Ikiwiki converts a directory full of wiki pages into HTML pages suitable for publishing on a website. Unlike many wikis, ikiwiki does not have its own ad-hoc means of storing page history, and instead uses a revision control system such as Subversion or Git.

Ikiwiki implements all of the other standard features of a wiki, including web-based page editing, user registration and logins, a RecentChanges page, BackLinks, search, Discussion pages, tags, smart merging and conflict resolution, and page locking.

Ikiwiki also supports generating news feeds (RSS and Atom) and blogging. Ikiwiki provides a plugin system which allows many other features to be added. Some of the plugins have additional dependencies, found among the Recommends and Suggests of this package.