Top 10 MediaWiki Extensions You Shouldn’t Live Without

MediaWiki's value is mostly in its extensions — but only a handful earn their place on every wiki. This is the curated top ten, chosen for value-to-maintenance ratio (all bundled or actively maintained, all stable as of 2026). Installation details for each are on their extension pages; the order reflects the order you should install them in.

1. VisualEditor — WYSIWYG editing; with Parsoid in core since 1.42 it is a one-line install and the single biggest editor-community improvement
2. TemplateData (bundled) — documents template parameters in machine-readable form; powers VE's template dialogs and the parameter tables on template pages
3. TemplateStyles — per-template CSS with sanitization; keeps styling local to templates instead of piling into Common.css
4. ParserFunctions (bundled) — #if, #switch, #expr and friends: the logic layer that every real template system needs
5. SyntaxHighlight (bundled) — Pygments-based code highlighting; the difference between 'code pasted' and 'documentation'
6. Cargo — structured data in tables with #cargo_query; the pragmatic layer for any wiki with records, inventories or fields
7. Page Forms — form-driven data entry; the companion to Cargo (or SMW) that makes structured data usable by non-technical editors
8. Notifications (Echo) — mentions and watchlist alerts; keeps contributors engaged without them refreshing RecentChanges
9. AbuseFilter — programmable anti-abuse: tag, warn, disallow, block and throttle on edit patterns; the default defense on Wikimedia's wikis
10. Translate — page translation with message groups and review; the only serious path to a multilingual wiki

Honorable mentions: CirrusSearch (search quality — install when the wiki grows past a few hundred pages), DiscussionTools (modern talk pages), Nuke + ReplaceText (spam and refactor cleanup), and ConfirmEdit (basic CAPTCHA against scripted spam).

Rules that keep the list honest: every entry above is stable and (for the non-bundled ones) actively maintained — check the status field on each extension page before installing; match versions to your MediaWiki branch; and refuse the temptation of the extension zoo. Ten maintained extensions do more than fifty abandoned ones. The full gallery is where you verify and explore beyond this list.