Recently, I was complaining on identi.ca about the lack of a PHP 5 wiki.

Well, no, I don't need the latest alpha, and it's not just putting words on a web site.

See, here's the problem; editing a wiki is not the same as managing a wiki. If all I had to do was to edit Media Wiki every now and then, I'd probably put up with the things about it that I hate, but the fact is I work on a project that uses a wiki for documentation. As a community, we have to manage that wiki1. If I didn't hate working with Media Wiki, it would be skinned by now. It wouldn't pointlessly redirect me to a "You have successfully logged in" page. We'd be able to directly export from the wiki to the manual we bundle with the software. You get the picture.

This is what I want from a wiki.

It should be free and open source. I believe in open source software. People should pay at the point of pain, not before they've used the software. If I like it, I'd like to be able to contribute to it. It should be free and open source.

It should be PHP 5. Since Habari is PHP, there's lots of PHP expertise around, making it easier to customise. PHP has its flaws, but PHP 5 is like a ... well, when you compare it to PHP 4 it's like something pretty nice, even if it makes me want to scream at times.

It should have a sensible architecture. This is similar to the PHP 5 thing, since sensible architecture is hard in PHP 4. Unfortunately, stupid architecture is not hard in PHP 5. I'm not saying I'm any good at designing an architecture, of course, but it's more fun to use something that's well designed.

That sensible architecture should let it be flexible and customisable, with themes and plugins. In fact, I'd like the philosophy to be similar to Habari's, small core with easy extensibility.

Can you recommend something that meets all my requirements ? This is not one of those questions at the end of a blog pleading for comments, I really, desperately, would like you to tell me if you know of something suitable for me.

  1. Of course, it's not completely up to me what wiki is used for Habari, and even if all my requirements were met, they might not match the requirements of others. ↩