Chances are, if you ever type “how” into Google, you’ll land on WikiHow sooner or later. The site has so many answers, you might start to believe there’s no such thing as a question too weird to ask.
As of August 2025, trending articles include “how to be a good boy” (balanced out, of course, by “how to be a bad boy”), but dig deeper into its 259,255+ articles and you’ll find gems like “how to calculate Pi by throwing frozen hot dog wieners,” “how to breathe,” and my personal favorite, “how to apologize to a cat.” (Honestly, that one feels essential.)
Mixed in with these quirky entries are straightforward, practical guides like “how to write a love letter,” “how to apply perfume,” and “how to play checkers.” This strange cocktail of useful, weird, and wonderful—paired with those unforgettable illustrations—is what makes WikiHow, well… WikiHow.
But as silly as some topics seem, founder Jack Herrick told Wired the goal was always to give everyone on the planet a “practical education.” That means covering things you might laugh at but that others genuinely wonder about—yes, even apologizing to cats.
Herrick himself swears by their “how to tie a tie” guide. “It’s actually really hard,” he said, adding that it helped his 14-year-old son go to his first dance. “I gave him the WikiHow article and watched him do it.”
Herrick launched WikiHow in 2005, after first creating eHow, a similar site that paid contributors but struggled with quality. “It just wasn’t working,” he told Wired.
Then came the “aha” moment in 2004, when he discovered Wikipedia. “It was clear it was going to be an amazing resource and become the best site on the internet. And I said: ‘If this works for an encyclopedia, does it work for a how-to guide?’”
Using open-source wiki software, Herrick launched WikiHow on Wikipedia’s birthday—January 15, 2005.
“Pretty much nothing happened,” he admitted. “In those first days, we had almost no users, almost no edits. I think we had 2,000 people visit us that first month.”
But Herrick stayed hands-on, sending personal notes to early contributors. “Anyone who edited the site, I’d send them a personal note,” he said. “It was that level of detail. I would look over every single change.”
That effort paid off. Volunteer editor Eric Wester, for instance, stumbled upon WikiHow in 2007. “I don’t remember the specific article that was featured that first brought me to WikiHow, although I was hooked pretty quickly,” he said.
Now, Wester does everything from writing articles to moderating pages for deletion and training new editors: “It’s fun to be able to learn more about people’s passions and then help point them in the direction of an editing tool that they might really find their niche in.”
And while the lighthearted guides usually get all the buzz, WikiHow has also genuinely saved lives. Wester once co-authored an article on checking for skin cancer.
“One anonymous reader came across that article and, because they read the article, they were able to detect and seek skin cancer treatment for a loved one which potentially saved their life,” he said. “That anonymous editor who stumbled across the article also went on to create an account and become an active editor on WikiHow.”
Reviews on Trustpilot echo this impact: Logan said WikiHow helped him tackle tough stains, install light switches, and even handle parenting challenges. Sex educator Pam shared that she’s a “huge fan” and often refers parents to the site. Zohrain credited it with helping him pass his math finals: “WikiHow is my savior!”