MediaWiki Tips and Tricks

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Harnessing Lua Scripting in MediaWiki with the Scribunto Extension

Why Lua feels like a secret weapon for wikis Ever stared at a wikitext page and thought, “there’s gotta be a smarter way”? You’re not alone. In the wild world of MediaWiki, the Scribunto extension quietly hands you a scripting toolbox that looks suspiciously like a Swiss army

Building Custom Skins for MediaWiki: A Developer Guide

Why bother with a custom skin? When you first log into a MediaWiki site the interface looks like the familiar Vector theme. That’s fine for most readers, but developers often want a look that matches a brand, a conference, or just the itch to experiment with HTML/CSS. A

How to Set Up a Backup and Restore Strategy for MediaWiki Sites

Why a Backup Strategy Matters MediaWiki stores its critical data in two places: the relational database (pages, revisions, users, logs, etc.) and the file system (configuration, extensions, skins, uploaded images). A single‑point failure – a corrupted database, a lost LocalSettings.php, or a missing images/ directory – can render a wiki

Enhancing Search in MediaWiki Using the CirrusSearch Extension

Why CirrusSearch matters for a MediaWiki site If you’ve ever typed a phrase into Special:Search and gotten a wall of unrelated hits, you know the frustration. The classic MediaWiki search is fast enough for a handful of pages, but it falls flat once your wiki grows beyond a

Top 10 MUST HAVE MediaWiki Extensions for Every MediaWiki

A curated list of ten extensions I believe are indispensable. I explain what problem each solves, when to use it, and any trade-offs to watch out for

Mastering MediaWiki Template Development for Dynamic Content

Why “just another template” never cuts it Ever opened a wiki page and felt the layout was as stale as last year’s Christmas sweater? You’re not alone. Most wikis start with a handful of hand‑crafted tables and a sprinkling of {{Infobox}} calls, then they stall. The real

Configuring OAuth Authentication in MediaWiki for Secure Logins

Why OAuth matters for MediaWiki logins When you run a wiki that anyone can join, the old‑school username/password combo starts to feel a bit… rusty. A compromised password can open the whole site to vandalism, and keeping track of password policies across dozens of installs is a headache.

How the Moderation Extension Helps You Fight Spam Bots

The Moderation extension is a lightweight anti‑spam tool designed for small and medium MediaWiki sites. By routing every edit and upload from untrusted users into a moderation queue, it stops spam bots before their changes ever appear in the wiki’s history or RecentChanges. Why Moderation beats traditional captchas

How to Use Page Forms Extension to Create Custom Data Entry Forms in MediaWiki

Why Page Forms? The Page Forms extension (formerly Semantic Forms) lets you turn any infobox‑style template into a user‑friendly form. It works on its own, or together with Semantic MediaWiki or Cargo for data storage and querying. With Page Forms you can let editors add, edit and query

Using Lua Modules in MediaWiki with the Scribunto Extension

Using Lua Modules in MediaWiki with the Scribunto Extension Ever stared at a wikitext page that just wouldn’t behave the way you wanted, and thought “there must be a better way”? You’re not alone. In the wild world of MediaWiki the answer often lives in the Module namespace,