Table of Contents
What makes DokuWiki so great for Documentation?
Wikis are good for documentation
- Easy to start: you can share unfinished content early, exposed to many eyes
- Have a simple, consistent page layout
- Easy to create and maintain structured, up-to-date documents:
- collaborative
- easy to access through the web, with simple login or without any login
- easy to modify, no need to know HTML
- easy to link pages
- easy to create simple and consistent pages
- easy to search
- easy to extend with external pages
- Don't need to go to another colleague or IT dept to update the documentation = low resistance to keeping documentation up to date.
DokuWiki is even better for documentation
- Easy to modify:
- section editing
- Automatic services:
- future links: links to non-existing pages are red
- backlinks
- inner indexing
- revision handling
- table of contents for each page
- Supports multiple ways of including code examples
- Sophisticated but easily administrated access control through user-friendly ACL and User Management GUI
- Simple but powerful Configuration Manager interface for control over features of not only DokuWiki core but also most plugins and themes. If you are not a PHP expert or don't have time to waste fiddling with conf – no problem!
- Datafiles are stored in plain text, so:
- are readable even if your DokuWiki installation doesn't work anymore
- easy to back up, through server scripts or FTP/SFTP
- can easily be read, modified, compared, generated with external (non-wiki) programs
- and easily moved from one DokuWiki-installation to another
- All those little gimmicks that make documentation fun: footnotes, abbreviations, syntax highlighting
- Huge amount of available plugins for your specific needs
- Maybe more I can't remember
