Introduction to DokuWiki

Table of Contents

DokuWiki is a standards compliant, simple to use Wiki, mainly aimed at creating documentation of any kind. It is targeted at developer teams, workgroups and small companies. It has a simple but powerful syntax which makes sure the datafiles remain readable outside the Wiki and eases the creation of structured texts. All data is stored in plain text files no database is required.

Nowdays it can be used for a lot of things, like a wiki, note taking, podcast show notes, collaborative note taking and a lot more.

I myself use it to keep notes, save code and articles (it has version control), communication platform and study help tool.Official website of DokuWiki

What does it look like?

Key features of DokuWiki

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 where an admin user can define permissions on page and namespace level, giving it much better access control than Mediawiki.

Plugins

DokuWiki has a generic plugin interface which simplifies the process of writing and maintaining plugins. There are over 750 plugins available. These can be easily integrated and managed by an admin user with the help of the plugin manager.

Templates

The appearance of the wiki can be defined by a template. There are templates to make it resemble a MediaWiki site, or a popular blogging platform and more.

Internationalization and localization

DokuWiki supports Unicode (UTF-8), so languages such as Chinese, Thai, and Hebrew can be displayed. DokuWiki can be configured in about 40 languages.

Installing and upgrading

Install is very simple, extract the archive to a webserver. Upgrading also, backup your data & media directory and replace the files with the newer ones.
Your webserver only needs PHP. I've run it on NGINX, Apache2, Lighttpd and Cherokee. Everything which supports PHP mostly...
Also, auto-installers like Installotron and Softalicious have dokuwiki in it.