Foswiki vs. MediaWiki vs. MoinMoin vs. PmWiki

General Features Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Version
2.1.8
1.32.2
1.9.11
2.3.33
Last Release Date
2023-08-05 (9 months ago)
2019-06-05 (4 years ago)
2020-11-07 (3 years ago)
2024-04-20 (28 days ago)
Last Update here
2023-10-16 (7 months ago)
2019-06-21 (4 years ago)
2020-11-08 (3 years ago)
2024-04-21 (27 days ago)
Author
Foswiki Community
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
https://moinmo.in/MoinCoreTeamGroup
Petko Yotov (Original author: Patrick R. Michaud)
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL
GPL
GPL
GPL2+
Programming Language
Perl
PHP
Python
PHP
Data Storage
Files, RCS
Database
Files
Files
License Cost/ Fee
$0
0
0
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
End Users/Desktop, Education
Everybody with <<100.000 pages. :)
All
System Requirements Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Operating System
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably any platform with Python 2.3+
Linux, UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Root Access
No
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Any with PHP support
Standalone, WSGI (e.g. Apache+mod_wsgi) - others like CGI, FastCGI, SCGI, AJP, ... via middlewares
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support. Can also be run w/o a webserver.
Other Requirements
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
none
None
none
Datastorage Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Text Files
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
MySQL
No
Yes
No
Plugin
PostgreSQL
No
Yes
No
No
Oracle
No
Yes
No
No
SQLite
No
Yes
No
Plugin
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
No
RCS
Yes
No
No
Plugin
Other
caching of content into database using plugins
No
No
Compressed, XML and/or ephemeral files (modules). Can provide custom data backends.
Security/Anti-Spam Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Yes
modular, scriptable. OpenID, ldap/AD, http, cookie, ssl client cert, interwiki, others possible
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
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Optional
Mail Encryption
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Optional
nofollow
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
Blacklist
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Optional
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Plugin
Optional
Plugin
Delayed Indexing
Plugin
No
No
Optional
Development/Support Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
97 ⭐
N/A
N/A
N/A
Common Features Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
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 Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
Yes
Yes
Optional
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
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
1
English
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
Yes
Optional
Yes
Optional
Comments
Plugin
Discussion Pages
Discussion Pages
Discussion Pages
Categories
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Conflict Handling
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
No
Unknown
No
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Structured Data
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Links Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
CamelCase
Yes
No
Yes
Optional
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
SisterWiki
Plugin
No
Yes
Plugin
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Page Redirects
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
Syntax Features Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
HTML Tags
All
Some
Some
Plugin
Math formulas
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Plugin
No
Yes
Optional
Markdown Support
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Textile Support
Plugin
No
No
No
BBCode Support
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Emoticon Images
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Plugin
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Footnotes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Quoting
Yes
No
No
Plugin
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Yes
No
No
Yes
Scripting
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
Optional
plugins, see comment ---------------->
MarkupExpressions (core, many add-ons). PageLists with templates (core structured data scripting). WikiSh (plugin), Data forms (optional)
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Plugin
Plugin
No
Plugin
Usability Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Section Editing
Plugin
Yes
No
Plugin
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Plugin
Toolbar
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Optional
WYSIWYG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Statistics Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
No
Yes
Yes
Optional
Orphaned Pages
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Optional
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Recent Visitors
Plugin
Plugin
No
Plugin
Analysis
Yes
Optional
Yes
Plugin
Output Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Printer Friendly
Print View
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print View
Mobile Friendly
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
ATOM Feeds
Yes
Yes
No
Optional
Abbreviations
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
XML export
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Plugin
PDF Export
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Office Export
Plugin
Unknown
No
Plugin
Media and Files Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Optional
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
No
Optional
Embedded Flash
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Embedded Video
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Image Editing
Plugin
No
Yes
Plugin
SVG Editing
Plugin
No
Yes
No
MindMap Editing
Plugin
Plugin
No
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
Keywords
Contents
Filenames only
Extras Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Image Galleries
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Presentations
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Plugin
No
Plugin
Blogs
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Ticket System
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Chat
No
Unknown
No
No
Syntax Examples Foswiki MediaWiki MoinMoin PmWiki
Internal Link
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
CamelCaseLink or [[free link]]

[[target|label|params]]
[[page name]]
[[page name | link text]]
[[link text -> page name]]
[[#anchor]]
[[#anchor|link to anchor]]
[[page name #anchor]]
External Link
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
[http://example.org The title]
http://google.de/ or
[[http://google.de/ | Google]] or
file://///server/share/file
http://....
[[http://... | link text]]
[[link text -> http://...]]
Headlines
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
= Level 1 =
== Level 2 ==
=== Level 3 ===
==== Level 4 ====
===== Level 5 =====
! Level 1
!! Level 2
!!! Level 3
Bold Format
*bold*
'''bold'''
'''bold'''
'''strong emphasised'''
'''bold'''
Italics Format
_italic_
''italic''
''italic''
''emphasised''
''italic''
Underline Format
<u>underline</u>
<u>underlined</u>
__underline__
{+underlined+}
Monospace Format
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
<tt>monospace</tt>
`monospaced`
@@monospace@@
Strikethrough Format
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
<s>strikethrough</s>
--(strikethrough)--
{-strikethrough-}
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
^superscript^
'^superscript^'
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
,,subscript,,
'_subscript_'
Images
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
[[Image:wiki.png]]
{{http://foo.bar/foo.jpg}}
{{attachment:foo.jpg | alt text}}
{{target|alt|params}}
https://foo.bar/foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg"alt/title text" | Caption
Aligning Text
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
<center>Centered</center>
only in tables:
||<(> left ||<:> middle ||<)> right ||
%center% centered text
%right% right aligned
%lfloat% left floating text
%rfloat% right floating text
%rframe% right floating frame
%lframe% left floating frame
Text Indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
: indented line
indented text
-> indented text
--> more indentation
-< hanging text
--< more indentation
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
alternatively, indented:
* item 1
* item 1.1
* item 2
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
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
Definition Lists
$ Term: Definition
; term : definition
term:: definition
: term : definition
Horizontal Rule
---
----
----
-----
------
----
remove Foswiki remove MediaWiki remove MoinMoin remove PmWiki