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Wiki: Best way to build a customized, independent, diverse wiki?

I need to build a wiki for a club. I know the ins and outs of dreamweaver, so I can do front-end stuff. Basically, I want some back-end wiki software (prefferably free) that will manage the databases and all that stuff that wikis do, but not be constricting. By constricting, I mean I don't want it to require me to use it's templates for the website (i want to do front-end stuff myself). I want it to be expandable (the website needs to be able to grow), and possibly have some sort of user registration/log-in system. Im going to design a website myself, upload it onto a server (that i'll pay fees for), and i just need a wiki system to operate in the back without interfering with the front-end stuff. I'm a fast learner so I can figure it out, but i'm wondering if I should know PHP/MySQL first, or do wikis cover that for you? Basically, whats the best (free) software that can do what I need?

Public Comments

1. The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an nonprofit charitable organization dedicated ... to providing wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. Wikipedia uses free software from this organization. It is easy to setup (one click install), easy to manage, and easy to customize. I was able to setup a complete Wiki site in under an hour. It fits all of your requirements.
2. MediaWiki does everything you want. You can skin it to your heart's content, and enable / disable as many features as you like. In all honesty, if you don't know much about PHP or MySQL to start with, the chances you can make a functional and secure wiki in anything less than months, if not years, are about zero. In fact, the chances you can understand MediaWiki well enough to get it to work are also pretty low. Sounds to me like you'd be better off using something like PHPNuke, which is a community-based content management system, or phpBB, which is a plain old bulletin board. Both have much clearer backends and can be skinned to appear however you want them to appear.