Zoho Wiki

Zoho Wiki! Here is yet another great product from Zoho. You can create your Wiki in a flash. No more ads in Wikis and a you have a full featured WYSIWYG editor without any limitation on the number of pages

Zoho has been providing great online apps like Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet. Now comes Zoho Wiki. I have tried in the past to create Wikis on some popular sites such as Jotspot and Wetpaint. I found myself crippled as I could not create more than a few pages – 5 if I remember – or the free account was ad supported. Even if all those could be put aside, I would be taken aback by the simplistic editors provided which were hardly capable of producing any professional content.

Zoho Wiki is a welcome change. There are no ads, the Wiki is clean. There are no limitations to the pages and subpages that can be added. You also get a full featured WYSIWYG editor. Zoho has used the same editor that it uses for Zoho Writer. That means you have the power of a word processor to create your Wiki.

In Zoho Wiki, each paragraph can be edited separately with the help of the Constrained Editor. The Wiki can be customized easily. There are about 5 skins from which you can choose and the header, side panels can be customized. You can even add your own logo to the header.

Zoho Wiki comes with access control. You can either make your Wiki public or keep it among your peers or just yourself. Similarly the editing can be controlled. Readers can post comments on your topics. I found something annoying here. No one post a comment until the Wiki is made public. This is bad since the content could be vandalised. It could have been better if comments could be turned on/off across all pages universally no matter what the access level to the Wiki is. I did not notice much difficulty using the Wiki except at one point. When I create a new page from the Dashboard, I have to either click on that page to access it or remember the page URL. It was not shown in the Navigation bar. Sub pages however had no problems and showed up below the parent page.

Zoho Wiki comes with RSS feeds. You can obtain the latest content, updated content of pages or just one page. An automated versioning system is maintained and a line at the bottom mentions the version number along with the author, the person who modified the page and when it was modified.

I would say that this product – keeping aside the few annoyances mentioned above – is yet another great show from the Zoho people. Now that Google has accquired Jotspot, I can see competition in this space since Google may release a completely new product with no ads or limitations.

Here is a screenshot