Foswiki vs. PmWiki vs. WackoWiki

General Features Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Version
2.1.11
2.5.8
6.2.1
Last Release Date
2026-03-15 (17 days ago)
2026-03-09 (23 days ago)
2026-03-03 (29 days ago)
Last Update here
2026-03-15 (17 days ago)
2026-03-09 (23 days ago)
2026-03-03 (29 days ago)
Author
Foswiki Community
Petko Yotov (Original author: Patrick R. Michaud)
WackoWiki Team
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
GPL2+
BSD
Programming Language
Perl
PHP
PHP
Data Storage
Files, RCS
Files
Database
License Cost/ Fee
$0
0
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
All
Advanced End Users, Developers, End Users/Desktop
System Requirements Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Operating System
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
Linux, UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
OS Independent
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support. Can also be run with PHP's built-in webserver.
run with the appserver/webserver of your choice
Other Requirements
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
none
mod_rewrite (optional)
Datastorage Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Text Files
Yes
Yes
No
MySQL
No
Plugin
Yes
PostgreSQL
No
No
No
Oracle
No
No
No
SQLite
No
Plugin
Yes
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
RCS
Yes
Plugin
No
Other
caching of content into database using plugins
Compressed, XML and/or ephemeral files (modules). Can provide custom data backends.
MariaDB
Security/Anti-Spam Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Internal: per page, per group, per user, per user group. External: .htpasswd, LDAP, Active Directory. Plugins: Mailman, forums w/MySQL, oAuth, custom possible.
LDAP (patch), ActiveDirectory
Host Blocking
Plugin
Optional
Optional
Mail Encryption
Yes
Optional
Optional
nofollow
Yes
Yes
Optional
Blacklist
Plugin
Optional
Yes
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Delayed Indexing
Plugin
Optional
No
Development/Support Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
118 ⭐
N/A
55 ⭐
Common Features Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
Optional
Yes
Interface Languages
22
Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
38
Arabic, Bulgarian, Breton, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Persian, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Macedonian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Albanian, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
30
Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Estonian, Persian, Finnish, French, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Tamil, Ukrainian, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
Email notification
Yes
Optional
Yes
Comments
Plugin
Discussion Pages
Flat
Categories
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Concurrent Editing
No
Yes
No
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Plugin
Yes
Patch
Structured Data
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Links Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
CamelCase
Yes
Optional
Optional
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Plugin
Yes
Yes
SisterWiki
Plugin
Plugin
No
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Page Redirects
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Syntax Features Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
HTML Tags
All
Plugin
All
Math formulas
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Plugin
Optional
No
Markdown Support
Plugin
Plugin
No
Textile Support
Plugin
No
No
BBCode Support
Plugin
Plugin
Patch
Emoticon Images
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Footnotes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Yes
Yes
No
Scripting
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
MarkupExpressions (core, many add-ons). PageLists with templates (core structured data scripting). WikiSh (plugin), Data forms (optional)
actions (PHP)
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Usability Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Section Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Toolbar
Plugin
Optional
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
Yes
Yes
Statistics Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
No
Optional
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
No
Yes
Recent Visitors
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Analysis
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Output Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Printer Friendly
Print View
Print View
Print View
Mobile Friendly
Yes
Yes
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Optional
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Yes
Optional
No
Abbreviations
Plugin
Plugin
Patch
Auto-TOC
Yes
Optional
Yes
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Plugin
Yes
XML export
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
PDF Export
Plugin
Plugin
Patch
Office Export
Plugin
Plugin
Patch
Media and Files Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Optional
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Optional
No
Embedded Flash
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Embedded Video
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Image Editing
Plugin
Plugin
No
SVG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
No
MindMap Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
Filenames only
Contents
Extras Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Presentations
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Plugin
Optional
Blogs
Plugin
Plugin
Optional
Ticket System
Plugin
Plugin
No
Chat
No
No
Patch
Syntax Examples Foswiki PmWiki WackoWiki
Internal Link
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
[[page name]]
[[page name | link text]]
[[link text -> page name]]
[[#anchor]]
[[#anchor|link to anchor]]
[[page name #anchor]]
[[InternalLink]] 
((InternalLink))
[[InternalLink alternate text]]
CamelCase
External Link
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
http://....
[[http://... | link text]]
[[link text -> http://...]]
https://wackowiki.org
[[https://wackowiki.org WackoWiki]]
[[Wikipedia:WackoWiki]]
Headlines
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
! Level 1
!!#anchor Level 2
!!! Level 3
== Level 1 ==
=== Level 2 ===
==== Level 3 ====
===== Level 4 =====
====== Level 5 ======
Bold Format
*bold*
'''bold'''
**bold**
Italics Format
_italic_
''italic''
//italics//
Underline Format
<u>underline</u>
{+underlined+}
__underline__
Monospace Format
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
@@monospace@@
##monospace##
Strikethrough Format
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
{-strikethrough-}
--strikethrough--
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
'^superscript^'
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
'_subscript_'
,,subscript,,
Images
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
https://foo.bar/foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg"alt/title text" | Caption
((image.png))
file:image.png
https://example.com/image.png
Aligning Text
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
%center% centered text
%right% right aligned
%lfloat% left floating text
%rfloat% right floating text
%rframe% right floating frame
%lframe% left floating frame
{html}<div align="right">{html}

%%(wacko wrapper="text" wrapper_align="center")
content%%
Text Indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
-> indented text
--> more indentation
-< hanging text
--< more indentation
one
two
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
alternatively, indented:
* item 1
* item 1.1
* item 2
*one
**One-two
*two
*three
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.1
# Item 2
alternatively, indented:
# Item 1
# Item 1.1
# Item 2
1. numbered List
1. numbered List-2
2.#8 numbered List, with break


Definition Lists
$ Term: Definition
: term : definition
{html}<dl>
<dt>Coffee</dt>
<dd>Black hot drink</dd>
<dt>Milk</dt>
<dd>White cold drink</dd>
</dl>{html}
Horizontal Rule
---
----
----
remove Foswiki remove PmWiki remove WackoWiki