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Ask HN: A simple wiki which supports Markdown syntax?

I'm looking for a wiki which has the following features * supports markdown syntax * Written in PHP/Python/Ruby/Java * Allows only authenticated and approved users to make edits (approved = all users have to approved by an admin) * Free Mediawiki does support all the above with extensions but it is a beast :) Even if a wiki doesn't support markdown, please do comment. I would like to know of all the alternatives. Any experiences with Docuwiki/TikiWiki/MoinMoin?

tptacek 17y ago
Instiki had all those attributes; it's certainly easier to set up than Mediawiki, but there has to be a more recent answer to this problem.
- boundlessdreamz 17y ago
  I looked at instiki, but it didn't seem like it had a facility where an admin needs to approve the users before they can edit. Is that the case?
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Our very first revision of Playbook was built on Instiki, and if I remember correctly, it had user registration.
jackowayed 17y ago
On this topic, is there a good place to ask "does this exist?" where you'll get good answers. Like, when I'm about to start hacking on something, I'll Google around a little, but sometimes I find out after I start/finish that it already exists in a reasonably-good form. An Ask HN thread every once in awhile I guess would be ok, but it seems like overkill in many cases, especially if not many people would really be interested in the answer. I guess ideal would be a piece of HN just for that that doesn't end up on the homepage, but some people would look over them once a day or so and see if they do know of something that exists.
- apphacker 17y ago
  If not many people are interested in an answer then it wont make the front page.
  - jackowayed 17y ago
    But that also means I won't have much likelihood of an answer. I want a place where some people who want to be helpful will see it even if not too many people care about the answer. Perhaps Twitter and/or Quora are my answers
- reconbot 17y ago
  Stack Overflow and Server Fault are full of questions like this.
- giantfuzzypanda 17y ago
  I don't think you can really do much better than Google. If the competitor/originator isn't on the first few pages, then you have an advantage even if you weren't the first one to make it.
  - jackowayed 17y ago
    If you're talking startups, I agree. But sometimes it's just some little library/tool that I need, and I'll spend an afternoon writing it and put it on GitHub if it doesn't exist, but if it does, I'd rather just use that than waste my time.
karanbhangui 17y ago
http://jottit.com http://jottit.com does all this and more. It's a hosted solution, not sure if you're looking for something to install.
avinashv 17y ago
tptacek mentioned http://instiki.org http://instiki.org which has all your features. It's a good wiki if you're happy with a Ruby solution, and Markdown/Textile formatting is native. A PHP-solution is PmWiki, and getting Markdown support via plugin is outlined here: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/MarkdownMarkupExtension http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/MarkdownMarkupExtension
zacharyvoase 17y ago
I’m the creator of Markdoc (http://markdoc.org/ http://markdoc.org/), which is pretty simple (bias bias bias bias) but it's just plain-text files in a directory, which means you’ll need to be comfortable with a text editor and a version control system.
sqrt17 17y ago
IMO, dokuwiki works fine. Reasonably easy to install as a Ubuntu package, has several authentication plugins. And it doesn't look ugly.
bradgessler 17y ago
Does anybody know of a markdown git-backed wiki?
- applicative 17y ago
  Gitit (http://github.com/jgm/gitit http://github.com/jgm/gitit) uses git by default. (But it now also supports darcs and mercurial: the darcs version is used by the wikis on http://patch-tag.com/ http://patch-tag.com/ and, unsurprisingly, by the darcs wiki http://wiki.darcs.net/ http://wiki.darcs.net/ )
- joeyh 17y ago
  ikiwiki (http://ikiwiki.info/ http://ikiwiki.info/) uses git (also supports svn, darcs, mercurial, bzr, monotone, etc)
applicative 17y ago
Gitit rules; I don't know if it counts as simple, and it certainly doesn't count as "written in PHP/Python/Ruby/Java" -- are you sure you need that?: "Gitit (http://gitit.net http://gitit.net) is a wiki backed by a git or darcs filestore. Pages and uploaded files can be modified either directly via the VCS’s command-line tools or through the wiki’s web interface. Pandoc is used for markup processing, so pages may be written in (extended) markdown, reStructuredText, LaTeX, HTML, or literate Haskell, and exported in ten different formats, including LaTeX, ConTeXt, DocBook, RTF, OpenOffice ODT, and MediaWiki markup."
- boundlessdreamz 17y ago
