DokuWiki supports some simple markup language, which tries to make the datafiles to be as readable as possible. This page contains all possible syntax you may use when editing the pages. Simply have a look at the source of this page by pressing “Edit this page”. If you want to try something, just use the playground page. The simpler markup is easily accessible via quickbuttons, too.

DokuWiki supports bold, italic, underlined and monospaced texts. Of course you can combine all these.

DokuWiki supports **bold**, //italic//, __underlined__ and ''monospaced'' texts.
Of course you can **__//''combine''//__** all these.

You can use _subscript and ^superscript, too.

You can use <sub>subscript</sub> and <sup>superscript</sup>, too.

You can mark something as deleted as well.

You can mark something as <del>deleted</del> as well.

Paragraphs are created from blank lines. If you want to force a newline without a paragraph, you can use two backslashes followed by a whitespace or the end of line.

This is some text with some linebreaks
Note that the two backslashes are only recognized at the end of a line
or followed by
a whitespace \\this happens without it.

This is some text with some linebreaks\\ Note that the
two backslashes are only recognized at the end of a line\\
or followed by\\ a whitespace \\this happens without it.

You should use forced newlines only if really needed.

DokuWiki supports multiple ways of creating links.

External links are recognized automagically: http://www.google.com or simply www.google.com - You can set the link text as well: This Link points to google. Email addresses like this one: andi@splitbrain.org are recognized, too.

DokuWiki supports multiple ways of creating links. External links are recognized
automagically: http://www.google.com or simply www.google.com - You can set
link text as well: [[http://www.google.com|This Link points to google]]. Email
addresses like this one: <andi@splitbrain.org> are recognized, too.

Internal links are created by using square brackets. You can either just give a pagename or use an additional link text.

Internal links are created by using square brackets. You can either just give
a [[pagename]] or use an additional [[pagename|link text]].

Wiki pagenames are converted to lowercase automatically, special characters are not allowed.

You can use namespaces by using a colon in the pagename.

You can use [[some:namespaces]] by using a colon in the pagename.

For details about namespaces see namespaces.

Linking to a specific section is possible, too. Just add the section name behind a hash character as known from HTML. This links to this Section.

This links to [[syntax#internal|this Section]].

Notes:

• Links to existing pages are shown in a different style from nonexisting ones.
• DokuWiki does not use CamelCase to automatically create links by default, but this behavior can be enabled in the config file. Hint: If DokuWiki is a link, then it's enabled.
• When a section's heading is changed, its bookmark changes, too. So don't rely on section linking too much.

DokuWiki supports Interwiki links. These are quick links to other Wikis. For example this is a link to Wikipedia's page about Wikis: Wiki.

DokuWiki supports [[doku>Interwiki]] links. These are quick links to other Wikis.
For example this is a link to Wikipedia's page about Wikis: [[wp>Wiki]].

Windows shares like this are recognized, too. Please note that these only make sense in a homogeneous user group like a corporate Intranet.

Windows Shares like [[\\server\share|this]] are recognized, too.

Notes:

• For security reasons direct browsing of windows shares only works in Microsoft Internet Explorer per default (and only in the “local zone”).
• For Mozilla and Firefox it can be enabled through different workaround mentioned in the Mozilla Knowledge Base. However, there will still be a JavaScript warning about trying to open a Windows Share. To remove this warning (for all users), put the following line in conf/userscript.js:

LANG.nosmblinks = '';

You can also use an image to link to another internal or external page by combining the syntax for links and images (see below) like this:

[[http://www.php.net|{{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png}}]]

Please note: The image formatting is the only formatting syntax accepted in link names.

The whole image and link syntax is supported (including image resizing, internal and external images and URLs and interwiki links).

You can add footnotes ¹⁾ by using double parentheses.

You can add footnotes ((This is a footnote)) by using double parentheses.

You can use up to five different levels of headlines to structure your content. If you have more than three headlines, a table of contents is generated automatically – this can be disabled by including the string ~~NOTOC~~ in the document.

==== Headline Level 3 ====
=== Headline Level 4 ===
== Headline Level 5 ==

By using four or more dashes, you can make a horizontal line:

You can include external and internal images with curly brackets. Optionally you can specify the size of them.

