Manual:FAQ - MediaWiki
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Install MediaWiki
Requirements
Extract
Upload
Set up database
Install
Configure
Upgrade
FAQ
Common issues
Get help and support
Local development quickstart
Immediate help
mediawiki-l
, the MediaWiki
mailing list
#mediawiki
connect
- the
IRC
channel.
Support desk
For a complete list of support venues, see
Communication
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
about MediaWiki usage. If your question is neither answered here nor in the
technical MediaWiki documentation
or the
MediaWiki user documentation
, then please ask in a
support venue
The basics
What are the differences between MediaWiki, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, and wiki?
Please see
Differences between Wikipedia, Wikimedia, MediaWiki, and wiki
for a detailed answer.
I want to use a MediaWiki instance to (blank). Am I allowed to?
MediaWiki is free software: this means that you may use it for any purpose without legal hindrance.
Furthermore, its licensing conditions apply solely to the software itself.
This means that although many wikis license their content under a permissive license, you are not obliged to license the content submitted to your wiki in any particular way.
Of course, as a project founded to support sites like Wikipedia, we encourage you to license the texts you write under a free license, but, in short, you are not required to.
If you wish to alter or amend the software itself, in general, you are permitted to, but there are some restrictions and you should consult
the full text of the GNU GPL version 2 for details
Because MediaWiki is provided free of charge, there is no warranty, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
How do I create a wiki?
Creating a wiki implies installing MediaWiki on a server and having access to manage it.
There are different options, depending on your level of expertise:
To create a wiki on your own server, follow the
Installation guide
Some web hosts offer one-click installs, or allow creating a wiki on-request. See
Hosting services
for different options.
There is no mechanism provided by this site (MediaWiki.org) or the Wikimedia Foundation by which a wiki can be created on behalf of an individual or organization.
Please use one of the methods listed above.
Installation and configuration
Where do I download MediaWiki?
Download the latest stable release of MediaWiki.
Files are supplied in a
.tar
.gz
archive.
MediaWiki can also be
obtained directly from our Git
repository.
How to install MediaWiki?
Installing MediaWiki takes around 10 to 30 minutes, and involves uploading/copying files, and running the installer script to configure the software.
See
Manual:Installation guide
, where you will also find the
minimum system requirements
How do I install MediaWiki using a package?
Many Linux distributions provide MediaWiki in a packaged format for that distribution.
The MediaWiki development team refers you to your Linux distribution for assistance with installing, configuring or using them.
The individual communities and companies who maintain such packages should provide installation instructions.
Be warned that third-party distributions may be older versions, so pay close attention to compatibility information for directions and extensions.
See also:
Software bundles
Can I install more than one wiki on a server using MediaWiki?
It is possible to install more than one wiki on a server provided that:
You install multiple instances of MediaWiki (such as with a
software bundle
like the Bitnami MediaWiki Stack); in different directories – one for each wiki
Or
You use a different database for each wiki
Or
You use a different database prefix for each wiki (for Postgres, you can achieve a similar effect by using different schemas and users). If you want to use the same
LocalSettings.php
file for both, you must ensure $wgServer is dynamically set to the correct value.
For information on the latter two options, see
$wgDBname
and
$wgDBprefix
respectively.
For more information on setting up a wiki family (wikifarm), see
Manual:Wiki family
How do I install an existing wiki, like Wikipedia or Wiktionary?
The main (but not necessarily the easiest) method is to import.
See
Wiki importing
, below.
(Non-MediaWiki methods, such as Xowa and Kiwix can be found at
w:Wikipedia:Database download
).
Does MediaWiki require shell access?
Shell access (
SSH
) is not required for installing MediaWiki, but it is
highly recommended
Without shell access, it may even be difficult for you to get a backup of your wiki, or to upgrade to a new version.
Some maintenance tasks are not possible at all without shell access.
Many major extensions work best with shell access.
How do I install extensions?
See
Manual:Extensions
for information about installing and writing extensions.
See
Category:Extensions
to find existing extensions.
How do I add extra namespaces?
See
Creating a custom namespace
How do I enable uploading?
File uploads are an often-used feature of MediaWiki, but are disabled by default in all current release versions.
To enable them, first make the upload directory (default
images
) writable by the web server (
chmod
-R 777 ./images
or allow the Apache user to write to it, etc.) then set
$wgEnableUploads
to
true
in
LocalSettings.php
If you get a "failed to mkdir" error when you try to upload, it probably means that there's a permissions problem.
See also:
Manual:Configuring file uploads
How do I allow uploading of additional formats?
MediaWiki requires that allowed file upload formats are specified using the
$wgFileExtensions
configuration directive.
Usually this directive is situated in
LocalSettings.php
in the root of your MediaWiki installation.
