I'm definitely interested in VaultWiki, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have any shortcomings. I'm posting in this thread because I want answers and possibly a discussion, if the developer(s) is active enough.

VaultWiki's vBulletin integration makes it a serious alternative to MediaWiki. That's its strongest point. Had it not been for that, I wouldn't even care about VaultWiki. That VaultWiki is cross platform too (XenForo and IPBoard) makes it even better. But other than that, I don't see any other major pros, and it's mostly cons aside from its forum integration.

VaultWiki would have been a lot more stable, mature, feature rich and powerful, had it been open source. What happens if the main author/developer dies in a car accident tomorrow, for example? Who will maintain the proprietary source code? VaultWiki will die out in such a scenario.

VW's vBulletin integration is very compelling, but I think the best thing thincom/pegasus can do, is go GNU GPL v3 and ask for donations. I and many others would happily and much rather, fund VaultWiki with such an approach.

The parent company (Cracked Egg Studios) is currently in charge of licensing, and I doubt they are considering a public license for the full product anymore. It was originally released in late 2007 as a public license, and was changed to a proprietary EULA in summer 2008, because a significant outcry of its user base said that it should NOT be offered for free. In 2010, VaultWiki was given a little more autonomy as VaultWiki Team was formed, but we still have to answer to CES. Throughout that entire time, the product, its image, and feature set have only improved. It tends to be a rule with VaultWiki: if something changes, it doesn't change back.

If there are features that MediaWiki has (vanilla or not) that VaultWiki doesn't have, you are welcomed to make feature requests. We recognize MediaWiki as competition, know it sets the standard, and that we have to exceed that standard when we can. VaultWiki was created by CES in 2007 after they used MediaWiki for a year and decided it didn't have the features they needed (granted that was MW 1.4 versus MW 1.22 or whatever it's up to now). Ignoring the forum integrations, there are many aspects VaultWiki (full) now has over MediaWiki: BB-Code, better permissions, language/translation management, book/chapter management, easier media insertion.

I'm currently compiling a list of feature comparison between MediaWiki and VaultWiki. This is what I have so far (for MediaWiki, these are all "Yes" for VaultWiki). If I'm incorrect on any of these points, please let me know. If an Extension lets you do it, let me know, but the final list would only include popular and active extensions (e.g. Extension:AutoLink is no longer maintained).

Here's the MediaWiki list:

New Licenses: FREE
Free updates: Yes
Pages indexed by forum search: No
Automatically create links: No
Store link data: Yes
Syntax uses BB-Code: No

Pages use tabs: Yes
Post comments: No (a talk page isn't the same as individual user comments)
Show comments below: No
Multiple Discussions: No
Collapsible sections: No
Split content: No
Auto-TOC: Yes
Fully parsed preview: No

Editable by multiple users: Yes
Edit paragraphs: Yes
Protect pages: Yes
Blacklist titles: Yes
Pages show list of contributors: No
Create categories: Yes
BB-Code variables: Yes

List of all edits: Yes
Fully parsed versions: Yes
Compare two edits: Yes
Approve edits: No
Revert a page: Yes

Post reusable attachments: Yes
Easily find, insert, upload: No
View, compare, undo: Yes

Write pages in any language: Extension required
Translate pages: Extension required
Easily switch between translations: No

Keep your pages organized in multiple areas: No
Use prefixes to keep similar pages unique: Yes
Icons show new articles, comments, edits: No
Place wiki content on other forum pages: No
Moderation tools for handling multiple pages simultaneously: No
Anonymous pages allow stand-alone pages: No

Create synonyms: Yes (VaultWiki also lets you create them in reverse, and set expiration)
Create templates: Yes
Integrate templates with content using arguments: Yes

Customize keyword-rich URLs: Yes
Makes use of canonical URLs and 301 redirects: Yes
Use RSS syndication to keep users informed: Extension required
Promote wiki content with Facebook: No

Add pages to Books: No
Read book collections with simple navigation: No
Place chapters in any order: No

View statistics: Yes
Look up recent edits: Yes
Pages meeting various criteria: Yes

List of edits made by any user: Yes
User contributions in user's profile: No
User can have wiki preferences: Yes
Utilize wiki usage data for trophies or other promotions: No

Users can subscribe to pages or discussions: Yes
Users can organize their subscriptions: Yes
Notifications can be sent instantly, daily, weekly: Yes

Pages maintained by group members: No
Private pages for group members: No

Control CSS for each forum style: No
Change image paths for each style: No

Quickly jump to other wiki pages: Yes
Watch recent wiki activity live: No
View technical analysis of each page: No
Find similar or related wiki content: No
Customize the sidebar: No
Use wiki sidebar in forum sidebar: No

Specify which Special pages each usergroup can access: No
Allow usergroups to edit, protect, and undo edits: Not forum usergroups
Define moderators to manage new and existing content: Yes

Import wiki information seamlessly: Yes
Various settings let you fine-tune look and feel: Yes

Fully phrased using the forum language system: separate system used
Developer hooks through forum plugin system: separate system used

A note on the MIN_PACKET (minimum max_allowed_packet value). vBulletin support has in the past recommended at least 32M, and sometimes as much as 128M, to prevent MySQL gone away and other packet-related database errors.