Real size:

Resize to given width:

Resize to given width and height²⁾:

Resized external image:

Real size:                        {{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png}}
Resize to given width:            {{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png?50}}
Resize to given width and height: {{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png?200x50}}
Resized external image:           {{http://de3.php.net/images/php.gif?200x50}}

By using left or right whitespaces you can choose the alignment.

{{ wiki:dokuwiki-128.png}}
{{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png }}
{{ wiki:dokuwiki-128.png }}

Of course, you can add a title (displayed as a tooltip by most browsers), too.

{{ wiki:dokuwiki-128.png |This is the caption}}

If you specify a filename (external or internal) that is not an image (gif, jpeg, png), then it will be displayed as a link instead.

For linking an image to another page see Image Links above.

Dokuwiki supports ordered and unordered lists. To create a list item, indent your text by two spaces and use a * for unordered lists or a - for ordered ones.

• This is a list
• The second item
  • You may have different levels
• Another item

1. The same list but ordered
2. Another item
   1. Just use indention for deeper levels
3. That's it

  * This is a list
  * The second item
    * You may have different levels
  * Another item

  - The same list but ordered
  - Another item
    - Just use indention for deeper levels
  - That's it

Also take a look at the FAQ on list items.

DokuWiki can convert certain pre-defined characters or strings into images or other text or HTML.

The text to image conversion is mainly done for smileys. And the text to HTML conversion is used for typography replacements, but can be configured to use other HTML as well.

DokuWiki converts commonly used emoticons to their graphical equivalents. Those Smileys and other images can be configured and extended. Here is an overview of Smileys included in DokuWiki:

• 8-)
• 8-O
• :-(
• :-)
• =)
• :-/
• :-\
• :-?
• :-D
• :-P
• :-O
• :-X
• :-|
• ;-)
• ^_^
• :?:
• :!:
• LOL
• FIXME
• DELETEME

Typography: DokuWiki can convert simple text characters to their typographically correct entities. Here is an example of recognized characters.

→ ← ↔ ⇒ ⇐ ⇔ » « – — 640×480 © ™ ® “He thought 'It's a man's world'…”

-> <- <-> => <= <=> >> << -- --- 640x480 (c) (tm) (r)
"He thought 'It's a man's world'..."

The same can be done to produce any kind of HTML, it just needs to be added to the pattern file.

There are three exceptions which do not come from that pattern file: multiplication entity (640×480), 'single' and “double quotes”. They can be turned off through a config option.

Some times you want to mark some text to show it's a reply or comment. You can use the following syntax:

I think we should do it

> No we shouldn't

>> Well, I say we should

> Really?

>> Yes!

>>> Then lets do it!

I think we should do it

No we shouldn't

Well, I say we should

Really?

Yes!

Then lets do it!

DokuWiki supports a simple syntax to create tables.

Table rows have to start and end with a | for normal rows or a ^ for headers.

^ Heading 1      ^ Heading 2       ^ Heading 3          ^
| Row 1 Col 1    | Row 1 Col 2     | Row 1 Col 3        |
| Row 2 Col 1    | some colspan (note the double pipe) ||
| Row 3 Col 1    | Row 3 Col 2     | Row 3 Col 3        |

To connect cells horizontally, just make the next cell completely empty as shown above. Be sure to have always the same amount of cell separators!

Vertical tableheaders are possible, too.

As you can see, it's the cell separator before a cell which decides about the formatting:

|              ^ Heading 1            ^ Heading 2          ^
^ Heading 3    | Row 1 Col 2          | Row 1 Col 3        |
^ Heading 4    | no colspan this time |                    |
^ Heading 5    | Row 2 Col 2          | Row 2 Col 3        |

You can have rowspans (vertically connected cells) by adding ::: into the cells below the one to which they should connect.

Apart from the rowspan syntax those cells should not contain anything else.

^ Heading 1      ^ Heading 2                  ^ Heading 3          ^
| Row 1 Col 1    | this cell spans vertically | Row 1 Col 3        |
| Row 2 Col 1    | :::                        | Row 2 Col 3        |
| Row 3 Col 1    | :::                        | Row 2 Col 3        |

You can align the table contents, too. Just add at least two whitespaces at the opposite end of your text: Add two spaces on the left to align right, two spaces on the right to align left and two spaces at least at both ends for centered text.

