Features of PmWiki

Costs & reputation

License

Free software licensed under the GNU GPL

User support On website, eg FAQ, troubleshooting guide, specific error messages descriptions, and by mailing lists (also in German, Spanish, French)
Reviews Favorable

System

Server Requirements PHP 5.3 or newer recommended, 5.2 minimum; developed and tested with the latest PHP version (7.4 as of January 2020); can run in safe mode.

See web hosts and the Standalone recipe.

Page storage Flat files; no need for a database. Can handle thousands of pages. See Flat File Advantages.
Upgrades By simply copying new version files or export from the Subversion repository
There are nearly 400 recipes.

Security

SPAM protection By blocking words, IP addresses (option), and by limiting the quantity of non-approved URLs (option), by encrypting the email address (addon)
Passwords Page, group or site based, see also passwords administration
User authentication Available as an option (AuthUser) or an addon (UserAuth).

Features

Features at a glance and a detailed list of Features
Page editing Similar to others wikis. Has a button bar and Preview capability. Handles simultaneous edits. Optional save-as-draft feature. Addon for spell checking
Page history History pages include Restore links. Configurable number of days and number of revisions of history.
Free links and WikiWords Wiki Word links are an option in version 2.1. In previous releases they were enabled by default.
Intersites links (InterMap) Configurable by the administrator or defined in the Site.InterMap page.
Groups and hierarchy One level only, handles menus and styling by groups, see Wiki architecture
Categories Organise and find related pages with special Category markup.
Navigation trails Allow wiki authors to create "trails" through sequences of pages in the wiki.
Search tools Search the entire site or the current group. Administrator may exclude pages from appearing in search results. Pre-defined searches are also available.
Email-notification of revised pages Option, by admin, site based: enable Notify in the local/config of the page(s) you want to monitor.
Web Feeds Optional RSS, Atom, and Dublin Core syndication feeds as well as feed links to enable autodiscovery of the feeds
Podcasting Web feed enclosures are supported.
Publish as static pages Available as Cookbook recipe Cookbook.StaticPages
International versions See Other languages. Handles accented characters and UTF-8.
Page renaming addon
Site Map Available via the pagelists directive.
Backlinks Available since version 2.0.beta33
New page templates new page edit templates

Layout

Skins By admin, can be table or CSS based, addon for switching by users and interactive configuration
Layout modifications By admin and by user, see group headers
Printable layout Suppress menu, make link list and miscellaneous reformatting
Style and custom markup
Tables Tables and Table Directives
Table Edit Addon - table editor
Page table of contents Addon - see also numbered headers
Inclusion in page Of other pages (part or complete)
Anchors In same or other page
User uploaded attachments Option to set
Images resizing and galleries By addons, see also the category images
Forms Forms may be embedded in wiki pages.
In browser drawing edit By addon, need java enabled on browser.
User preferences Option. See also the SkinChange add-on.

HTML details

Handles HTML meta informations Keywords (site, group or page based), automatic noindex, nofollow for utility pages
HTML compatibility XHTML 1.0 transitional, may differ for miscellaneous skins
allow embedding of html in wiki pages Cookbook:enable HTML
Browser caching Option
Nice URLs See also $EnablePathInfo in LayoutVariables
Hide e-mail addresses Addon

Miscellaneous addons

Calendar Each date becomes a wiki page. There are two possible implementations: WikiCalendar and PmCalendar. CopyPasteCalendar is another option (relies solely upon core PmWiki features).
Latex in Wiki
Publish trails
Forum There are 2 addons: Forum and SimpleForum
Guestbook
For the full list ... See the Cookbook recipes.

Administration details

Wiki farms To have multiple wikis with a single installation of the wiki engine
Missing and orphan pages search Option - You can also list orphan and missing attachments (addon)

Elements which are not listed as features and are strengths of PmWiki :

  • Small code base (under 2 MB)
  • Many parameters are handled by pages, without having the need to open system files, which greatly helps the Wiki administration.
  • While there is only one major developer, there is a very active community and most addons are from independent people.

Add a new feature you would like to see in PmWiki as a new PITS entry marked Feature Request, or use one of the mailing lists to brainstorm new features.

Enjoy!

This page may have a more recent version on pmwiki.org: PmWiki:PmWikiFeatures, and a talk page: PmWiki:PmWikiFeatures-Talk.