Wiki hosting
Wiki is a well known application which is used extensively for creating knowledge bases on the internet. A wiki hosting service is basically
a server or a range of servers that offer users tools to simplify the creation and development of individual or even independent wikis. Wiki is actually a website that helps in the creation of a number of web pages which are interlinked and also enables editing on these pages. It is a database actually which serves the purpose of forming, browsing, and also searching through the information. These wikis are usually powered by the wiki software which is a collaborative software. These include community websites as also corporate intranets and the knowledge management systems.
A wiki system is a web application that runs on single or multiple web servers. The content, which includes the present as well as the revisions, is generally stored in a file system or a database. The wiki software PMWiki stores in the file system, whereas the wiki software application MediaWiki stores it in a database. The WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki software that was launched in the year 1994. Few examples of the wiki softwares that have been developed over the years are as follows:
Foswiki: This is a wiki that lets you share and store structured data as also has programmable pages with which excel sheets and the likes can be prepared.
MoinMoin: MoinMoin is implemented in Python. It is a wiki engine. This application stores data in flat files instead of a database.
Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware: Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware is actually a content management system which is wiki based. It is free and open source and is distributed under the GNU lesser general public License. Apart from enabling websites and portals on the internet, intranets and extranets, this application contains features which allow it to also work as a Geospatial Content Management System (GeoCMS).
XWiki: XWiki application mainly helps teams to collaborate more efficiently. It is a free software which is written in Java.
DokuWiki: This application is mainly for the small companies for their documentation needs. This application is written in PHP.
MediaWiki: This is a free web based software which is written in PHP and uses the database storage mechanism.
TWiki: This is a perl-based, open source web application.
Traction TeamPage and Atlassian Confluence are mostly more popular on intranets.
Decision of choosing a wiki software depends on a various things. These aspects include the start up and the cost of maintaining, complexity and the technical framework, control, clarity and the features. In order to have a stable website based on your preferred wiki platform, you must choose a reliable wiki hosting provider.

Wikis focus mainly on the content, at the expense of the publishing technologies such as the blogs which are present in the other content management systems. This is the main difference between the wikis and the contene management systems. Most of the wikis are modular, providing application programming interfaces, which is a framework that the softwares have to follow. These allow the programmers to develop various new features without really being acquainted with the codebase.