This is how it looks in the source:

^           Table with alignment           ^^^
|         right|    center    |left          |
|left          |         right|    center    |
| xxxxxxxxxxxx | xxxxxxxxxxxx | xxxxxxxxxxxx |

Note: Vertical alignment is not supported.

If you need to display text exactly like it is typed (without any formatting), enclose the area either with <nowiki> tags or even simpler, with double percent signs %%.

This is some text which contains addresses like this: http://www.splitbrain.org and **formatting**, but nothing is done with it. The same is true for //__this__ text// with a smiley ;-).

<nowiki>
This is some text which contains addresses like this: http://www.splitbrain.org and **formatting**, but nothing is done with it.
</nowiki>
The same is true for %%//__this__ text// with a smiley ;-)%%.

You can include code blocks into your documents by either indenting them by at least two spaces (like used for the previous examples) or by using the tags <code> or <file>.

This is text is indented by two spaces.

This is preformatted code all spaces are preserved: like              <-this

This is pretty much the same, but you could use it to show that you quoted a file.

Those blocks were created by this source:

  This is text is indented by two spaces.

<code>
This is preformatted code all spaces are preserved: like              <-this
</code>

<file>
This is pretty much the same, but you could use it to show that you quoted a file.
</file>

DokuWiki can highlight sourcecode, which makes it easier to read. It uses the GeSHi Generic Syntax Highlighter – so any language supported by GeSHi is supported. The syntax uses the same code and file blocks described in the previous section, but this time the name of the language syntax to be highlighted is included inside the tag, e.g. <code java> or <file java>.

/**
 * The HelloWorldApp class implements an application that
 * simply displays "Hello World!" to the standard output.
 */
class HelloWorldApp {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello World!"); //Display the string.
    }
}

The following language strings are currently recognized: 4cs, 6502acme, 6502kickass, 6502tasm, 68000devpac, abap, actionscript-french, actionscript, actionscript3, ada, algol68, apache, applescript, asm, asp, autoconf, autohotkey, autoit, avisynth, awk, bascomavr, bash, basic4gl, bf, bibtex, blitzbasic, bnf, boo, c, c_loadrunner, c_mac, caddcl, cadlisp, cfdg, cfm, chaiscript, cil, clojure, cmake, cobol, coffeescript, cpp, cpp-qt, csharp, css, cuesheet, d, dcs, delphi, diff, div, dos, dot, e, epc, ecmascript, eiffel, email, erlang, euphoria, f1, falcon, fo, fortran, freebasic, fsharp, gambas, genero, genie, gdb, glsl, gml, gnuplot, go, groovy, gettext, gwbasic, haskell, hicest, hq9plus, html, html5, icon, idl, ini, inno, intercal, io, j, java5, java, javascript, jquery, kixtart, klonec, klonecpp, latex, lb, lisp, llvm, locobasic, logtalk, lolcode, lotusformulas, lotusscript, lscript, lsl2, lua, m68k, magiksf, make, mapbasic, matlab, mirc, modula2, modula3, mmix, mpasm, mxml, mysql, newlisp, nsis, oberon2, objc, objeck, ocaml-brief, ocaml, oobas, oracle8, oracle11, oxygene, oz, pascal, pcre, perl, perl6, per, pf, php-brief, php, pike, pic16, pixelbender, pli, plsql, postgresql, povray, powerbuilder, powershell, proftpd, progress, prolog, properties, providex, purebasic, pycon, python, q, qbasic, rails, rebol, reg, robots, rpmspec, rsplus, ruby, sas, scala, scheme, scilab, sdlbasic, smalltalk, smarty, sql, systemverilog, tcl, teraterm, text, thinbasic, tsql, typoscript, unicon, uscript, vala, vbnet, vb, verilog, vhdl, vim, visualfoxpro, visualprolog, whitespace, winbatch, whois, xbasic, xml, xorg_conf, xpp, yaml, z80, zxbasic

When you use the <code> or <file> syntax as above, you might want to make the shown code available for download as well. You can do this by specifying a file name after language code like this:

<file php myexample.php>
<?php echo "hello world!"; ?>
</file>

myexample.php

<?php echo "hello world!"; ?>

If you don't want any highlighting but want a downloadable file, specify a dash (-) as the language code: <code - myfile.foo>.

