PmWiki vs. TWiki vs. Foswiki vs. MediaWiki

General Features PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Version
2.3.33
TWiki-6.1.0
2.1.8
1.32.2
Last Release Date
2024-04-20 (19 days ago)
2018-07-15 (5 years ago)
2023-08-05 (9 months ago)
2019-06-05 (4 years ago)
Last Update here
2024-04-21 (18 days ago)
2019-07-19 (4 years ago)
2023-10-16 (6 months ago)
2019-06-21 (4 years ago)
Author
Petko Yotov (Original author: Patrick R. Michaud)
Peter Thoeny, TWiki community
Foswiki Community
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
GPL2+
GPL
GPL
GPL
Programming Language
PHP
Perl, JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Data Storage
Files
Files, RCS
Files, RCS
Database
License Cost/ Fee
0
N/A
$0
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
All
Large enterprise; small to medium businesses
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
End Users/Desktop, Education
System Requirements PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Operating System
Linux, UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Linux, Windows, OS-X and other
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
Root Access
No
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support. Can also be run w/o a webserver.
Almost any webserver, typically Apache and Ngnix
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Any with PHP support
Other Requirements
none
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
none
Datastorage PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Text Files
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
MySQL
Plugin
No
No
Yes
PostgreSQL
No
No
No
Yes
Oracle
No
No
No
Yes
SQLite
Plugin
No
No
Yes
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
No
RCS
Plugin
Yes
Yes
No
Other
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
caching of content into database using plugins
No
Security/Anti-Spam PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Authentication Backends
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
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Yes
Host Blocking
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Mail Encryption
Optional
Yes
Yes
Plugin
nofollow
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Blacklist
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Delayed Indexing
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
No
Development/Support PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
97 ⭐
N/A
Common Features PmWiki TWiki Foswiki 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 PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Optional
No
No
Yes
Interface Languages
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
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
Email notification
Optional
Yes
Yes
Optional
Comments
Discussion Pages
Threaded
Plugin
Discussion Pages
Categories
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
Yes
Unknown
No
Unknown
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Yes
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Structured Data
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Links PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
CamelCase
Optional
Yes
Yes
No
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
SisterWiki
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
No
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
No
Page Redirects
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Features PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
HTML Tags
Plugin
All
All
Some
Math formulas
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Optional
No
Plugin
No
Markdown Support
Plugin
No
Plugin
No
Textile Support
No
Plugin
Plugin
No
BBCode Support
Plugin
No
Plugin
No
Emoticon Images
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Optional
Syntax Highlighting
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Footnotes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Plugin
Yes
Yes
No
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Scripting
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
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
Optional
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Usability PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Section Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Optional
Toolbar
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Statistics PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Optional
No
No
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Optional
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Most/Least Popular
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Analysis
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Optional
Output PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Printer Friendly
Print View
Print View
Print View
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Yes
Plugin
Yes
No
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Abbreviations
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
No
Auto-TOC
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
PDF Export
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Office Export
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Media and Files PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
File Attachments
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Optional
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Embedded Video
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
No
SVG Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
No
MindMap Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Filenames only
Contents
Contents
Keywords
Extras PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Presentations
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Forums
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
No
Ticket System
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
No
Chat
No
Unknown
No
Unknown
Syntax Examples PmWiki TWiki Foswiki MediaWiki
Internal Link
[[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]]
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
External Link
http://....
[[http://... | link text]]
[[link text -> http://...]]
http://twiki.org/ autolink
[[http://twiki.org/][label]]
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
[http://example.org The title]
Headlines
! Level 1
!! Level 2
!!! Level 3
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
Bold Format
'''bold'''
*bold*
*bold*
'''bold'''
Italics Format
''italic''
_italic_
_italic_
''italic''
Underline Format
{+underlined+}
<u>underline</u>
<u>underline</u>
<u>underlined</u>
Monospace Format
@@monospace@@
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
<tt>monospace</tt>
Strikethrough Format
{-strikethrough-}
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
<s>strikethrough</s>
Superscript Format
'^superscript^'
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
Subscript Format
'_subscript_'
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
Images
https://foo.bar/foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg"alt/title text" | Caption
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
[[Image:wiki.png]]
Aligning Text
%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
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
<center>Centered</center>
Text Indentation
-> indented text
--> more indentation
-< hanging text
--< more indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
: indented line
Bulleted Lists
* 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 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
Numbered Lists
# 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
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
Definition Lists
: term : definition
$ Term: Definition
$ Term: Definition
; term : definition
Horizontal Rule
----
---
---
----
remove PmWiki remove TWiki remove Foswiki remove MediaWiki