MediaWiki is a collaborative publishing system that powers Wikipedia and thousands of other reference sites. Its page-oriented editing model is designed for collections of linked information maintained by multiple contributors, from small community projects to large public encyclopedias.
Content is organised using pages, namespaces and categories rather than a rigid document hierarchy. The software preserves revisions and provides discussion and moderation mechanisms that make changes visible and accountable. Administrators can tailor an installation through configuration, skins and an extensive extension ecosystem.
MediaWiki is especially appropriate when a site expects many independent editors and needs transparent responsibility for changes. Public projects often develop conventions for naming, citations and dispute resolution alongside the software itself. Smaller teams can use the same underlying editorial machinery, although making a highly customised intranet can involve more configuration than choosing a documentation-first wiki.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Keep a complete page revision history with comparisons and rollback tools.
- Use namespaces, categories, redirects and templates to organise content.
- Create reusable page content with templates and parser functions.
- Manage permissions using user groups and protected pages.
- Support uploaded files and automatically generated image thumbnails.
- Provide search across article text and titles, with optional search backends.
- Add functionality with extensions and change presentation using skins.
- Offer multilingual interfaces and language-specific content conventions.
- Integrate with external services through APIs and maintenance tools.
- Use talk pages, watchlists and notifications to coordinate edits.
Website: mediawiki.org
Support:
Developer: Wikimedia Foundation and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
MediaWiki is written in PHP. Learn PHP with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Wiki Engines | |
|---|---|
| Wiki.js | Wiki engine running on Node.js and written in JavaScript |
| MediaWiki | Collaborative editing software that runs Wikipedia |
| XWiki | Enterprise wiki written in Java |
| TiddlyWiki | Personal wiki and non-linear notebook |
| DokuWiki | Targeted at developer teams, workgroups and small companies |
| Docmost | Collaborative wiki and documentation software |
| Tiki Wiki | Wiki-based content management system |
| BookStack | Platform to create documentation/wiki content |
| Gollum | Simple wiki system built on top of Git |
| PmWiki | Offers a simple-to-install system |
| JSPWiki | Built around the standard J2EE components of Java, servlets and JSP |
| Foswiki | Supports the embedding of active and passive macros |
| WackoWiki | Small, lightweight, handy, expandable, multilingual written in PHP |
| PhpWiki | Wiki engine written in PHP |
| MoinMoin | Advanced, easy to use and extensible wiki engine implemented in Python |
| TWiki | Easy to use enterprise wiki and collaboration platform |
| Otter Wiki | Python-based wiki for collaborative content management |
| Wiki-Go | Flat-file wiki platform |
| LeafWiki | Lightweight self-hosted wiki |
| WikkaWiki | Flexible, lightweight, standards-compliant wiki engine |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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