You can embed raw HTML or PHP code into your documents by using the <html> or <php> tags. (Use uppercase tags if you need to enclose block level elements.)

HTML example:

<html>
This is some <span style="color:red;font-size:150%;">inline HTML</span>
</html>
<HTML>
<p style="border:2px dashed red;">And this is some block HTML</p>
</HTML>

<html> This is some inline HTML </html> <HTML> <p style=“border:2px dashed red;”>And this is some block HTML</p> </HTML>

PHP example:

<php>
echo 'A logo generated by PHP:';
echo '<img src="' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '?=' . php_logo_guid() . '" alt="PHP Logo !" />';
echo '(generated inline HTML)';
</php>
<PHP>
echo '<table class="inline"><tr><td>The same, but inside a block level element:</td>';
echo '<td><img src="' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '?=' . php_logo_guid() . '" alt="PHP Logo !" /></td>';
echo '</tr></table>';
</PHP>

<php> echo 'A logo generated by PHP:'; echo '<img src=“' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '?=' . php_logo_guid() . '” alt=“PHP Logo !” />'; echo '(inline HTML)'; </php> <PHP> echo '

'; </PHP>

Please Note: HTML and PHP embedding is disabled by default in the configuration. If disabled, the code is displayed instead of executed.

DokuWiki can integrate data from external XML feeds. For parsing the XML feeds, SimplePie is used. All formats understood by SimplePie can be used in DokuWiki as well. You can influence the rendering by multiple additional space separated parameters:

The refresh period defaults to 4 hours. Any value below 10 minutes will be treated as 10 minutes. DokuWiki will generally try to supply a cached version of a page, obviously this is inappropriate when the page contains dynamic external content. The parameter tells DokuWiki to re-render the page if it is more than refresh period since the page was last rendered.

Example:

{{rss>http://slashdot.org/index.rss 5 author date 1h }}

• AV1's Open, Royalty-Free Promise In Question As Dolby Sues Snapchat Over Codec by BeauHD (2026/03/28 03:30)
• Google Moves Post-Quantum Encryption Timeline Up To 2029 by BeauHD (2026/03/27 23:00)
• European Commission Investigating Breach After Amazon Cloud Account Hack by BeauHD (2026/03/27 22:00)
• Windows PCs Crash Three Times As Often As Macs, Report Says by BeauHD (2026/03/27 21:00)
• Austria Plans Social Media Ban For Under-14s by BeauHD (2026/03/27 20:00)

Some syntax influences how DokuWiki renders a page without creating any output it self. The following control macros are availble:

DokuWiki's syntax can be extended by Plugins. How the installed plugins are used is described on their appropriate description pages. The following syntax plugins are available in this particular DokuWiki installation:

• Backlinks Plugin 2025-11-28 by Mark C. Prins
  Displays backlinks to a given page.
• bibtex4dw plugin 2024-02-24 by Till Biskup
  adding BibTeX functionality to DokuWiki
• Blockquote Plugin 2020-09-27 by Anika Henke (previous author: Gina Haeussge)
  Write quotations in a semantically correct way
• do plugin 2024-05-12 by Andreas Gohr
  Assign tasks within the wiki
• folded plugin 2023-07-22 by Michael Hamann, Fabian van-de-l_Isle, Christopher Smith, Esther Brunner
  Foldable page sections
• Icons Plugin 2024-10-30 by Giuseppe Di Terlizzi
  Embed icons in Dokuwiki
• Plugin imagebox 2023-08-21 by Lukas Rademacher, CvH, Dr-Yukon, FFTiger & myst6re
  Syntax for display an image with a caption, like Wikipedia.org
• include plugin 2025-07-22 by Michael Hamann, Gina Häussge, Christopher Smith, Michael Klier, Esther Brunner
  Functions to include another page in a wiki page
• Info Plugin 2020-06-04 by Andreas Gohr
  Displays information about various DokuWiki internals
• latexcaption plugin 2025-1-10 by Ben van Magill
  Adds syntax for latex-like figure captions and numbering
• MathJax plugin 2021-11-20 by Mark Liffiton
  Enables MathJax (https://www.mathjax.org/) parsing of TeX math expressions in wiki pages
• nodisp 2022-09-14 by Myron Turner
  Hide text from brwosoer display or remove from output to browser depending on acl
• nspages plugin 2024-11-22 by Guillaume Turri
  Presents a toc of the selected namespace using <nspages>
• Poem 2012-07-06 by Danny Lin
  <poem> tag that embeds a block with linebreaks preserved.
• Snippets Plugin 2022-10-07 by Myron Turner
  Provides toolbar button+popup for template insertion; can track and insert sinppet updates
• struct plugin 2025-09-24 by Andreas Gohr, Michael Große, Anna Dabrowska
  Add and query additional structured page data
• Tag Plugin 2023-10-17 by Michael Hamann, Gina Häussge, Christopher Smith, Michael Klier, Esther Brunner
  tag wiki pages
• Wrap Plugin 2023-08-13 by Anika Henke
  Universal plugin which combines functionalities of many other plugins. Wrap wiki text inside containers (divs or spans) and give them a class (choose from a variety of preset classes), a width and/or a language with its associated text direction.

