MediaWiki Tips and Tricks

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A collection of 121 articles

How to Secure MediaWiki with Two‑Factor Authentication and SSO Integration

Why strengthen MediaWiki login? MediaWiki powers public wikis like Wikipedia and many private knowledge bases. Even a well‑configured password policy is not enough against credential stuffing, phishing or insider threats. Adding a second factor and centralising authentication through Single Sign‑On (SSO) raises the security bar dramatically while keeping

Mastering MediaWiki Caching: Strategies for High-Traffic Sites

Why “Caching” Is the Lifeblood of a Busy Wiki When a MediaWiki installation starts to see a few thousand page‑views per minute, the server’s CPU and DB threads begin to scream “slow down!”. The first thing most sysadmins learn—sometimes the hard way—is that raw PHP execution

Mastering MediaWiki Templates: Creating Reusable Content Structures

Why Templates Matter in MediaWiki Ever stared at a dozen pages that look almost identical, then spent an afternoon hunting down a stray bold‑tag or a missing reference? You’re not alone. In the wild world of wikis, repetition is a silent productivity killer. A well‑crafted template is

Mastering MediaWiki's Parser Functions: A Developer's Guide

Why parser functions matter

Mastering ParserFunctions in MediaWiki: Logical and String Functions for Dynamic Content

ParserFunctions Unleashed: From Simple Logic to String Sorcery Ever stared at a wiki page that felt as static as a marble statue? Then you probably missed the hidden gears of ParserFunctions humming underneath. Imagine you could ask, “Show this text only if the user is logged in,” or “Trim a

Building Custom Reports in MediaWiki Using Lua Modules

Why Lua modules matter for MediaWiki reporting At first glance a MediaWiki installation looks like a giant collection of wikitext pages, nothing more than a glorified blog. In practice, though, the platform hides a surprisingly powerful scripting layer called Scribunto. With Scribunto you can write Lua code that lives inside

Introduction to Semantic MediaWiki

What is Semantic MediaWiki? Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) is a powerful MediaWiki extension that lets you turn a regular wiki into a collaborative knowledge base. By adding simple #set and #ask markup, you can store structured data (properties and values) directly on wiki pages and query that data across the whole

Integrating REST API in MediaWiki: Building Dynamic Applications

Why the MediaWiki REST API matters (and why you might care) Picture this: you’re building a mobile app that lets people browse Wikipedia articles offline, or a dashboard that pulls the latest revision stats for a set of internal wiki pages. You could hack together a bunch of action=

Best Practices for Backing Up MediaWiki Installations

Why a MediaWiki Backup Is More Than Just “Copy‑Paste” Imagine you’ve spent months curating a niche wiki about vintage arcade cabinets. One night a power surge knocks the server offline and, when it boots, the latest articles have vanished. The feeling is a bit like watching a favorite

How to Create a Custom CSS Theme in MediaWiki

How to Create a Custom CSS Theme in MediaWiki MediaWiki separates the skin (the PHP/HTML structure) from the theme (a bundle of CSS that decorates a skin). If you want a unique look for your wiki without touching core files, the recommended path is to create a custom CSS