Case study: clipclip.pbworks.com

I interviewed Chih-Chao Lam, who runs clipclip.pbworks.com, to understand how his team uses the wiki — and how they got it to look so beautiful.

How do you use clipclip.pbworks.com?
Initially, we wanted to get user feedback. But mostly, it’s for internal use now to get everyone on the same page, to get product plans, to compile lists of things we want to do. Ad hoc collaboration. The product we’re working on is a few things: Clipclip.com is a web2.0 service, and the primary feature of it allows you to clip things off any page. URL.com is a social metasearch engine that we just launched.
Why’d you choose PBwiki?
Primarily because I met David Weekly at SHDH and heard about it. We tried several others including the Track Wiki, and we liked it best because it was simple to use and things worked. The simplicity of it meshes well with HTML. What has been the biggest surprise for you in using PBwiki?
Good clip of features that you’ve been gently been introducing over the last year. For example, intermingling HTML and Wiki syntax together, and both working seamlessly was a nice surprise. Would you recommend PBwiki to others?
Yeah, and I have! I tell them that it’s really easy to set up if they need something lightweight collaboration, it’s a good tool.

Your wiki is gorgeous. How’d you do that?
We wanted it to be community-focused, and we wanted to mesh it with our own web site (http://clipclip.org), so we wanted to make it look consistent. It took our designer maybe a day’s effort.

How do you think has PBwiki helped you succeed?
Because we’re so distributed and we work in such an ad hoc fashion, it’s a great collaboration tool. It’s a great communication tool. It’s a great way to get everyone on the same page.

Sachiko Kwan, the wiki designer

To be a featured case study on PBwiki, email ramit@pbworks.com

-Ramit Sethi, PBwiki co-founder