Top 5 dokuwiki for 2021
Update: I updated this list with more and better content. Feel free to check it here
Dokuwiki is a very simple wiki platform that you can self-host. It provides just the right balance between features and complexity. With an ecosystem of plugins, it allows you to customize your wiki to your taste. Over time I have fitted it to the extent where I can use it without battling its rigid “wiki nature” while ensuring that no information is lost.
I want to share some of the plugins that I have used on my personal wiki.
Add new page
https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:addnewpage
The default way of creating a new page in DokuWiki is to create a new link from an already existing page — while this ensures that there are no orphans pages, this is cumbersome. This plugin adds a form that enables you to quickly create a new page.
The risk of creating an orphan page is mitigated with the IndexMenu.
IndexMenu
https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:indexmenu
This plugin creates a list of all the pages under a namespace — being very flexible in terms of display and filtering. For example, on my start page, I use it to display all the pages in my wiki, which I find makes it much easier to navigate through it.
See how I use this plugin in detail here
markdowku
https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:markdowku
This was the first plugin that I installed— it enables the formatting of the text using markdown rather than the wiki syntax, which I find very cumbersome and unreadable.
Move plugin
https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:move
You should not be moving your pages manually, it is super tedious and this plugin does it automatically. It painlessly moves and renames pages and namespaces — it then updates all the needed backlinks.
Note that I’ve had some problems with using this plugin in my phone with the responsive template — for my it only works with the wiki in desktop mode.
Tag
https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:tag
The traditional hierarchy of parent and child pages is quite restrictive. This plugin lets you assign category tags to wiki pages — which can then be listed and you can find all related pages.
A very interesting use I found was to create a “pinned” tag that I then filter by in my start page. This way I have my most used pages in one place.
Update: I updated this list with more and better content. Feel free to check it here