Who wants to type in all the pointy brackets and other mark up just to write web pages? And why not write pages in the place where they should be displayed? This can be answered different, CMS, Blog, Wiki. I like wikis …

I never liked the traditional wiki link syntax "CamelCase"¹⁾, so the wikis I installed, have one thing in common: No CamelCase necessary. And following wikis all run with php and Apache .. sometimes one won't get more.

These pages run with DokuWiki.

• Pro:
  • no database necessary
  • nested name spaces
  • Access Control Lists possible (for groups and users, on name spaces or single pages)
  • Diff²⁾
  • Footnotes³⁾
  • mostly logical and simple usage⁴⁾
  • content are simple text files on the web server - easy backup possible, can be also changed by other tools.
  • clear simple architecture
  • valid XHTML
  • layout with template, more templates and plugins available
    • in this DokuWiki installation I use the Better Navigation Template, the main plugins are: gallery (with small modifications) and include
• Cons:
  • a bit slow
  • only for medium sized wikis (no database)
  • (?)

* it is easy to miscount the intention spaces for list elements

I administrate some smaller installations of Mediawiki, that is the software used by Wikipedia.

• Pro:
  • very large functional range
  • proved to scale up very large
  • exhaustive documentation
  • a lot of users already know the syntax from the large encyclopedia …
• Cons:
  • access control is not very enhanced
  • syntax is a bit complex (e.g. tables)
  • database necessary (most common: mysql)

My first two self installed wikis were PWP-Wikis.

• Pros:
• very low requirements (I've had an quite old PHP)
• export to static html pages possible (create web pages on a secure inside place, transfer static pages to web server which won't need php)
• Cons:
• No ACL (in Version 1.4.0), authorization by other means ⁵⁾
• no diff
• syntax is less familiar (for Wikipedians)
• HTML not valid (except you change the PHP), the provided CSS creates pixel-based design

• Wikimatrix - Compare the features of various popular Wiki engines
• We held a BOF at the SANE 2006 conference: Wiki at the Enterprise