PhpWiki vs. PmWiki vs. TWiki vs. MediaWiki

General Features PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Version
phpwiki-1.3.14
2.5.5
TWiki-6.1.0
1.32.2
Last Release Date
2007-07-01 (18 years ago)
2026-01-10 (2 days ago)
2018-07-16 (7 years ago)
2019-06-06 (6 years ago)
Last Update here
2009-04-03 (16 years ago)
2026-01-10 (2 days ago)
2019-07-19 (6 years ago)
2019-06-21 (6 years ago)
Author
Steve Wainstead, Jeff Dairiki, Reini Urban, Carsten Klapp, Marc-Etienne Vargenau
Petko Yotov (Original author: Patrick R. Michaud)
Peter Thoeny, TWiki community
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
GPL2+
GPL
GPL
Programming Language
PHP
PHP
Perl, JavaScript
PHP
Data Storage
Database, Files, RCS
Files
Files, RCS
Database
License Cost/ Fee
0
0
N/A
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Any
All
Large enterprise; small to medium businesses
End Users/Desktop, Education
System Requirements PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Operating System
UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Linux, UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Linux, Windows, OS-X and other
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
Root Access
No
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support. Can also be run with PHP's built-in webserver.
Almost any webserver, typically Apache and Ngnix
Any with PHP support
Other Requirements
various opt. helpers
none
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
none
Datastorage PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Text Files
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
MySQL
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
PostgreSQL
Yes
No
No
Yes
Oracle
Yes
No
No
Yes
SQLite
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
BerkeleyDB
Yes
No
No
No
RCS
Yes
Plugin
Yes
No
Other
gdbm, cvs, MSSQL, ... (ADODB, PearDB)
Compressed, XML and/or ephemeral files (modules). Can provide custom data backends.
RcsLite Perl library for version control without external RCS; backend API for other storage
No
Security/Anti-Spam PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Authentication Backends
db, session, pop, imap, ldap, file, webserver
Internal: per page, per group, per user, per user group. External: .htpasswd, LDAP, Active Directory. Plugins: Mailman, forums w/MySQL, oAuth, custom possible.
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Yes
Host Blocking
No
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Mail Encryption
No
Optional
Yes
Plugin
nofollow
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Blacklist
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
CAPTCHA
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Delayed Indexing
No
Optional
Plugin
No
Development/Support PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
#phpwiki
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Common Features PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
Optional
No
Yes
Interface Languages
9
German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, 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
19
Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
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
Email notification
Yes
Optional
Yes
Optional
Comments
Plugin
Discussion Pages
Threaded
Discussion Pages
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Unknown
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Yes
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Structured Data
Patch
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Links PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
CamelCase
Yes
Optional
Yes
No
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
SisterWiki
No
Plugin
Plugin
No
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Yes
Yes
Plugin
No
Page Redirects
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Features PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
HTML Tags
Some
Plugin
All
Some
Math formulas
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
No
Optional
No
No
Markdown Support
No
Plugin
No
No
Textile Support
No
No
Plugin
No
BBCode Support
No
Plugin
No
No
Emoticon Images
No
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Footnotes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Yes
Plugin
Yes
No
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
No
Yes
Yes
No
Scripting
plugins, templates, PHP
MarkupExpressions (core, many add-ons). PageLists with templates (core structured data scripting). WikiSh (plugin), Data forms (optional)
TWiki Markup Language, TWiki variables, JavaScript, extensive API
Optional
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Usability PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Section Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Optional
Toolbar
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Statistics PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Analysis
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Output PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print View
Print View
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
No
Yes
Plugin
No
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
No
Optional
Yes
Yes
Abbreviations
No
Plugin
Plugin
No
Auto-TOC
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
XML export
No
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
PDF Export
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Office Export
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Unknown
Media and Files PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Embedded Video
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
No
SVG Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
No
MindMap Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
No
Filenames only
Contents
Keywords
Extras PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Calendar
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Presentations
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Unknown
Forums
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
No
Ticket System
No
Plugin
Plugin
No
Chat
Unknown
No
Unknown
Unknown
Syntax Examples PhpWiki PmWiki TWiki MediaWiki
Internal Link
WikiWord or [somelink]
[ desc | pagename ]
[[page name]]
[[page name | link text]]
[[link text -> page name]]
[[#anchor]]
[[#anchor|link to anchor]]
[[page name #anchor]]
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
External Link
http://someserver/someurl
[ desc | exturl ]
http://....
[[http://... | link text]]
[[link text -> http://...]]
http://twiki.org/ autolink
[[http://twiki.org/][label]]
[http://example.org The title]
Headlines
!!!Headline1
!!Headline2
!Headline3
! Level 1
!!#anchor Level 2
!!! Level 3
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
Bold Format
*bold* or
<strong>bold</strong>
'''bold'''
*bold*
'''bold'''
Italics Format
_italics_ or 
or
<em>italics</em>
''italic''
_italic_
''italic''
Underline Format
<u>underlined</u>
{+underlined+}
<u>underline</u>
<u>underlined</u>
Monospace Format
<tt>monospace</tt>
<code>code</code>
<pre>preformatted</pre>
<verbatim>
unparsed text</verbatim>


@@monospace@@
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
<tt>monospace</tt>
Strikethrough Format
<strike>striked through</strike>
{-strikethrough-}
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
<s>strikethrough</s>
Superscript Format
<sup>above</sup>
'^superscript^'
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
Subscript Format
<sub>below</sub>
'_subscript_'
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
Images
[ http://foo.org/1.jpg size=30%] 
external image
[Upload:view.jpg align=right size=50x40] 
view uploaded image
[Upload:view.jpg | http://server/external-linkjpg ] 
view and link to another image
https://foo.bar/foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg"alt/title text" | Caption
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
[[Image:wiki.png]]
Aligning Text
<?plugin RawHtml <span align="right"> ?>right<?plugin RawHtml </span> ?>
or <div align="right"> right </div>

%center% centered text
%right% right aligned
%lfloat% left floating text
%rfloat% right floating text
%rframe% right floating frame
%lframe% left floating frame
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
<center>Centered</center>
Text Indentation
;: left indent
;;: more left indent

or 
paragraph
and another level 
-> indented text
--> more indentation
-< hanging text
--< more indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
: indented line
Bulleted Lists
* list
or
- list
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
alternatively, indented:
* item 1
* item 1.1
* item 2
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
Numbered Lists
# list
# Item 1
## Item 1.1
# Item 2
alternatively, indented:
# Item 1
# Item 1.1
# Item 2
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
Definition Lists
Term:<def>
def
: term : definition
$ Term: Definition
; term : definition
Horizontal Rule
----
----
---
----
remove PhpWiki remove PmWiki remove TWiki remove MediaWiki