Tangentially related: if you’re starting anew, Wiki.js is a nice modern take: Markdown, auto commit and push to git remote, responsive, visually pleasing, etc. all out of box, no need for heaps of plugins.
* Had an overall half-bakedness about it. Like, there are features in the UI that sound cool but when you click on them it says "sorry, not implemented yet." ...Then why even have the button?
* Using it, the UI felt "heavy" and a bit sluggish in a way that I can't quite quantify.
* Having to set the page title and URL separately is weird. I think this is an artifact of designing it more like a document repository than a wiki. Because in a wiki, the URL _is_ the title of the page. I remember linking between pages being a little obnoxious somehow, but I don't remember the details.
* You can have WYSIWYG HTML pages or Markdown pages. You cannot switch a page between the two. Which is totally and completely crazy. Either design your WYSIWYG editor to handle Markdown so that you _can_ switch between them or settle on one or the other.
[1] https://wiki.js.org/feedback/p/switching-from-an-editor-to-a...
I've got half a mind to make an "our incredible journey" blog with all of the software that has uttered these famous last words.
I am happy with wiki.js. It's much less maintenance than Dokuwiki.
That said I like choice be it for themes or wiki apps!
My primary driver for seeking out a new wiki was because of how difficult testing and managing Dokuwiki can be. Updates to the main wiki are infrequent, plugins are often abandoned, and the setup, running, and maintained of the wiki is non-trivial.
I recommended wiki.js is easier to run, uses markdown by default, backs up data as flat files in a git repository, and does not require many resources either. Plus, there's a supported Docker image that works out of the box.
There's no problem with choice. Dokuwiki is frequently recommended to new users and wonder if that wiki is an appropriate recommendation. I explicitly would suggest wiki.js or something similar to someone not already running Dokuwiki.
I've looked into wiki.js and its really nice but I doubt I could run it on my hardware and I'd have to install node and Postgres (docker is not my thing, I'm old school!). Anyway the real deal breaker to me is that mathjax support is not there yet and I need formulas.
Yes, it's possible to rsync flat files from Dokuwiki to somewhere else, but Dokuwiki files are stored in a unique format. Moving files from one machine to another does not make the format more ubiquitous or easier to parse. The amount of work required to migrate data out of Dokuwiki may be trivial to some very experienced developers but would be neigh impossible for greener developers.
The plugin ecosystem of Dokuwiki is reminiscent of Jenkins. Dokuwiki plugins can do anything, but few seem to do them well or without quirks. Some require updating the CSS and HTML template for a theme. Others require modifying the host system. Few plugins are active, modern, and useful to more than a subset of specialized scenarios. The mobile editors are truly an exercise in frustration for even tech-savvy users.
Dokuwiki is great if you have specialized needs and accept the file format costs. The specialized markup language and plugin ecosystem are a type lock-in that should really be stated more up-front to new and perspective Dokuwiki users. I do recommend Dokuwiki for very particular and specific needs, but not as a general purpose wiki for "most people".