For example, to extend uploading to PDF files, add the following to
LocalSettings.php
$wgFileExtensions
[]
'pdf'
To extend uploading to more than one type of file, use the following syntax
$wgFileExtensions
array_merge
$wgFileExtensions
'pdf'
'txt'
'mp3'
);
See also:
Manual:Configuring file uploads
How do I enable embedded math formulas?
MediaWiki allows embedded math formulas.
See
Extension:Math
for complete setup instructions.
How do I set the timezone for my MediaWiki?
See
Manual:Timezone
How do I purge a cached page?
To purge a cached page, such as when making changes to the navigation bar, add
&action=purge
to the end of the page's dynamic URL.
E.g.
Or
?action=purge
to the end of the page's short form URL:
E.g.
See also:
Manual:Purge
Manual:Parameters to index.php
How do I completely disable caching?
Add in your
LocalSettings.php
file the following lines:
$wgParserCacheType
= CACHE_NONE;
$wgCachePages
false
"File is corrupt or has an invalid extension"
Some users have reported that after adding a file format to the allowed extensions list, an error is encountered.
The text of the error is similar to the following:
The file is corrupt or has an incorrect extension. Please check the file and upload again.
As a possible solution, set the value of
$wgMimeDetectorCommand
. Under Unix or Linux, this would be
$wgMimeDetectorCommand
"file --brief --mime"
See also:
Manual:MIME type detection
Initial user was not created by installer or it is not an administrator
Sometimes, the installer fails to create the default user, or the
user
table is lost for some reason.
There are a couple of options for solving this:
maintenance/createAndPromote.php
Execute
maintenance/createAndPromote.php
--username --password
from the shell. Append
--bureaucrat
to command line if you want that user to become a bureaucrat, in addition to becoming an administrator.
This will create a new user and promote them to an administrator.
For help, run the script with the parameter
--help
Alter the database
Register a new account using the regular method (
Special:UserLogin
).
Check the user ID
via API
Execute the following SQL statement against the database:
INSERT INTO user_groups ( ug_user, ug_group ) VALUES (

, 'bureaucrat' ), (

, 'sysop' );

above should be replaced with the appropriate user ID which you can see on the user's preference page.
Note: if
$wgDBprefix
is defined in
LocalSettings.php
, prepend its value to the table name. For example, if
$wgDBprefix
is "XYZ", then the table name to use is
XYZuser_groups
Temporarily let everyone assign rights to promote your initial user
Warning:
You should not let outsiders access your wiki while you do this, if you use this method. This method may leave your wiki temporarily vulnerable to attack while you do the procedure.
This method essentially involves letting all users temporarily modify user permissions in order to promote one user
Register a new account using the regular method (
Special:UserLogin
). Be logged in using that account.
Add the following line to the bottom of
LocalSettings.php
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['userrights'] = true;
Go to
special:userrights
and add the user you just created to the
Administrator
and
Bureaucrat
groups.
Remove the
$wgGroupPermissions
'user'
][
'userrights'
true
line from your LocalSettings.php. This step is
very important
, as until you remove it anyone can alter permissions, which is bad.
How do I reset a user's MediaWiki password?
See
Manual:Resetting passwords
How can I create interwiki links in my wiki?
See
Manual:Interwiki
How do I make my base URLs shorter?
(i.e. /wiki/Article_Name as opposed to /w/index.php?title=Article_Name)
See
Manual:Short URL
How do I organize pages into subdirectories like /wiki/subdir/PageName?
See
Manual:$wgNamespacesWithSubpages
and
Help:Subpages
Is downloading and using all of MediaWiki.org free?
Yes, it is free in the sense of
Free software
See
Project:Copyrights
for licensing issues regarding the written content of this site.
How do I administrate/manage user rights?
See
Manual:User rights
for general information.
See
Manual:Preventing access
for methods and strategies for restricting access.
How do I stop anonymous users from editing any page?
The recommended method is by changing the value of the
$wgGroupPermissions
configuration option.
Edit
LocalSettings.php
and add the line:
$wgGroupPermissions
'*'
][
'edit'
false
If you use
Extension:AbuseFilter
, any admin can also disable IP editing temporarily as needed.
See also:
Preventing access
Manual:User rights
How do I stop anonymous users from reading any page?
Add this to the bottom of
LocalSettings.php
$wgGroupPermissions
'*'
][
'read'
false
See also
Manual:$wgWhitelistRead
See
Manual:Preventing access#Restrict viewing of all pages
for more information.
How do I restrict account creation?
Add this to the bottom of
LocalSettings.php
$wgGroupPermissions
'*'
][
'createaccount'
false
See
Manual:Preventing access#Restrict account creation
for more information.
How do I require an email address be specified at registration?
See
Manual:$wgEmailConfirmToEdit
How do I put MediaWiki into
Read Only
mode?
MediaWiki version:
1.5
See
Manual:$wgReadOnly
How do I change default user preferences?
