Comparison To Other Wiki Engines

The aim of this comparison is to give a quick look of how Wikidot compares to other wiki engines in terms of availability, easiness, fitness, technology used and possibly other areas.

This document is editable by everyone. Contributions are welcome.

General

Wikidot MediaWiki Confluence PmWiki
License APL GPL

Syntax

Wikidot MediaWiki Confluence
Tables yes yes yes
Tables sortable no1 yes
Tables based on attachments no no yes2
Footnotes yes ? yes3 ?
Images yes yes yes ?
Redirects yes yes yes4 ?
Iframes yes ? yes ?
Smileys no ? yes ?

Features

Wikidot MediaWiki Confluence
WYSIWYG editor no yes5
Search pages yes yes
Search attachments no yes
Search extended to other spaces no yes
Categories yes ? no ?
Templates (voluntary) yes ? yes ?
Templates (live) yes (per category) ? yes67 ?
Page comment yes ? yes ?
Blog can be created by user8 ? built-in ?
Issue tracker can be created by user9 ? Jira integration ?
Third party plugins no ? yes ?
Watch10 wikipage yes ? yes ?
Watch wikisite yes ? no ?
Watch wikifarm no ? yes ?
Import no, except clonage ? yes ?
Export/backup yes ? yes ?
LDAP login no ? yes ?

Files

Wikidot MediaWiki Confluence PmWiki
Can attach files to pages yes yes yes ? ?
Attachments versioning no ? yes ? ?
Attachments listed by filetype no ? yes ? ?
HTML accepted yes ? yes11 ? ?
JavaScript accepted yes ? yes12 ? ?
Thumbnails generated for images yes ? yes ? ?
Thumbnails generated for PDF files yes ? no ? ?

Security

Wikidot MediaWiki Confluence PmWiki
Pages restrictions at wish no ? yes ? ?

Embedding

Wikidot MediaWiki Confluence PmWiki
YouTube videos yes ? yes13 ? ?
Vimeo videos yes ? yes14 ? ?
Google gadgets yes ? yes15 ? ?
Widgetbox gadgets yes ? ? ? ?
Is Drupal a wiki ?
gerdamigerdami 1244582605|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I didn't know that.
Nor http://www.wikimatrix.org/

Reply  |  Options
Unfold Is Drupal a wiki ? by gerdamigerdami, 1244582605|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Re: Is Drupal a wiki ?
GabrysGabrys 1244582996|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I don't think so. It's rather a CMS AFAIK.


Piotr Gabryjeluk, Wikidot Inc.
visit my blog

Reply  |  Options
Unfold Re: Is Drupal a wiki ? by GabrysGabrys, 1244582996|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Confluence
gerdamigerdami 1244715685|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

The version I report here is 2.5.7 of August 2007.

Reply  |  Options
Unfold Confluence by gerdamigerdami, 1244715685|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
An idea
GabrysGabrys 1245100441|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Quick summing up current experience on making this comparison:

  1. Good Wikidot-to-other-wikis comparison is published at wikimatrix.com
  2. Wikidot CAN be compared to non-wiki software (like Drupal)
    • because Wikidot is more than wiki
  3. Long comparison is boring (and would be a copy of wikimatrix eventually)

What I suggest is to divide the comparison not by sections (General, Syntax, Files, …), but by application:

  • Wikidot as wiki
    • comparing to MediaWiki, other wiki engines
  • Wikidot as CMS
    • comparing to Drupal and other CMS platforms
  • Wikidot as blog
    • comparing to Wordpress and other blog systems
  • Wikidot as bug tracker
    • comparing to Trac, Mantis, JIRA
  • Wikidot as …
    • comparing to …

Also in each application only list a few features, that really matter, not going too deep in them.

What do you think?


Piotr Gabryjeluk, Wikidot Inc.
visit my blog

Last edited on 1245100540|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By Gabrys + Show more
Reply  |  Options
Unfold An idea by GabrysGabrys, 1245100441|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Re: An idea
pieterhpieterh 1245689774|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

While I appreciate the matrix, sometimes pure feature list comparisons can be counter-productive because they don't take into account that different types of project need different things. I.e. they don't say why we need certain functions.

A better kind of comparison might come from users with experience of Wikidot and another overlapping product, who can explain precise advantages in one or the other based on their use.

Or, we could look at typical tasks and see how they compare in different products:

  • Installation and configuration
  • Starting a new project
  • Creating a custom look and feel
  • Adding participants to a project
  • Creating private areas
  • Workflow on project pages
  • Integration with email
  • Uploading files
  • Extensibility of core product
  • Creating reusable blocks
  • Custom listing and sorting of pages
  • etc.

This would help drive Wikidot to becoming more useful. Adding features just makes it more complex.

It is also useful to try to understand the target market for different products. For instance, Confluence is more aimed at business users, while Wikidot is more aimed at smaller, more flexible groups.

Reply  |  Options
Unfold Re: An idea by pieterhpieterh, 1245689774|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
exerciciosresolvidosexerciciosresolvidos 1252469794|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Wikimatrix tables are …. not very clear. List pages in mediawiki doesn't exist, not by default. There is the dynamic list pages extension but no wiki farm has it enabled because it's heavy and slows down everyone. And all farms running mediawiki has the default 3 columns category pages, which are really bad for many scenarios, specially when categories are categorized and categories listing over 1000 pages.

I think that there is a missconception of considering a wiki anything that has an edit this page button.

http://moinmo.in/WikiEngineComparison
http://mojomojo.org/documentation

Lots of "this wiki has this, that wiki lacks that".

there is one thing that I find it curious, all wiki engines support some features that add functionality to wikis, such as count pages or list all categories. Netcipia runs xwiki, which calls such things "mini-applications". Other wiki engines call them macros, sometimes scripts, or like mediawiki, extensions. Wikidot itself refers to them as "modules" for instance.

I'm testing wikispot, they support tags like wikidot but their implementation is reverse. In wikidot you tag pages and list pages by tag, in wikispot you link a page to some kind of master page, which can act as hub for all pages that link to it. Damn, sycamore lacks html tags, which I really depend on… Sycamore has a different concept, there are no inline styling like mediawiki or mediawiki template definitions, they use css classes instead.

Last edited on 1252812208|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By exerciciosresolvidos + Show more
Reply  |  Options
Unfold by exerciciosresolvidosexerciciosresolvidos, 1252469794|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Add a New Comment
page_revision: 32, last_edited: 1254308512|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z (%O ago)
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License