Scott+Crellin

Wikispace vs. some other PBi. The battle unfolds here.

|| pbwiki || One thing I found very annoying about this site was that the free wiki that you create cannot really be customized in any way. They let you change the color scheme for a few hours, but if you don't pay them, it changes back. The same goes for templates. At least, you can customize the colors at wikispaces for free, and they provide the choice of a few basic templates at no charge. ||
 * || Wiki Spaces
 * How easy is it to set up? || Very easy to set up a new account and create a space, I had my space created within minutes and was editing my pages right away. Help links from the editing page are very useful, was able to find how to's on what I needed very quickly. || Also quite easy to create a new space, had no problems with the set up of the wiki. A nice bonus, pbwiki emails me with advice periodically and provides a link to a community forum. Help links to a list of previously asked and answered questions that is tedious to search. Was unable to easily find information on how to fix problems I was having. ||
 * How does it handle editing? || One click to the editing page, then uses a WYSIWYG text editor. Automatic headings are available from a drop down menu. Another click gets you to a text editor, which shows the code wiki spaces uses behind the scenes. Needed to research the help pages in order to insert anchors using the text editor. That process could have been easier, perhaps with an insert anchor button in the visual editor. Inserting images was quite easy as well. My pictures uploaded from my computer quickly and then I double clicked them right into the document. I was able to adjust their size and position once they were in the document. It has a few templates for changing the look of the space, but not much is available without upgrading and paying for the service. There is a separate tab for the forum like discussion. || pbwiki's editor is also easy to access, entering and formatting text is not much different from wiki spaces. I don't really like the collapsible side tabs in the side bar area, they seem to me to just be unnecessary clutter. The image uploading feature is similar to that of wikispaces, however, for quite a while it was only inserting thumbnails into my page, and I still have no idea why. The help section was not much use. Commenting is made in a text box at the bottom of the page.
 * Version control || The history of the page is easy to access from a tab at the top, and from there you can see who made each edit and when it happened. You can compare the changes that were made with another version and revert to an older one with just a click. I also like how text that has been changed gets highlighted. Very nice! || Pbwiki's version control is virtually the same, it is accessed from a button on the page, but also has recent history as part of an expandable side tab. Quite easy to use. ||
 * Discussion || A separate tab is provided for discussion that will display a list of comments, who said it, and when. || Couldn't find a separate discussion page, pbwiki lists comments to each page at the bottom of the page. ||
 * Subscription to articles || Can subscribe to individual pages or the whole site with RSS feeds. || Can receive email notifications of changes to a page. ||
 * Security || Can be set to allow only members to edit pages or participate in discussion. Members can be added or can request membership to the page. Administrator has control of these privileges. || Can be set to allow anyone to visit, members need to be added to be writers or editors of the page. Administrator can control who has these privileges and can edit pages at will. ||
 * Contributions || By viewing the edit history, the administrator can see who has edited the page, when they did it, and highlighted text that has been added or changed. || The administrator can view the history of the page and see who has edited it when, but has to visually compare the entire page with the last entry to find the changes. Not good! ||
 * My recommendation || I prefer wikispaces for several reasons. I like the look of the page and how you can do some minor customizations without having to pay for it. I also like the way the page history will show you the changes that have been made in each version by highlighting text. It is also better to receive notifications from RSS feeds rather than email, in my opinion. || One thing that is better about pbwiki, is the lack of ads on the sidebar, but that's about all it has over wikispaces. ||