  This is awesome and is something that didn't come up while googling. Is there a way to only approved users to edit the wiki? I didn't get that info after reading README
  - applicative 17y ago
    There are several ways to adjust access. The easiest way to limit editors is with the 'access-question' field in the configuration file; if you use the field, then the "question" must be answered by anyone setting up an account. # Example: # access-question: What is the code given to you by Ms. X? # access-question-answers: RED DOG, red dog See http://github.com/jgm/gitit/blob/master/data/default.conf http://github.com/jgm/gitit/blob/master/data/default.conf Or see, e.g. http://groups.google.com/group/gitit-discuss/msg/e07fcabd70bd7495 http://groups.google.com/group/gitit-discuss/msg/e07fcabd70b... On patch-tag.com (which hosts darcs projects) the gitit wikis are set up differently, with the natural default that they are only editable by members of the project. You might sign up there with an arbitrary 'test project' so you could try out the wiki mechanism. (Many users just use it for the wiki, apparently, though I can't point to an example.) (The patch-tag gitit wikis are the only publicly accessible gitit wikis I've used regularly. I use a git-backed gitit wiki locally for everything; it's awesome because of the connection to Pandoc and the indifference between LaTeX/HTML/RTF output).
deleted 17y ago
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cmelbye 17y ago
Dokuwiki and pmwiki are both very nice, hackable, lean wikis. I have a question on this subject, though. For a wiki (not a blog post, etc), do you guys prefer WYSIWYG, markdown, textile, creole (http://wikicreole.org/ http://wikicreole.org/), or something else?
- boundlessdreamz 17y ago
  I prefer both markdown and WYSIWYG
  - cmelbye 17y ago
    Oh yeah, forgot about WYSIWYG. Definitely my first choice, but it can be very difficult and buggy to implement.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  I really like Dokuwiki, and one big reason is that it uses plain text files to store content. That makes it much easier to write tools to interact with content (e.g. grep for stuff, do backups into git, have scripts that check for certain content and send me E-mail, and so on).
nailer 17y ago
Are you users computer programmers? If not, I'd suggest avoiding the need to learn markup languages. There are WYSIWYG plugins for most wikis.
- applicative 17y ago
  This is the miracle of Markdown: everyone basically already knows it. I have read more than one story like this http://atendesigngroup.com/blog/what-it-not-what-it-looks http://atendesigngroup.com/blog/what-it-not-what-it-looks where programmers thought Of course, these naive non-programmers will want WYSIWYG -- but in fact they preferred Markdown once they found it.
  - nailer 17y ago
    Really? I program and I've spent a while fixing non-obvious markdown errors. I believe that was the whole reason it was forked by markdownsharp. How would learning any language be easier than not learning anything at all?
davidw 17y ago
http://dedawiki.dedasys.com http://dedawiki.dedasys.com does: Markdown, is written in Rails and is pretty simple to hack. It's available under the Apache license (BSD style, basically). It could use some work, but it does do what you asked, and is fairly simple to hack on if you need something more.
synack 17y ago
I wrote this one a while ago and still use it for my own projects. Written in Python, uses Markdown syntax, and is fairly easy to hack on and add features. Still haven't gotten around to adding decent version control though. http://github.com/synack/nikiwiki http://github.com/synack/nikiwiki
joeyh 17y ago
Ikiwiki uses markdown in plain text files, and can be configured to lock all pages and only allow specific users to edit specific pages (configuration for that would look like locked_pages => "* and !user(foo) and !user(bar) and !admin()"). It's written, unapologetically, in Perl. It is used as the wiki for projects including Dragonfly BSD, NetBSD, GNU Hurd, Monotone, Cario, etc. http://ikiwiki.info/ http://ikiwiki.info/
wbond 17y ago
A colleague and I are currently working on Noted (http://notedwiki.com http://notedwiki.com), which matches what you are looking for, except that we are planning on charging when it launches. It is currently in development, but we are going to be looking for beta testers soon, which may provide an opportunity for a free or discount copy.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
erikpukinskis 17y ago
http://gist.github.com/363190 http://gist.github.com/363190 ruby lilwiki.rb
- savant 17y ago
  nice. was going to comment on it before you shoved it into a gist that you should gist it.
  - erikpukinskis 17y ago
    :)
- erikpukinskis 17y ago
  I wrote that in 40 minutes. Obviously you need to add stylesheets and some error handling.

