How to go about promoting a wiki for web developers

**danielcer** · 04:18 AM

Hey guys,

I recently put together a wiki, or more accurately a structured wiki, for web developers that's orientated around people sharing what languages, frameworks, and libraries, etc. they've used to build specific websites. Think a unified combination of toolkit-website lists like djangosites, workingwithrails, merbsites, etc. that allows sites to be listed with various plugins and modules in addition to just large frameworks.

I figure that if enough people contribute, it could end up being a pretty nice and useful resource for the community. It'll allow people to advocate their favorite tools by posting good/interesting sites they've built with them. And, everybody will be able to explore what's behind a large sample of other sites. By being more aware of the tools and packages other people are using and what they're being used for, people might be able to better select the ones that fit their needs.

But, before things get to that point, I need help building up some small community of contributers to the site. I imagine the ideal people to find would be those that have both built multiple sites and are open and/or passionate about the tools they use.

Anybody have any experience building a wiki community, or even just generally have any thoughts about the right way to hit critical mass on something like this?

BTW - if you're interested the swiki is at http://www.appliedstacks.com/

-Dan

**danielcer** · 12-09-2008, 04:07 PM

Um....anybody?

**danielcer** · 12-09-2008, 07:25 PM

One more thing.

One of the things I tried was a small adwords campaign. However, it ended up being more expensive per click than I wanted (the wiki is being done as a hobby on a student budget), and only 1 out a hundred clicks actually resulted in a contribution. For the latter, I'm not sure if the low numbers of contributions vs. traffic was due to either the main page for the site being unconviencing on why people should contribute, or if it was due to the ad ending up on alot of spam-y adsense sites.

**vangogh** · 12-09-2008, 09:24 PM

I'd think the most important thing is to get a community of developers on board to keep growing the site. Similar to the way you'd build a forum community. Until you have reach critical mass with the community you may have to grow it one member at a time.

Spend more time places like here. The members here are some of the people you'll want to attract. Add a signature with a link to your wiki and become more active in the community here. I'm sure some of us will wander over and contribute if we see enough there.

Do the same on other webmaster related forums. It'll be time consuming, but if the money isn't there to promote the time is going to need to be.

One thing I notice with the site now is it doesn't seem intuitive to me what to do when I land on the home page. True it's there in the content, but the site design could be better. Why not keep the more standard Wikipedia look or a custom version of it. A similar design will make it obvious to people what the site is about.

Also if you look at the Wikipedia home page you see obvious categories for browsing, featured articles, news, etc. There's info right on the home page to keep people engaged with the site even if they don't contribute on their first visit.

**danielcer** · 12-10-2008, 12:04 AM

Thanks for the reply. That sounds like pretty solid advice.

I just added a link to the site in my signature. And, I'll work on ways to make the design more intuitive & engaging. I'm guessing this will probably involve adding more interesting material on the main page for casual visitors, like links to some 'featured' wiki entries. I should probably also increase the visibility of the 'browse everything' link.

**vangogh** · 12-11-2008, 10:55 PM

Glad to help. Keep posting here and get to know some of the members. I would think a few people here would be interested in helping with your wiki. We're certainly interested in the same things.

**Learning Newbie** · 12-12-2008, 03:14 PM

I would think the best way to approach this would be posting unique and high quality code. And, to a greater extent, the solution to common problems, especially errors. When I'm searching for stack overflow in Html Agility Pack, there aren't terribly many results (especially compared to if I just search for Html Agility Pack), it's "low hanging fruit" in SEO terms, and, more importantly, an answer to this question earns loyalty from a searcher. (By the way, I linked to my site in this example because that particular post is bringing a fair amount of traffic - might help you to look it over?)

You need to attract developers. There are a lot of ways you might do this, and VanGogh's advice is excellent. Search engines are another, and you should head to our SEO forum and learn what you can. But, no matter what they use to enter your site, you'll want to keep their attention, and hopefully earn some loyalty. And it sounds like the community you hope to build, and the wisdom that you hope will be shared, will do that. Until that's all built, though, you need another catch. Which is why I'd suggest offering up some fantastic code, the solution to a problem, that can't be got anywhere else.

**vangogh** · 12-12-2008, 03:46 PM

Good point John about posting the code. What might be good would be to do some keyword research. Look for questions people are asking and then write the page to answer that question. That should help the page rank reasonably well unless it's a topic that's been written to death.

Then make sure on every page there's a call to action to indicate the site is open to developers. Maybe a sidebar with the information or something inside the content on each page.