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To be good at something is to be wrong at (almost) everything. At least, that’s one way of putting it. Some things are rather difficult to learn, whereas other things are easy to learn, yet hard to master. Learning comes in many form factors – learning at school, learning on the job, or even learning by yourself. And when learning by yourself proves difficult, the internet is human’s best friend. And nine out of ten times, the Google Search often showcases at least ONE WikiHow article.

The process towards the WikiHow article “How to Grocery Shopping on a Budget” (grammar error on title, RIP) comes as a rather interesting journey. The goal was to educate and showcase how one can provide nourishment for themselves with a limited budget that money spent is not meant to exceed. To create a sense of uniqueness, most of the research was done less online and more in the real world – by going grocery shopping. Reading other WikiHow articles did help with layout and formatting, but coding a web page for inexperienced users can prove to be a challenge. 

Pictures was of course, no easy task. Being instructed to provide photos owned by the article user and NOT stock WikiHow images, or even free stock images from sites such as Unsplash proved to be a tedious procedure. Plus in grocery shopping, there is ALWAYS brand names and copyright issues leaving the user to edit the photos so the article doesn’t get taken down. It isn’t difficult to edit a photo, it’s just tedious… sometimes. 

Managing the project is no easy work if WikiHow is a first time thing for someone. Knowing the flow, knowing what information to share, knowing what information that can be EDITED at any time proves to be a challenge. But challenges should be fun! And this one is, because how does one want to share knowledge to the world? Wikis are a good way, under the risk that some anonymous user can edit it at ANY TIME, and surely enough, there are several wiki articles that were probably edited over the course of the article’s timeline.

There are many WikiHow articles on how to grocery shop, but very few on grocery shopping under a limited or specific budget, which is often overlooked because we as consumers are inclined (at least, most of the time) to consumerism. Many thought the concept was very difficult, but not impossible, but it is indeed a proven fact that grocery shopping can be successful under finite amounts of money. Food is one of the three necessities in Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the first being physiological needs. One does NOT need a lot of money to feed themselves - just some extra steps really. And the steps included on “How to Grocery Shopping on a Budget” will show the steps needed to ensure one spends less, and gets more. Less is more, folks.

Reading other WikiHow articles often shows the words “you,your” etc., and the goal of this specific WikiHow project was to create an OBJECTIVE article. P.S - objective means viewing through several different points. The goal was to create a factual wiki, not a subjective one. This proves challenging because often as writers, blog posters, even artists often want to put their own personalities into writing - and while this can apply here, one must also balance facts and entertainment. Well, the point here was to create a tutorial that objectively works, and the most difficult part is to contain any impulses of subjectivity, as we as a human race are such. Another point to note is not to suggest what readers should do, but tell what readers should do when reading the wiki. While WikiHow articles are often suggestive, many others have one specific way in a tutorial. This article is no exception, because the end goal is to teach and inform.

While creating a WikiHow article, one thing to notice is “how will this be presentable?” Almost no being on Earth, for example, will want to eat food that does NOT look good, or as advertised, and for the wiki, it was trying to convey information while creating a pleasant experience for viewers to read. Presentation is one thing many of us take for granted, with another lying example being how Apple spends a lot of time and money into their unboxing mechanisms, and how clean they are. One word: PRESENTATION. Many often get caught up in the flow that sometimes they forget to create a presentable product, and this WikiHow project is no different. Coding a web page, again, is no easy task, and even copying another wiki’s code and pasting self-created information was challenging, because how will it promote presentability? 

tl;dr this wiki was a challenge, very tedious challenge, but proved to be fun