ComparingXWikiAndMediaWiki

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I've been using XWiki [1] for some time now. I even installed at work. I did this because XWiki uses Hibernate [2], and I wanted to show everyone that Hibernate is "real". XWiki also has a lot of nice features, and is a bit easier to work with in some ways.

MediaWiki doesn't use Java or Hibernate of course, but it does come with some really nice features that XWiki doesn't have.

Contents

[edit] Where XWiki wins:

  • Slightly simpler wiki syntax.
  • Reasonably simple installation.
  • Put code in pages with Velocity and Groovy.
  • Nicer printable output, PDF.
  • It's a Java Web continainer application, so if you have Tomcat running already it's pretty easy to set up.

[edit] Where MediaWiki wins:

  • Renaming and deleting pages is supported.
  • The built-in search is useable.
  • Math notation using LaTeX
  • Page section editing.
  • Lots of people know MediaWiki wiki syntax.
  • Email seems to work (I never got XWiki e-mail notification to work).
  • Page hit counts and all that work (I never got Xwiki stats to work properly).
  • 'minor edits' feature.

[edit] My Opinion

Well... I've only used MediaWiki for a little while, and it does seem to be better in day to day use. I really do miss the PDF functionality of XWiki, but it seems like most folks don't use that too much (it's as if they don't even see the little PDF icon! I don't understand people sometimes). As of this writing I'd say that MediaWiki is probably a better choice.

[edit] Update on XWiki

Since I last installed XWiki, there have been some updates:

  • XWiki now supports deleting and renaming
  • Using the Lucene search plugin in XWiki you can get good search results
  • Page section editing also supported since last year
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