MediaWiki Tips and Tricks

Sign in Subscribe

Topic

mediawiki

A collection of 152 articles

Lua Scripting with Scribunto Extension in MediaWiki

Picture this: you’re editing a page, and suddenly a tiny script pops up, churning out tables, calculating dates, or even fetching data from a remote API – all without a single line of PHP in sight. That, dear reader, is the magic of Scribunto.

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 API for Custom Integrations

Why the MediaWiki Action API matters If you’ve ever tinkered with a wiki‑powered site and felt the urge to pull data into a dashboard, push alerts to Slack, or bulk‑update pages from a spreadsheet, the MediaWiki Action API is the bridge you’ve been looking for. It

How to use Git for MediaWiki page versioning and collaboration

A practical guide to git-remote-mediawiki: setup, clone with full history, review workflows, conflict handling, and when not to use it.

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

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