tptacek 17y ago

Instiki had all those attributes; it's certainly easier to set up than Mediawiki, but there has to be a more recent answer to this problem.

boundlessdreamz 17y ago
I looked at instiki, but it didn't seem like it had a facility where an admin needs to approve the users before they can edit. Is that the case?
- tptacek 17y ago
  Our very first revision of Playbook was built on Instiki, and if I remember correctly, it had user registration.

jackowayed 17y ago

On this topic, is there a good place to ask "does this exist?" where you'll get good answers. Like, when I'm about to start hacking on something, I'll Google around a little, but sometimes I find out after I start/finish that it already exists in a reasonably-good form. An Ask HN thread every once in awhile I guess would be ok, but it seems like overkill in many cases, especially if not many people would really be interested in the answer. I guess ideal would be a piece of HN just for that that doesn't end up on the homepage, but some people would look over them once a day or so and see if they do know of something that exists.

apphacker 17y ago
If not many people are interested in an answer then it wont make the front page.
- jackowayed 17y ago
  But that also means I won't have much likelihood of an answer. I want a place where some people who want to be helpful will see it even if not too many people care about the answer. Perhaps Twitter and/or Quora are my answers
reconbot 17y ago
Stack Overflow and Server Fault are full of questions like this.
giantfuzzypanda 17y ago
I don't think you can really do much better than Google. If the competitor/originator isn't on the first few pages, then you have an advantage even if you weren't the first one to make it.
- jackowayed 17y ago
  If you're talking startups, I agree. But sometimes it's just some little library/tool that I need, and I'll spend an afternoon writing it and put it on GitHub if it doesn't exist, but if it does, I'd rather just use that than waste my time.

karanbhangui 17y ago

http://jottit.com http://jottit.com does all this and more. It's a hosted solution, not sure if you're looking for something to install.

avinashv 17y ago

tptacek mentioned http://instiki.org http://instiki.org which has all your features. It's a good wiki if you're happy with a Ruby solution, and Markdown/Textile formatting is native. A PHP-solution is PmWiki, and getting Markdown support via plugin is outlined here: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/MarkdownMarkupExtension http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/MarkdownMarkupExtension

zacharyvoase 17y ago

I’m the creator of Markdoc (http://markdoc.org/ http://markdoc.org/), which is pretty simple (bias bias bias bias) but it's just plain-text files in a directory, which means you’ll need to be comfortable with a text editor and a version control system.

sqrt17 17y ago

IMO, dokuwiki works fine. Reasonably easy to install as a Ubuntu package, has several authentication plugins. And it doesn't look ugly.

bradgessler 17y ago

Does anybody know of a markdown git-backed wiki?

applicative 17y ago
Gitit (http://github.com/jgm/gitit http://github.com/jgm/gitit) uses git by default. (But it now also supports darcs and mercurial: the darcs version is used by the wikis on http://patch-tag.com/ http://patch-tag.com/ and, unsurprisingly, by the darcs wiki http://wiki.darcs.net/ http://wiki.darcs.net/ )
joeyh 17y ago
ikiwiki (http://ikiwiki.info/ http://ikiwiki.info/) uses git (also supports svn, darcs, mercurial, bzr, monotone, etc)

applicative 17y ago

Gitit rules; I don't know if it counts as simple, and it certainly doesn't count as "written in PHP/Python/Ruby/Java" -- are you sure you need that?: "Gitit (http://gitit.net http://gitit.net) is a wiki backed by a git or darcs filestore. Pages and uploaded files can be modified either directly via the VCS’s command-line tools or through the wiki’s web interface. Pandoc is used for markup processing, so pages may be written in (extended) markdown, reStructuredText, LaTeX, HTML, or literate Haskell, and exported in ten different formats, including LaTeX, ConTeXt, DocBook, RTF, OpenOffice ODT, and MediaWiki markup."

