Creating Your Team's Wiki Homepage

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When running a team, there is always a temptation to go resource crazy and set up a homepage, wiki, forums, bzr server, mailing lists, IRC server, IM service, forwarding service etc. Many of these resources are simply not needed, and when creating a new team you should always try and spend as much time in getting people interesting in your team, instead of spending it setting up new resources.

As such, there is often a tendency to create a CMS driven website instead of just setting up a bunch of wiki pages. The wiki has many benefits over a CMS site:

• wiki.ubuntu.com is already there to use
• lots of people know how to use a wiki
• anyone can register and update it - there is no bottleneck
• a wiki provides a quick and easy way to look for information

The primary purpose of the website when you start a team is to share information, store notes and tips about how to run the team, and provide information for new members. The wiki is ideal for this.

Making an easy to use and navigate wiki site

When using the wiki though, it is sometimes easy to create a bunch of disorganized pages that are vaguely linked together. It always makes sense to put a little thought into how your site will be organised and split into sections.

To make this easier, I have created a sample site called SampleTeam. This site uses specific sections which every team should have, has a consistent menu bar and looks and feels like a collective site. We will look at how to make a site such as that in this document. Head over to SampleTeam and get a feel for the site, the sections and the organization.

Lets look at the different things you should make sure you put in your wiki pages.

Consistent sections

Think of some definitive sections and put your content in those sections. The following are highly recommended:

• Knowledge Base
• FAQ
• Contact Details
• TODO List
• Events (such as IRC meetings and sprints)

It is recommended you use a consistant menu bar (such as the one on the SampleTeam site). For more details of how to do this, see [:SampleTeam/CreatingMenuBar:this guide]. Remember to put the menu bar on every page on your site.

Make key events obvious

If you are organizing regular IRC meetings (which is highly recommended), you should ensure that these meeting times and agenda items are clearly located on a page. Updating the agenda is something that is particularly easy with a wiki, so you should make sure it is simple and easy for people to add items to an agenda.

Document everything

With a wiki being so easy to update, it provides a very low barrier to entry for documenting things to do with your team. As such, you should encourage your team to document any processes in the knowledge base part of your site. The more documents, guides and tips you have, the easier it will be for people to get involved.

While it may feel like a thankless task, every word of documentation you write will make your team more approachable and more likely to pick up new members.

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