in users see more than logged-out users, an…
Energize your Editors
Do you have a wiki with quite a few visitors and people “hanging out,” but not a lot of editing action? That can be frustrating -- you know they’re there, but they’re not contributing! To get people more involved and engaged on your wiki, there are a few things you can do...
Every week, come up with a new project that everyone on the wiki can participate in and work on together. By providing specific tasks and needs, you’ll encourage your visitors to participate and make helpful contributions. Using Rift as an example (but these pages exist on every wiki):
- Wanted pages need to be created or the links to them removed so you don’t have red links.
- Dead end pages don’t link anywhere else on the wiki which hurts your search engine results and makes…
Make Your Wiki Great
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Another user's take on how to build/grow/improve a wiki. Well, I'm gonna try to take that to another level, and try to give you new and interesting ideas. If any of you have more ideas you would like to add, post them below in the comments.
- 1 General Stuff
- 2 Advertisements
- 3 Contests
- 4 Discussions
- 5 Observe
- 6 Make a "spirit" for your wiki
- 7 Educate new Wikia users
- 8 Newsletters
- 9 Drives
- 10 Features
- 11 Partnerships
There are some general stuff, that should be done in the days after a wiki's creation. The logo, background and favicon (that little picture that appears on your tab) are some of the basics. If the wiki already have stuff like these, think if there is a need to improve them. If there is, how 'bout creating a contest i…
Making the Most of your Main Page
Your wiki’s main page is the gateway to your community and the main navigation hub for your users. Think of the main page as one of those shiny “You are Here” maps -- you want it to be streamlined, easy to understand and well organized so that new visitors can find their way around the wiki.
So take a good, hard look at your main page. Is it in need of a face lift? If so, use these helpful tips to improve it.
Create left and right columns for your main page to organize your content and allow everyone, regardless of their ad settings, to see the best version of your main page. The Green Hornet Wiki has implemented columns on their main page with great results.
If you are working to grow your wiki community, it’s important to consider how your …
National Stop Bullying Day
Wikis are all about working together to build an awesome site about something you love. But any group is likely to have arguments and disputes -- which can sometimes get out of hand. Today is National Stop Bullying Day in the US, so I wanted to take the time here to talk a little about online bullying and how we can all work together to help prevent it.
Think about what you say. Remember that there is a real person reading what you write. Are you saying it in a way that's going to sound nasty or aggressive? I've always disliked the phrase "real world" to distinguish between on and off-line life... this is real life, and what you say here matters.
Look out for new users. Sometimes it's easy to take the side of the people we know best, but withou…
Tips to spruce up your main page
Wiki founders and admins spend plenty of time making their wiki's main page an engaging and interesting space. After all, the main page is the first impression your wiki makes on both newcomers and dedicated fans. What can you do to make this space even more functional and pleasing? We recommend adding a Main Page Slider.
The main page slider is a neat way to display amazing images from your wiki and to showcase your pages. And, we've recently implemented an easy tool to help you add a slider; it just takes a bit of initiative and a little bit of photo sizing magic.
Step 1: Find your photos
Choose the pages you want to highlight in the slider. There are 4 slider spaces to fill, so pick your 4 favorite pages. After you've decided, choose a phot…
Tips for Promoting your Wiki
Want to get new eyes on your wiki? Need some fresh editors? Want to share your awesomeness with the rest of the world? Keep reading, we're going to give you some of the tips we use for promoting wikis both on and off Wikia. Enjoy!
- Keep adding content: More content gives people more reasons to visit.
- Create a great mainpage: Make sure it's welcoming and keep important links at the top -- this will help with SEO and get your wiki noticed by the search bots. Try to keep around 100 links maximum on the main page, and make sure they relate to the topic of your wiki. The links that crawlers see first should be links to the most topical information (characters, weapons, etc.).
- Request a spotlight: Once you meet the criteria, request a spotlight, and…