Wikven
Wikven is a static site generator built on MediaWiki, the software behind Wikipedia. It turns a directory of wikitext into a plain HTML site you can host anywhere, with no server or database to run. This documentation site is itself built with Wikven.
Reach for Wikven when your content is already MediaWiki wikitext, or when you want MediaWiki's templates, parser functions, gadgets and extensions but a static result with nothing to run: a project's documentation site, an archived wiki you can browse as plain HTML, or a personal wiki. Unlike a general static-site generator such as Hugo or MkDocs, it renders real wikitext through MediaWiki itself, so it assumes you are comfortable with wikitext (see Why wikitext for the trade-offs).
See Installation for the three ways to install Wikven, the standalone binary, the Docker image, or from source, then Getting Started to build your first site.
Supported features
With Wikven, you can use the following features of MediaWiki.
- Wikitext pages (see Pages)
- Templates
- Images from Wikimedia Commons or local files
- JavaScript (MediaWiki:Common.js and gadgets)
- Extensions, bundled or fetched at build time, and skins — several at once, with a switcher for the reader
- Search (client-side, built in via SifterSearch)
- Translation into multiple languages (via the Translate extension)
Unsupported features
These need a live wiki, so they are not part of the static export:
- All special pages, and the action API behind them
- All editors (WikiEditor, VisualEditor and CodeEditor); you edit the source files instead
- Accounts, and everything keyed to one: preferences, watchlists, notifications, user pages
- Page histories and diffs, which live in your repository instead — the "View history" link leads there
- Discussion pages as a workflow, and recent-changes feeds
What replaces some of them is written down: the reader's own display choices are on a Settings page the build writes, and searching is done in the browser.