DokuWiki
Wiki software
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Related on Lably
Through Documentation and Parsing
History
DokuWiki was created by Andreas Gohr in June 2004. In July, the first official release was published on Freshmeat (now known as Freecode).
Originally, DokuWiki used a simple list of regular expressions to transform wiki syntax into HTML. A big step forward in the development was the re-design of the parser and the renderer mechanisms based on contributions by Harry Fuecks in January 2005. The new design made use of the then-new object-oriented features of PHP4. The new parser and the introduction of a cache mechanism led to significant performance improvements, thus making DokuWiki usable for larger projects.
The new parser also prepared DokuWiki for the introduction of a generic plugin interface which simplified the development and maintenance of syntax-based plugins. Over the years, additional plugin mechanisms followed which allowed third-party developers to extend nearly all aspects of the wiki software.
The introduction of DokuWiki into the Debian and Gentoo Linux distributions in April and July 2005, respectively, significantly increased the visibility of the software.
The DokuWiki logo is the result of a design contest. The winning logo, designed by Esther Brunner, represents editing pages (by pencils of different colors, i.e. different people) and linking them.
For many years, DokuWiki's source code was managed through the Darcs distributed version control system. In 2010 a switch to Git was made, making use of GitHub for hosting.
Today, DokuWiki is one of the most widely used wiki engines available and has achieved significant usage with stable interest over time.
Release history
Since 2011, releases are named after Discworld characters.
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Main features
- Installation and Requirements
- DokuWiki requires only a webserver and PHP; no database is needed. It can run on cheap web hosting servers and is usually installed by simply unpacking. Additional plugins may have additional requirements.
- Revision control
- DokuWiki stores all versions of each wiki page, allowing the user to compare the current version with any older version. The difference engine is the same as the one used in MediaWiki. Parallel editing of one page by multiple users is prevented by a locking mechanism.
- Access control
- Access control can be handled by a user manager, which allows users and groups of users to be defined, and an access control list in which an administrator user can define permissions on page and namespace level, giving DokuWiki more fine-grained control than Mediawiki. Besides the built-in user management, DokuWiki also provides mechanisms for authentication against databases, LDAP Servers and Active Directory. Other authentication mechanisms are available as plugins.
- Plugins
- DokuWiki has a generic plugin interface which simplifies the process of writing and maintaining plugins. There are ≈1000 plugins available. These can be easily integrated and managed by an administrator user with the help of the plugin manager.
- Templates
- The appearance of the wiki can be defined by a template. There are various templates provided by the development community.
- Internationalization and localization
- DokuWiki supports Unicode (UTF-8) and properly handles right-to-left languages, so languages such as Chinese, Thai, and Hebrew can be displayed. DokuWiki can be configured in about 70 languages. Multilingual wikis can be configured through plugins. Users can contribute translations of the DokuWiki software and of plugins through a web interface.
- Caching
- DokuWiki uses a two-level cache mechanism which stores the parsed wiki page in an intermediate serialized format which is then rendered to the desired output format, such as HTML5. This rendered format is cached again. The two levels of caching expire on different conditions. The caching helps to reduce server load and speeds up access to the information.
- Full text search
- DokuWiki has an integrated indexed search with which a user can search for keywords and phrases on the wiki.
- Wiki markup
- DokuWiki uses a simple markup language similar to that of MediaWiki. Like MediaWiki, it makes use of free links, but CamelCase links can optionally be enabled. WYSIWYG editors are available as plugins.
DokuWiki based software projects
Some independent software projects based on DokuWiki have been created. These projects usually bundle the DokuWiki software, select plugins, a customized design and sometimes pre-built content for specialized use cases.
- The EinsatzleiterWiki is a German project, bundling fire fighting knowledge in a package that can be installed in fire departments and then be customized to the needs of the specific department. The wiki is used by the professional fire services of Berlin, Kaiserslautern, Wuppertal and many voluntary fire services in Germany.
- open|SchulPortfolio is a German project aimed at the internal management of schools. It has been created with input from the ministry of education of the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
- ICKEWiki is a redistribution of DokuWiki with a focus on the use in enterprises. It was originally developed in a research project focusing on adding structured data to wikis and making it more usable in industrial production companies.
As required by DokuWiki's license these projects are all licensed under the GPL version 2.