MediaWiki Tips and Tricks

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A collection of 130 articles

MediaWiki Caching Strategies: Improving Site Speed

Rethinking Speed: Why Caching Is the Backbone of a Fast MediaWiki Ever visited a wiki that feels like it’s crawling through molasses? Chances are the server’s cache is either missing in action or mis‑configured. In MediaWiki, caching isn’t just a nice‑to‑have; it’s the

Mastering MediaWiki Parser Functions for Dynamic Content

Why parser functions matter for a lively wiki

Optimizing MediaWiki Performance with Lazy Loading

Why lazy loading matters for a MediaWiki farm Picture a bustling wiki with dozens of pages peppered with thumbnails, infoboxes, and user‑uploaded charts. When a reader clicks “read more,” the browser pulls down a hefty HTML payload, parses every <img> tag, then wrestles with dozens of image

Building Custom Hooks in MediaWiki: Advanced Development Techniques

Why “just another extension” isn’t enough When you first dip your toes into MediaWiki development, you’ll see a sea of Extension::register calls, a smorgasbord of $wgHooks arrays, and a dozen examples that all look a bit too tidy. In practice, real‑world wikis need more than the

How to Optimize MediaWiki Performance with Redis and APCu

MediaWiki’s caching architecture

How to Configure and Use the Translate Extension for Multilingual Content in MediaWiki

Introduction The Translate extension turns a single-language MediaWiki into a fully multilingual publishing platform. It provides in-wiki translation of interface messages, software strings and, most importantly, structured page translation. The extension is bundled together with a handful of supporting extensions in the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle (MLEB), which gives you

Mastering MediaWiki Hooks for Extension Development

Why Hooks Matter in MediaWiki Extension Development Imagine you’ve built a tiny extension that logs every page view. You could sprinkle a wfDebug() call everywhere, but that’s messy, hard to maintain and basically spaghetti code. MediaWiki’s hook system is the clean‑cut alternative: it lets you inject

How to Set Up MediaWiki with Docker Compose for Local Development

How to Set Up MediaWiki with Docker Compose for Local Development MediaWiki powers Wikipedia and thousands of wikis worldwide. For developers, contributors, or anyone who wants a sandbox to experiment with extensions, the official MediaWiki‑Docker development environment provides a ready‑made Docker stack. This guide walks you through the

Customizing MediaWiki Appearance with CSS and Templates

Why “skin‑deep” isn’t enough When you first hop onto a fresh MediaWiki install, the default look feels… well, kind of bland. The familiar blue‑green header, the default logo, that plain gray sidebar—nothing screams “my wiki”. Most admins stumble on the fact that the look of a

Enhancing MediaWiki with MathJax for Mathematical Content

Why bother with MathJax on a MediaWiki? Ever opened a scientific wiki and found the equations looking like a jumble of back‑slashes and curly braces? It happens more often than you’d think. Readers stumble over raw LaTeX, editors scratch their heads, and the whole page feels half‑finished.