MediaWiki Tips and Tricks

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mediawiki

A collection of 129 articles

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

Implementing a Custom Search Index in MediaWiki with Elasticsearch

Why a Custom Search Index? MediaWiki ships with a simple MySQL‑based search engine that works for tiny wikis, but it quickly becomes a bottleneck as the amount of content grows. Extension:CirrusSearch replaces the native engine with Elasticsearch, giving you full‑text relevance, fast autocomplete, and the ability to

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

How to Upgrade Your MediaWiki to 1.45

Upgrading to 1.45 follows the same disciplined process used for any major MediaWiki upgrade, but there are a few version‑specific details you should be aware of

Mastering the Cargo Extension for Structured Data in MediaWiki

Why Structured Data Matters in a Wiki Ever opened a wiki page and thought, “This could be a spreadsheet, but I’m stuck with plain text”? Yeah, I’ve been there. MediaWiki, at first glance, feels like a giant notebook – you scribble, you link, you hope the reader gets the

How to Use MediaWiki’s API to Build a Custom Search Widget for Your Website

Introduction MediaWiki powers Wikipedia and thousands of other wikis. Its Action API is a clean, REST‑like interface that lets external sites query a wiki for titles, snippets, images and more. In this guide we walk through the steps needed to turn that API into a lightweight, client‑side search