BrutalWiki

As of 2021, the days when every web nerd made their own pet wiki engine for fun are past. BrutalWiki is a throwback. Think of it as a toy or art piece.

Since you're still reading, here are the technical details.

About

BrutalWiki is a wiki engine written in PHP, with some unique traits:

• Trying to follow Brutalist web design principles such as clarity of purpose.
• It uses rocket links throughout, making for a very distinct authorial voice.
• The database is contained in a single JSON file that can be manipulated with many 3rd-party tools; that means you can only have so much text on any one wiki, but backups become very easy, and you are never locked in.

Otherwise, BrutalWiki is geared towards personal use. It tries to be somewhat robust and secure, but isn't exactly industrial-strength. Known user: Gorf. See also: capsule review on the SDF Wiki.

A little history: initial development took place in 2021-2022, but then everyone upgraded to PHP 8 and BrutalWiki stopped working. Lacking the bandwidth to deal with it, I shelved the project for three years. But due to a fan getting in touch (thanks, Gorf!) now it's back!

Availability

Live Demo

This mirror is read-only, but you can try it on your own server:

Download (20K) • Source code

The current version is 1.5.1 as of 21 March 2025. You can have it under the terms of the Artistic License 2.0 (included with the source code). See the public repository for how to get support, and other useful information.

Features

BrutalWiki has a carefully chosen set of features, in order to limit scope and keep the project manageable:

• Single PHP script; the base edition is only 200 lines of code!
• Database kept in a single JSON file for easy backup and 3rd-party access.
• Wiki syntax that can be rendered through simple text substitution.

The usual conveniences are also available:

• Password-based security, mostly to prevent spam;
• a decent set of configuration options;
• custom stylesheet, logo and icon;
• preview button, recent changes and summaries;
• custom footer and navigation menu;
• page search, page index and statistics;
• error 404 is properly returned for non-existent pages.

On top of that there are some extra features:

• custom syntax and actions can be easily added in config;
• the wiki can be set to read-only mode with an option.

More are planned and will be added as time allows.

Other small things