Surfing one the web, I found this great web 2.0 style project called WETPAINT, it’s a new free wiki hosting service where you can build you own wiki, similar to wikipedia, without needing to deal with hard mysql, php and server stuff. Within three simple steps you can have your wiki working, build your community, and start sharing some knowledge.

Some time ago I was looking for some free wiki script or free hosted wiki. The script provided by WikiMedia (the same as wikipedia) is very good, but it’s very hard to install, configure and maintain, what makes WetPaint great, easy to set up and no need to worry about server. Another good feature of WetPaint is that you can build public or private wikis, on public ones, everyone can contribute, but on private, only some users can edit and view the information, this is good to use on your company, or in some dev project, where developers can write pages and contribute writing texts about the project and it’s development.

Some facts that makes WETPAINT a great free wiki hosting service:

• It’s free
• All website is based on AJAX, which make things much more efficient and fast.
• When creating your own website, you can choose from 24 different templates, of afterwards, make your own.
• You can use tags on your posts, making it easy to find afterwards.
• It’s very easy to add/edit a post, and the editor looks like MS-Word, which people are used to, and makes the learning time shorter.
• There is an auto-generated site map, making it easier for people and search engines to find and index content, bringing more users.
• You can use Google Analytics or SiteMeter to see how many access you have on your website, so you can watch your website growing, how popular your website is, and to think what can you do to attract more users. (Google Analytics is just too good to be true on e free wiki hosting service!)

Conclusion

Wetpaint is the place for you if you want to build your own free hosted Wiki website, I believe that this project have great future, as it’s just some months old, there’s still a lot to grow. I like to see new “web 2.0″ projects, specially when they have great use and use new technologies to build it.

Well done Wetpaint!