Discovering MediaWiki 1.44: Key Features for Developers

MediaWiki 1.44 was released as a stable release on 2 July 2025, and by now its REL1_44 branch has reached maintenance-only status — 1.45 has taken over as the current release, and 1.46 (the next LTS) is in development. That makes 1.44 a snapshot of where the platform stands for extension developers: it was the release where several long-deprecated pieces of API code were finally removed, and where a few genuinely new mechanisms landed. This article covers the changes that matter when you write code against it.

The headline: a notifications framework in core

MediaWiki 1.44 introduces a built-in notifications framework (see Manual:Notifications) that core and extensions can use to produce notifications for users. You still need the Notifications (Echo) extension for users to actually see and manage them — Echo remains the delivery UI — but the event side of the pipeline is now a core service with middleware, not an extension-specific mechanism. If you previously coupled your extension to Echo classes for sending notifications, 1.44 is the right moment to migrate to the core framework.

Breaking changes: the cleanup you need to plan for

1.44 removed a large batch of long-deprecated APIs. The ones most likely to affect real extensions:

• wfGetDB() is gone. The global DB accessor, deprecated in 1.39, was removed — use injected IDBProvider/LoadBalancer services
• ApiPageSet::getTitles() and friends removed. API modules must switch to getPageIdentities()-style accessors
• ParsoidOutputAccess removed. The class was deprecated in 1.43; use ParsoidOutputAccessUnstable or the new output pipeline
• OutputPage::mModules / mModuleStyles removed (deprecated since 1.38) — public mutation of module state is no longer possible
• HtmlToContentTransform::setMetrics() and HtmlInputTransformHelper::setMetrics() now require a StatsFactory argument
• Message API cleanup — Message::objectParam(), MessageValue::objectParams() and the MediaWiki\Message\Converter class were removed
• StatusValue no longer accepts MessageSpecifier with a separate parameters array
• UploadBase::OVERWRITE_EXISTING_FILE and HOOK_ABORTED constants removed

The full list is in the 1.44 release notes; the short version is that anything flagged as "deprecated in 1.39–1.43" should be treated as deleted in 1.44.

New services and facilities

• FeatureShutdown service — provides controlled outages for deprecated interfaces, letting operators disable a deprecated feature on a live wiki before upgrading past its removal
• Notification middleware — the new notifications pipeline supports middleware to filter talk-page notifications, replacing the deprecated AbortTalkPageEmailNotification hook
• Forward-compatible parser output flags — ParserOutput gained serialization support for flags that will be used in 1.46
• New parsedreason API parameter for list=blocks — block reasons as parsed HTML, for clients that render them
• Richer siteinfo — action=query&meta=siteinfo now lists all user groups and their granted permissions, including inherited ones from $wgGroupInheritsPermissions
• CirrusSearch + OpenSearch — for search deployments, MediaWiki 1.44 is the first version compatible with OpenSearch 1.3 as a backend alongside Elasticsearch

Extension and skin packaging changes

• CheckUser and TemplateStyles are now bundled with MediaWiki, which simplifies installs and upgrades for wikis running either extension
• Interwiki was merged into core — the extension is no longer needed; the interwiki table is editable from Special:Interwiki out of the box. Note the removed settings: $wgInterwikiCentralDB, $wgInterwikiCentralInterlanguageDB and $wgInterwikiViewOnly are gone, replaced by virtual-domain mapping and the interwiki right respectively
• Skin authors: heading markup changed. The default HTML markup for wikitext headings changed in 1.44 (ParserEnableLegacyHeadingDOM now defaults to false). Skins and CSS that target the old heading DOM need updating; the legacy markup can be restored temporarily with $wgParserEnableLegacyHeadingDOM = true;, but that escape hatch will be removed in the next release

Configuration changes worth knowing

• $wgAllowRawHtmlCopyrightMessages now defaults to false — the copyright footer messages no longer support raw HTML by default
• Google search fallback removed — if $wgDisableTextSearch is set, MediaWiki no longer shows a Google search form; configure $wgSearchForwardUrl (e.g. 'https://duckduckgo.com/?q=$1') instead
• "Special pages" toolbox link removed — if you relied on it, add it to MediaWiki:Sidebar explicitly
• $wgEnotifImpersonal and $wgEnotifMaxRecips deprecated
• $wgResourceLoaderUseObjectCacheForDeps removed (always enabled now), and $wgBaseDirectory removed in favour of MW_INSTALL_PATH
• exception-json log channel removed — use the PSR-3 exception channel
• New uppercase-ckb collation; uca-xx-ckb deprecated

Upgrade notes

Running the update script (php maintenance/run.php update) is mandatory because of the Interwiki merge and schema changes. After upgrading, check the logs for usage of removed globals — MediaWiki logs these, and the FeatureShutdown service helps you stage the deprecation. If you maintain a custom skin, test it against the new heading DOM early, since the legacy fallback has a hard removal date.

1.44 is the release to catch up on homework: the removals are the announced end of a long deprecation cycle, and the additions — notifications framework, bundled CheckUser and TemplateStyles, OpenSearch support — are quietly significant. The release page and the Wikimedia tech blog highlights are the two best references when planning an upgrade.