MediaWiki vs. Zwiki vs. PmWiki

General Features MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Version
1.45.3
0.61
2.7.4
Last Release Date
2025-12-04 (8 months ago)
2008-10-28 (17 years ago)
2026-07-31 (25 days ago)
Last Update here
2026-06-03 (2 months ago)
2008-10-30 (17 years ago)
2026-07-31 (25 days ago)
Author
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
Simon Michael & the Zwiki dev team
Petko Yotov (Original author: Patrick R. Michaud)
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
GPLv2
GPL2+
Programming Language
PHP
Python
PHP
Data Storage
Database
Database
Files
License Cost/ Fee
0
0
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
End Users/Desktop, Education
anyone able to install or get access to a zope server
All
System Requirements MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Operating System
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
any
Linux, UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Any with PHP support
Zope
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support. Can also be run with PHP's built-in webserver.
Other Requirements
none
none
Datastorage MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Text Files
No
Plugin
Yes
MySQL
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
PostgreSQL
Yes
Plugin
No
Oracle
No
Plugin
No
SQLite
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
BerkeleyDB
No
Unknown
No
RCS
No
Unknown
Plugin
Other
No
ZODB (zope object database)
Compressed, XML and/or ephemeral files (modules). Can provide custom data backends.
Security/Anti-Spam MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
No
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
Yes
any supported by Zope authentication plugins
Internal: per page, per group, per user, per user group. External: .htpasswd, LDAP, Active Directory. Plugins: Mailman, forums w/MySQL, oAuth, custom possible.
Host Blocking
Yes
Patch
Optional
Mail Encryption
Plugin
Yes
Optional
nofollow
Optional
Unknown
Yes
Blacklist
Yes
Yes
Optional
CAPTCHA
Plugin
No
Plugin
Delayed Indexing
No
Patch
Optional
Development/Support MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
#zwiki on freenode
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
N/A
Common Features MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
No
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 MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Yes
Optional
Optional
Interface Languages
140
Afar, Abkhazian, Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Bihari, Bislama, Bengali; Bangla, Tibetan, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Bhutani, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian, Basque, Persian, Finnish, Fiji, Faroese, French, Frisian, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Galician, Guarani, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Armenian, Interlingua, Indonesian, Interlingue, Inupiak, Icelandic, Italian, Inuktitut, Japanese, Georgian, Kazakh, Greenlandic, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Kirghiz, Latin, Lingala, Laothian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Malagasy, Maori, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mongolian, Moldavian, Marathi, Malay, Maltese, Burmese, Nauru, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian, Occitan, Oromo, Oriya, Punjabi, Polish, Pashto, Pushto, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Quechua, Rhaeto-Romance, Kirundi, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Sangho, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Samoan, Shona, Somali, Albanian, Serbian, Siswati, Sesotho, Sundanese, Swedish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Tajik, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkmen, Tagalog, Setswana, Tonga, Turkish, Tsonga, Tatar, Twi, Uighur, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Volapuk, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zhuang, Chinese, Chinese Traditional, Zulu
0
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
Email notification
Optional
Yes
Optional
Comments
Discussion Pages
Flat
Discussion Pages
Categories
Yes
No
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
No
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Detection
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
No
Unknown
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Structured Data
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Links MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
CamelCase
No
Optional
Optional
Freelinks
Yes
Optional
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Yes
Yes
SisterWiki
No
No
Plugin
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
No
Unknown
Yes
Page Redirects
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Syntax Features MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
HTML Tags
Some
Optional
Plugin
Math formulas
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
No
No
Optional
Markdown Support
Plugin
No
Plugin
Textile Support
No
No
No
BBCode Support
No
No
Plugin
Emoticon Images
Optional
Patch
Plugin
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
No
Optional
Footnotes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Unknown
Optional
Yes
Scripting
Optional
DTML
MarkupExpressions (core, many add-ons). PageLists with templates (core structured data scripting). WikiSh (plugin), Data forms (optional)
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Usability MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Section Editing
Yes
No
Plugin
Page Templates
Yes
No
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Optional
Patch
Plugin
Toolbar
Yes
No
Optional
WYSIWYG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
Yes
Yes
Statistics MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Yes
No
Optional
Orphaned Pages
Yes
Optional
Optional
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Optional
No
Recent Visitors
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Analysis
Optional
No
Plugin
Output MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print View
Print View
Mobile Friendly
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Optional
ATOM Feeds
Yes
No
Optional
Abbreviations
No
Unknown
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Plugin
XML export
Yes
Yes
Plugin
PDF Export
Plugin
Patch
Plugin
Office Export
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Media and Files MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Optional
Media Revisions
Yes
No
Optional
Embedded Flash
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Embedded Video
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Image Editing
No
No
Plugin
SVG Editing
No
No
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Plugin
No
Plugin
Media Search
Keywords
Filenames only
Filenames only
Extras MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Calendar
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Image Galleries
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Presentations
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Blogs
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Ticket System
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Chat
Unknown
Unknown
No
Syntax Examples MediaWiki Zwiki PmWiki
Internal Link
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
WikiName
[freeform name]
[[double-bracketed]]
[[page name]]
[[page name | link text]]
[[link text -> page name]]
[[#anchor]]
[[#anchor|link to anchor]]
[[page name #anchor]]
External Link
[http://example.org The title]
Bare urls plus markup-specific 
link syntax. This and all 
following syntax examples depend 
on which markup mode is used for 
a page, including:

restructured text, structured 
text, wikiwikiweb, moinmoin, 
html, plaintext..
http://....
[[http://... | link text]]
[[link text -> http://...]]
Headlines
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
! Level 1
!!#anchor Level 2
!!! Level 3
Bold Format
'''bold'''
'''bold'''
Italics Format
''italic''
''italic''
Underline Format
<u>underlined</u>
{+underlined+}
Monospace Format
<tt>monospace</tt>
@@monospace@@
Strikethrough Format
<s>strikethrough</s>
{-strikethrough-}
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
'^superscript^'
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
'_subscript_'
Images
[[Image:wiki.png]]
https://foo.bar/foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg"alt/title text" | Caption
Aligning Text
<center>Centered</center>
%center% centered text
%right% right aligned
%lfloat% left floating text
%rfloat% right floating text
%rframe% right floating frame
%lframe% left floating frame
Text Indentation
: indented line
-> indented text
--> more indentation
-< hanging text
--< more indentation
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
alternatively, indented:
* item 1
* item 1.1
* item 2
Numbered Lists
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.1
# Item 2
alternatively, indented:
# Item 1
# Item 1.1
# Item 2
Definition Lists
; term : definition
: term : definition
Horizontal Rule
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remove MediaWiki remove Zwiki remove PmWiki