1. What is a wiki ?

A web application which allows users to add and edit content collectively.

2. What is a private wiki ?

A private wiki is a wiki which the general public does not have access to. Only the people (users) that you grant access to, or invite to the wiki can access it.

3. What is a hosted wiki ?

This is a wiki that you can access from anywhere, and is served externally to your organization. No specialist IT infrastructure is required, you only need an internet connection to access a hosted wiki. Hosted wikis are a great way for anyone, regardless of their technical abilities, to take advantage of the power of the wiki.

4. Which browsers does ClearWiki support ?

ClearWiki has been tested with Internet Explorer 6, Intenet Explorer 7, Safari 3.0 , Firefox 1.5, and Firefox 2. ClearWiki has limited support on Opera working best with Opera 9.5 or above.

5. What advertising is displayed on free wikis and how do they work ?

On free wikis more than 30 days old, with more than 10 pages of content, adverts from the Google advertising network are displayed. The adverts use Google Adsense to target ads appropriately based purely on the URL of the wiki page. Your content itself is NOT indexed by the Google Adsense robot, only the URLs. IMPORTANT: If you have subscribed to any additional users, storage, or features, adverts will NOT be displayed on your wiki.

6. How is my data stored in ClearWiki ?

Every ClearWiki instance has its own dedicated, and separate database. This means your data is not stored in the same database as any other organization. You have a private database for your data, providing extra security.

7. Can I rename or brand my wiki ?

You can change the title (rename) or add branding to your wiki by clicking on the settings link and choosing the Wiki Branding option in the menu.

8. How do I edit wiki pages with ClearWiki ?

There are 2 ways to edit your content. ClearWiki uses a simple WYSiWYG control for editing wiki pages. Anyone familiar with typical word processing tools will find it easy to create a page with ClearWiki. You do not need any specialist knowledge of HTML or wiki languages.
However, for those users comfortable with HTML markup, pressing CTRL-H on your keyboard while using the WYSiWYG editor, will enable you to edit the raw content HTML directly. ClearWiki renders pages in XHTML which is stricter than vanilla HTML. Consequently, if you edit the raw XHTML and your markup is not valid, the ClearWiki engine will attempt to correct or clean your code. So if it appears that your code has been changed it probably has!
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML for more information on the XHTML standard.

9. Can I be notified of changes to the wiki content ?

Yes. You can be notified when your users change wiki content by Email or by subscribing to an RSS feed. If you prefer, you can be notified by Email of changes that occur only to specific items of content that you select.

10. What is the difference between an administrator and a super-user ?

An administrator can edit wiki settings, can add and invite other users, and can edit other users accounts. There must be at least one admin user.
A super-user can read and write all wiki content regardless of any access restrictions applied. A super-user does not have administrator privileges.

11. How do I add more users to my private ClearWiki ?

The user who creates a ClearWiki is a ClearWiki administrator. This user can either invite or add users using the settings link at the top of the ClearWiki page. You can then invite a user to join your ClearWiki by simply entering their email address. ClearWiki will then send the user an email containing a link to a special registration page.

12. How do I delete a user from my wiki ?

There are 2 techniques, both accessible by wiki administrators from the 'manage users' area under settings. If you want to temporarily remove a user's access to the wiki, then edit the user account and 'lock' the user. The locked user will not be able to log in, and will not count towards your total users. You can then unlock this user later. To remove a user completely, edit the user account and click on the delete option at the top of the page. Note, you cannot delete yourself!.

13. How do the Access Control Lists (ACLs) work ?

ClearWiki has a simple user interface for granting or revoking read and write access to wiki pages based on Access Control Lists. An ACL for a wiki page can be made up of individual users, or groups/teams of users, or a combination of both. Note, access control is only available on a subscription basis.

14. What is 'starring' ?

Any piece of content that you add to your ClearWiki can be 'starred'. Clicking on the star next to an item's title, flags the item as of personal interest (like a bookmark). It is then easy for you to access your starred items.

15. What is 'labelling' ?

Labelling or 'meta-tagging' is the ability to add a free-text label to any ClearWiki item (content or files). Labels are shared amongst all the users who have access to your private wiki. For example if you label an article about cars as 'car', and another user labels a different item with the same label 'car', then any user will be be able to easily see all ClearWiki items labelled 'car'. This is a knowledge management tool that becomes more useful the more it is used.

16. How does the ClearWiki search engine work ?

The ClearWiki search engine delivers search results from all content that you add to your wiki. This includes wiki pages, files, to-do lists, and users. When you upload a document (for example a Microsoft office, OpenOffice, PDF, or text file) the contents of the file are indexed by the search engine. The search engine can then match search terms against the file content, not just the file name. The search engine also uses word-stemming techniques to deliver search results based on similar word forms - for example 'fishing' would also deliver results for 'fish' and 'fished'. All search results are ranked by the search engine according to their frequency of occurance, proximity, and word-stem to deliver the best possible match.
Complex searches can be achieved using the terms AND, OR and NOT. For example you can search for cat OR dog

17. How do I view archived discussions/comments ?

To view archived comments in a discussion, click on the discussion link at the top. This will display the discussion full page. When displaying the discussion full page there is an option to view the discussion archive.

18. Can I backup my wiki ?

Yes - there is an option for a wiki administrator to download a zip file containing your wiki content. The backup can be unzipped to give a locally browseable copy of your wiki content.

19. How do I configure a custom domain for my wiki ?

Subscribers to premium features (except for SSL encryption) can set a custom domain for their wiki. For example, wiki.yourcompany.com
Wiki administrators can configre this on the Settings > Branding page. It will also require your network (or domain) administrator adding a CNAME DNS record to point your new custom domain to the original clearwiki URL. For example the CNAME record will alias wiki.yourcompany.com to yourcompany.clearwiki.com. If you subscribe to SSL encryption for your wiki, this process cannot be automated quite so easily. If you would like to have a custom domain and subscribe to SSL please contact support@clearwiki.com.