{{tag>[list of tags]}}

Allows you to categorize your wiki pages. The resulting links either point to the corresponding page in the specified tag namespace (only if it exists). If you want a link to point to a page in another namespace, you have to indicate the namespace before the tag name. If this page doesn't exist, just the list of pages with the same tag is shown when you follow one of those links.

Examples:

• {{tag>tag1 tag2 tag3}}
• with namespaces: {{tag>:ns1:tag1 ns1:tag2 ns2:subns1:tag3}}

{{topic>[tag]&[flags]}}

This displays a list of all pages that contain the given category tag. The list is sorted alphabetically by page ID. You can also prepend the modifiers + and -. + creates an intersection between the list of pages created by the already defined tags and the pages matching the tag following the + (AND), - removes all pages tagged with the given tag from the list of already found pages.

Example:

• {{topic>tag1 -tag2}} – Lists all pages tagged with tag1 but not with tag2.
• {{topic>tag1 +tag2}} – Lists all pages tagged with tag1 and tag2.
• {{topic>tag1 tag2}} – Lists all pages tagged with either tag1 or tag2 or both.
• {{topic>ns1?tag1 tag2}} – List all pages inside namespace ns1 tagged with either tag1 or tag2
• {{topic>.?tag1 tag2}} – List all pages inside the current namespace tagged with either tag1 or tag2
• {{topic>tag1 tag2 tag3&nodate&desc&sort}} (Adding pagelist options to change the design)

 {{searchtags&[flags]}}

This displays a search form with the possibility to select a namespace and to select tags from a table of all tags that should either be in- or excluded with the option to choose if the tags should be associated with AND or OR. The results are displayed as in the topic component.

Example:

• {{searchtags}} – The basic syntax
• {{searchtags&nodate&desc&sort}} – with pagelist options to change the design

{{count>[tag]}}

This part allows you to display an overview of your current used tags. It prints the tag and the related occurrence (how often is the tag used?) in your wiki. Either you can specify a + as tag-name, which results in a list of all used tags or just specify some tags separated by spaces.

Example:

• {{count>+}} – List all tags with related occurrences.
• {{count>tag1 tag2}} – List the occurrence of tag1 and tag2.
• {{count>tag1 tag2 tag3&. ns1 ns2}} – List all occurrences for the given tags inside the namespaces (the dot specifies the root namespace)

 {{tagpage>[tag][&dynamic][|title]}}

This displays a link to the listing of all tags as it is done by the Tag syntax but without tagging the page with that tag. With the optional dynamic flag the link becomes red when the listing of all pages with that tag is empty for the current user. The dynamic flag automatically disables the cache of the current page in order to ensure that the link color is always correct. Optionally a title can be specified that will be used as link name.

Example:

• {{tagpage>test_foo}} – The basic syntax
• {{tagpage>test_foo&dynamic}} – A link with dynamic link color
• {{tagpage>test_foo|my title}} – A link with custom title
• {{tagpage>test_foo&dynamic|my | title}} – A link with dynamic link color and custom title (that can also contain |)