To find the best wiki software for our readers, we have been using more than 15 wiki software to build wiki websites and kept monitoring the sites closely since last September. In addition, we have read a pile of reviews from real users. As a result, we found that DokuWiki, MediaWiki and PmWiki are the best 3.
Each of the 3 selected applications comes with a lot of features that are extremely useful for creating wiki sites with rich content. Besides, the 3 software is very easy to use. Below, we have worked out a post to list the main information about the 3 applications to help our readers know more about them.
DokuWiki
DokuWiki is user-friendly and standards-compliant, which is suitable for users to create any documentation and mainly designed for developer teams, small companies and workgroups. This software has many highlights. The most significant one is its simple syntax ensuring readers can read the data files outside the wiki create and structure new texts easily.
Besides, by using DokuWiki to build your wiki site, you are allowed to revise the pages whenever you need, customize Interwiki links, upload and embed images and other media. Moreover, with the toolbar and access keys, it easy for users to edit the contents of websites, even for people who are beginners. Additionally, the section editing of this application enables the user to edit small parts of a page. More tempting features are listed below.
- Support for more than 30 languages.
- Automatic table of contents generation.
- Spam blacklist & extended access control lists.
Mediawiki
Written in PHP, Mediawiki is free and for use on Wikipedia originally. As one of the most powerful, scalable and feature-rich software, Mediawiki is suitable for webmasters to set up a website with millions of hits every day. Now, except Wikipedia, a couple of other projects of Wikipedia Foundation and many other wikis are using this software, including the home of this application.
By using this software to build wiki sites, site owners are able to keep track of edits. There is a link “Watch this article for me” at every page, by clicking which readers are able to get a watch list. Besides, users have the ability to view the recent changes to the pages linked from the current page. In this way, visitors are able to learn the changes to this page. Besides, users are allowed to appoint a real name they want to use for author credits.
More highlights of Mediawiki are:
- Compatible output & tidy integration.
- Different skins for users to present sites in different ways.
- User styles enable users to adapt the look and feel of the site.
PmWiki
From all the wiki software we have reviewed, PmWiki is one of the most highly recommended ones. Because PmWiki is a wiki-based system for maintenance and collaborative creation of websites, its pages act and look like normal pages. Besides, people who know little about HTML and CSS are able to modify existing pages and add new pages with the least effort being made because there is an Edit link helping webmasters do these things using basic editing rules.
What’s more, to ensure the security of users’ wiki sites, PmWiki offers SPAM protection by blocking IP addresses & words, encrypting the email address, and limiting the quality of non-approved URLs. Moreover, the security of passwords are ensured because PmWiki supports multiple levels of access to wiki pages and allows users to set an admin password that can be used to overcome the locked passwords.
More outstanding features:
- The ability to handle thousands of pages.
- Feed links to enable discovery of the feeds.
- Forms may be embedded in wiki pages.
Recommended Wiki Hosting
No matter which software you choose, you need to choose a quality web hosting company to host your site. In this case, a web host offers fast hosting speed, satisfying uptime, rich features and quality technical support is a good option.