boundlessdreamz 17y ago
This is awesome and is something that didn't come up while googling. Is there a way to only approved users to edit the wiki? I didn't get that info after reading README
- applicative 17y ago
  There are several ways to adjust access. The easiest way to limit editors is with the 'access-question' field in the configuration file; if you use the field, then the "question" must be answered by anyone setting up an account. # Example: # access-question: What is the code given to you by Ms. X? # access-question-answers: RED DOG, red dog See http://github.com/jgm/gitit/blob/master/data/default.conf http://github.com/jgm/gitit/blob/master/data/default.conf Or see, e.g. http://groups.google.com/group/gitit-discuss/msg/e07fcabd70bd7495 http://groups.google.com/group/gitit-discuss/msg/e07fcabd70b... On patch-tag.com (which hosts darcs projects) the gitit wikis are set up differently, with the natural default that they are only editable by members of the project. You might sign up there with an arbitrary 'test project' so you could try out the wiki mechanism. (Many users just use it for the wiki, apparently, though I can't point to an example.) (The patch-tag gitit wikis are the only publicly accessible gitit wikis I've used regularly. I use a git-backed gitit wiki locally for everything; it's awesome because of the connection to Pandoc and the indifference between LaTeX/HTML/RTF output).

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

cmelbye 17y ago

Dokuwiki and pmwiki are both very nice, hackable, lean wikis. I have a question on this subject, though. For a wiki (not a blog post, etc), do you guys prefer WYSIWYG, markdown, textile, creole (http://wikicreole.org/ http://wikicreole.org/), or something else?

boundlessdreamz 17y ago
I prefer both markdown and WYSIWYG
- cmelbye 17y ago
  Oh yeah, forgot about WYSIWYG. Definitely my first choice, but it can be very difficult and buggy to implement.
jamesbritt 17y ago
I really like Dokuwiki, and one big reason is that it uses plain text files to store content. That makes it much easier to write tools to interact with content (e.g. grep for stuff, do backups into git, have scripts that check for certain content and send me E-mail, and so on).

nailer 17y ago

Are you users computer programmers? If not, I'd suggest avoiding the need to learn markup languages. There are WYSIWYG plugins for most wikis.

applicative 17y ago
This is the miracle of Markdown: everyone basically already knows it. I have read more than one story like this http://atendesigngroup.com/blog/what-it-not-what-it-looks http://atendesigngroup.com/blog/what-it-not-what-it-looks where programmers thought Of course, these naive non-programmers will want WYSIWYG -- but in fact they preferred Markdown once they found it.
- nailer 17y ago
  Really? I program and I've spent a while fixing non-obvious markdown errors. I believe that was the whole reason it was forked by markdownsharp. How would learning any language be easier than not learning anything at all?

davidw 17y ago

http://dedawiki.dedasys.com http://dedawiki.dedasys.com does: Markdown, is written in Rails and is pretty simple to hack. It's available under the Apache license (BSD style, basically). It could use some work, but it does do what you asked, and is fairly simple to hack on if you need something more.

synack 17y ago

I wrote this one a while ago and still use it for my own projects. Written in Python, uses Markdown syntax, and is fairly easy to hack on and add features. Still haven't gotten around to adding decent version control though. http://github.com/synack/nikiwiki http://github.com/synack/nikiwiki

joeyh 17y ago

Ikiwiki uses markdown in plain text files, and can be configured to lock all pages and only allow specific users to edit specific pages (configuration for that would look like locked_pages => "* and !user(foo) and !user(bar) and !admin()"). It's written, unapologetically, in Perl. It is used as the wiki for projects including Dragonfly BSD, NetBSD, GNU Hurd, Monotone, Cario, etc. http://ikiwiki.info/ http://ikiwiki.info/

wbond 17y ago

A colleague and I are currently working on Noted (http://notedwiki.com http://notedwiki.com), which matches what you are looking for, except that we are planning on charging when it launches. It is currently in development, but we are going to be looking for beta testers soon, which may provide an opportunity for a free or discount copy.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

erikpukinskis 17y ago

http://gist.github.com/363190 http://gist.github.com/363190 ruby lilwiki.rb

savant 17y ago
nice. was going to comment on it before you shoved it into a gist that you should gist it.
- erikpukinskis 17y ago
  :)
erikpukinskis 17y ago
I wrote that in 40 minutes. Obviously you need to add stylesheets and some error handling.