What it is

DokuWiki is an open-source wiki engine written in PHP and described as The DokuWiki Open Source Wiki Engine. It lives in the content and publishing and documentation and knowledge base ecosystem, and it is distributed under the GPL-2.0 license. The project has a public repository that has existed for 17 years, with a last push recorded on 2026-09-09T18:24:17Z. It has 4717 stars, 921 forks, and 483 open issues.

The concrete problem it addresses is providing a wiki engine for users who need to organize, publish, and maintain documentation or knowledge-base content. The README points users to online documentation at https://www.dokuwiki.org and to installation instructions at https://www.dokuwiki.org/install. It also states that license information can be found in COPYING and file headers, and it attributes the project to Andreas Gohr and the DokuWiki Community for 2004-2026.

Key capabilities

• Provides an open-source wiki engine for content and publishing.
• Supports documentation and knowledge-base use cases, as indicated by its category.
• Runs as a PHP project, according to the repository language field.
• Publishes user documentation online at https://www.dokuwiki.org.
• Provides installation instructions at https://www.dokuwiki.org/install.
• Discloses licensing information through COPYING and file headers.
• Identifies its core scope through the topics dokuwiki, php, wiki, and wiki-engine.

Who uses it and how

• A team that needs to publish wiki content can use DokuWiki as a PHP-based wiki engine.
• A documentation maintainer can use it to organize and publish knowledge-base material.
• A new user can follow the installation instructions to deploy the software.
• A user can consult the online documentation for setup and usage guidance.
• A contributor can inspect the public repository, which records stars, forks, and open issues.

Getting started

Install DokuWiki by following the installation instructions at https://www.dokuwiki.org/install, and consult the online documentation at https://www.dokuwiki.org for further guidance.

When to use it — and when not to

Use DokuWiki when you need an open-source PHP wiki engine for documentation or knowledge-base content and you are willing to rely on the online installation and documentation pages. Avoid it if you need a detailed README, a listed contributor count, or evidence of a small issue backlog, because the provided facts show a sparse README excerpt, no contributors number, and 483 open issues. The facts do not state required database, storage, SMTP, or other self-hosting components, so an operator must verify those needs from the external documentation.