MediaWiki

From TheBestLinks.com

MediaWiki is a Wiki server software licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is written in PHP and uses an underlying MySQL relational database.

MediaWiki was originally written for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. The site previously used UseModWiki (aka "Phase I"), and switched to the new version ("Phase II") on January 25, 2002. The day is known within the Wikipedia community as Magnus Manske Day, after the original author of the new software.

A further rewritten and improved version of the Phase II software was at one time known as "Phase III". It was renamed MediaWiki in recognition that the software was capable of supporting not only Wikipedia but also other projects, and that a more meaningful system of version numbers was needed. The software was named MediaWiki as a play on Wikimedia Foundation, the Wikipedia mother foundation. The name is occasionally criticised for its similarity to Wikimedia, which leads to confusion among people new to the project.

The current stable version of MediaWiki is 1.3.5, which was released on September 30, 2004.