howto

Why PHP 8 and Redis matter for a busy MediaWiki Picture a wiki that serves a few hundred edits a day. It runs comfortably on PHP 7, APCu, and the default file‑based cache. Now scale that up to a university‑wide knowledge base or a community‑driven documentation portal

Ever tried to read a wiki that suddenly switched from English to Japanese mid‑article? It feels like walking into a café and finding the menu printed in three different scripts. That is the kind of delightful chaos you get when a MediaWiki instance starts serving content in more than

Why “advanced” really matters

Why Your Wiki Needs a Little Extra Muscle Ever opened a MediaWiki site and thought, “this could use a splash of colour, a pinch of interactivity, maybe a dash of data‑validation?” You’re not alone. The core MediaWiki engine is rock‑solid, but it’s also a bit like

Why the “if” matters more than you think Picture this: you’re fiddling with an infobox on a fandom wiki and suddenly the table decides to spit out a blank line because a single parameter slipped through the cracks. In the wild world of MediaWiki, that’s not a bug

When a wiki starts to speak a richer language than plain text, you instantly get a double‑edged sword: the data becomes more powerful, but the markup also grows heavier

What CirrusSearch Brings to MediaWiki When you spin up a MediaWiki installation, the default search feels a bit like using a paper‑clip to pry open a steel door. It works, but you quickly realize it’s not built for the kind of precision you’d expect from a modern

Understanding MediaWiki’s Hook System for Extension Development When you first peek at MediaWiki’s source you’ll notice a curious pattern: scattered Hooks::run calls, each paired with a string like ArticleSaveComplete or UserLoginComplete. Those are the beating heart of the extension ecosystem. In plain English, a “hook” is