Announcing DokuWiki Sphinx Search Plugin
Mindaugas Zukas··Updated The DokuWiki Sphinx Search Plugin replaces DokuWiki's built-in search with Sphinx, delivering Google-style results with namespace filtering and per-section indexing. It's ideal for large documentation wikis where the default search struggles with relevance. We released it as open source on Launchpad.
At Ivinco we use DokuWiki and so do many of our friends and customers. DokuWiki is a great choice for creating documentation of any kind. So we are more than happy to present the DokuWiki Sphinx search plugin.
This plugin replaces DokuWiki’s built-in search functionality with the Sphinx Search Engine powered search which gives high-performance and more relevant search results. It also improves the way search results are being displayed – it’s more Google-style now, and you can filter results by namespaces.
One more nice feature to mention is that different parts of documents are indexed separately. It is very useful when you have large documents with lot’s of sections.
You can download it from Launchpad:
https://launchpad.net/dokuwiki-sphinxsearch
On Launchpad you can also report about bugs.
Let us know if you run into trouble installing it. And feel free to contact us if you need any customizations or additional features.
Need a custom search backend or wiki integration? See our development services.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why use Sphinx instead of DokuWiki's built-in search?
DokuWiki's built-in search is fine for small wikis but struggles with relevance and speed on large ones. Sphinx adds proper full-text indexing, BM25 ranking, namespace filtering, and section-level matches.
Does the plugin index DokuWiki pages incrementally or in full?
In full. The plugin uses Sphinx's standard indexing pipeline, and a cron job re-indexes the wiki periodically. For most documentation wikis that is enough, since pages don't change often enough to need true real-time.
Can I filter search results by namespace with this plugin?
Yes — namespace filtering is built in. You can scope a search to a specific section (e.g., engineering: or customer-docs:) without indexing each namespace separately. This is useful for multi-team wikis where users want results from their own area only.
Is the DokuWiki Sphinx Search Plugin still maintained?
This plugin is a legacy release from the early days of Ivinco's open source work. It still works against the Sphinx versions it was built for, but for modern setups, Manticore Search (the Sphinx fork) or a fresh integration is the better choice. Reach out if you need a current-generation wiki search backend.
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