Some users are still using default or host-restricted packet values of 1M, 2M, or even 500K. VaultWiki now uses a dynamic minimum, calculated based on your current forum and expected query size.

The most packet-expensive query in vBulletin is the one that caches phrase translations in columns on the language table. Rather than do this one column at a time, it updates all the columns at once, which quickly uses up all available packet space.

To determine the requirement, VaultWiki builds this query without executing it, and calculates how many bytes it will transfer. If the current max_packet is exceeded, or only has a small margin, then VaultWiki will refuse to install.

If this happens, your only option is to upgrade your max_allowed_packet. There is nothing VaultWiki can do to improve this - as I describe above, max_allowed_packet errors are due to a design flaw in the vBulletin language system.

The first post is now updated: you can purchase Ad Removal and Branding Removal for VaultWiki Lite from the official site. If you need help installing or upgrading, you can also purchase install or upgrade services from the main site. Previously these options were only available for licensed users, but now they are available to anyone, including Lite users.

If you do purchase one of these extras, you would have to always download it from there in the future, because the Members area will automatically remove those elements for you, and the ZIP attached to this thread will not.

Make sure your PHP version is at least 5.3. VaultWiki's source code won't parse on lower versions.

A blank page is usually due to a PHP error, but you have errors hidden. You will have to turn on 'display_errors' in your php.ini file to see them. But I suspect that the error you see is due to your PHP version being too low.

If it is, we need to create a bug report, because you should AT LEAST be able to reach the screen that says your site doesn't meet the PHP requirement.

I'm on PHP 5.4... and no, I didn't get that far. Just the sign in and then blank.

By the way, is it possible to export VaultWiki's article database to MediaWiki? You know, if I'd change my mind later.

Any VaultWiki > MediaWiki tool would be a lossy conversion, since there is a lot of functionality and page types that simply don't exist in MediaWiki. We have not written something like this, but we do plan to eventually have a generic export tool that would export XML or something like that. It is not high on the priority list right now, as it's not one of those every-day features that our users ask for.

Even so, we still have to do some research to see if there is a mostly loss-less format that other wiki software might be able to import.

From what I have seen, it's rare for any software to provide an export function to a competing software. For example, if you search online for a MediaWiki exporter to Dokuwiki, what you will find is:
- a Dokuwiki function that imports MediaWiki
- third parties that wrote scripts to do this
However there is not a script within MediaWiki itself to do this.

If we expect that most software and VaultWiki continues to follow this model, I am not aware if MediaWiki or other potentially intermediate software currently includes a function to import VaultWiki data.

As far as the blank page, it really sounds like a PHP error. You will need to track down the error message by enabling 'display_errors' or viewing your error logs. Once you have the error you can report it here or the VaultWiki site. The VaultWiki site has faster response time.

Just wanted to note that I uploaded a new ZIP today. Technically it's the same version, but a lot of issues getting the installation/un-installation process to run smoothly are fixed.

For example, previous versions of the ZIP could not be extracted using the WinZIP client, and there were fatal errors whenever cron jobs tried to run. These are now resolved.

Also, starting with the new upload, the Javascript will be minified from now on. If you want access to the un-minified Javascript, please download VaultWiki Lite from the main support site since you can choose your download settings there.

We have heard your concerns and there is now a sub-section in the current EULA to cover this:
This has also been a serious concern of ours, because VaultWiki was created under similar circumstances to what you describe. The owner of a software called NuWiki mysteriously disappeared, and because of a proprietary EULA, myself and a few other users of that software pooled our resources to create VaultWiki from scratch. We don't want VaultWiki to die out, even if we do.

But of course, while we are alive we would like to profit from it if we can.

Cracked Egg Studios, LLC is a publicly registered company, so you can with a little research find out if all of ownership suddenly dropped dead at once, like during a suspicious period of inactivity.

The Lite version of Gamma 6 has been posted today, above.

(released June 8, 2014)

• Status Icons are now Font-Based
• Serious error fixed: removing old revisions deletes the entire page
• Fixed Bug: race condition - AJAX requests occur before AJAX params are ready
• Fixed Bug: bbcode does not have options field in Lite version
• Fixed Bug: index URL caches with guest session attached
• Fixed Bug: invalid index URL for guests with cookies disabled
• About 30 other bugs that weren't limited to vBulletin are fixed