MediaWiki version:
1.4
The MediaWiki default user preferences are in
MainConfigSchema.php
Don't edit that file, just use it for reference.
Say if you want to hide minor edits in recent changes by default.
MainConfigSchema.php says:
public
const
DefaultUserOptions
...
'hideminor'
=>
...
To change the preference, put this in your
LocalSettings.php
$wgDefaultUserOptions
"hideminor"
To change the default namespaces to be searched, in any version of MediaWiki, set
$wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault
in LocalSettings.php to an array mapping namespace indexes to boolean values.
For example, to search the main namespace and the category namespace, use:
$wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault
NS_MAIN
=>
true
NS_CATEGORY
=>
true
];
In some cases, after you change a default user preference, you may also want to change the user preferences of all existing user accounts.
If so, use the
userOptions.php
script in the
maintenance
directory.
Use the
--dry
option for the first run, assess the impact and go from there.
--dry
does not write the database.)
php userOptions.php --dry --nowarn hideminor --old 0 --new 1
Also, always backup your database before making these kinds of changes (you do not need to if you are just using
--dry
).
See also:
Manual:$wgDefaultUserOptions
How can I make MediaWiki run faster?
See:
Manual:Performance tuning
How do MediaWiki and GDPR go together?
See
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and MediaWiki software
Upgrading
See
Manual:Upgrading
Moving
Is it possible to move my wiki to a different machine?
Yes.
It should be.
In essence, you will be backing up your old installation and then "restoring" it onto the new machine.
Finally, you will have to make additional modifications to update the wiki configuration so that everything points to the new location.
How do I move my wiki to a different server?
Follow the instructions at
Manual:Moving a wiki
Changing the interface
How do I change the logo?
Caution:
Do not simply overwrite the default logo installed within MediaWiki (
/resources/assets/wiki.png
); this file will be overwritten when you upgrade the software.
See
Manual:$wgLogos
for the current recommendations on the sizes and filetypes that are acceptable for site logos.
The logo that appears in the top left of each page is determined by the
$wgLogos
configuration line in the
LocalSettings.php
file.
(MediaWiki installations prior to
MediaWiki 1.35.0
used
$wgLogo
.)
There are two ways to change the logo:
Upload an image to your wiki using the normal file uploading interface. This allows the logo to be replaced easily, so you may want to protect the page if you use this method.
The resulting logo path will be something like
$wgUploadPath
/6/62/myRasterLogo.png"
Upload an image to your server by other means (such as FTP).
The resulting logo URL will be something like
$wgScriptPath
/myVectorLogo.svg"
(In this example, the image is in the same folder as the
LocalSettings.php
file.)
Then, modify the
$wgLogos
array in LocalSettings.php.
It should look something like:
$wgLogos
'1x'
=>
$wgUploadPath
/6/62/myRasterLogo.png"
'icon'
=>
$wgScriptPath
/myVectorLogo.svg"
];
Replace the paths above as appropriate, depending on where you actually uploaded the images.
If you only want to change the logo on specific pages, override
#p-logo
CSS's
background-image
property or use a third-party extension like
Extension:LogoFunctions
How do I edit the wiki's CSS?
You shouldn't edit the CSS files (such as common.css) directly, because it will make upgrading harder if you need to apply your customizations each time you upgrade the software.
Instead you need to edit a wiki page called
MediaWiki:Common.css
if you want to apply your CSS changes for all skins, or a wiki page called
MediaWiki:Vector.css
if you want to apply the customizations only for the Vector skin.
The content of the MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.css pages always overrides the default CSS styles specified in the skin files.
How do I hide the left vertical navigation toolbar?
In other words, how do you make the main content div take up 100% of the display, hiding the logo, toolbox, navigation and search engine?
To hide it permanently, copy and paste the following into the
MediaWiki:Common.css
page:
column-content
margin
.6
em
content
margin
2.8
em
p-logo
generated-sidebar
p-lang
p-tb
p-search
display
none
p-cactions
left
.1
em
To instead hide the toolbar when the user presses F11, enter this in your wiki's
MediaWiki:Common.js
document
onkeydown
function
if
==
null
event
if
testKey
122
//F11
appendCSS
'#column-content {margin: 0 0 .6em 0;} #content {margin: 2.8em 0 0 0;} #p-logo, .generated-sidebar, #p-lang, #p-tb, #p-search {display:none;} #p-cactions {left: .1em;} #footer {display:none;}'
);
return
false
function
testKey
intKeyCode
if
window
createPopup
return
keyCode
==
intKeyCode
else
return
which
==
intKeyCode
How do I hide the categories at the bottom of each page?
You can hide display of the categories on each page by modifying your
MediaWiki:Common.css
and adding:
catlinks
display
none
How do I customize the link-URL of the site-logo in the top left corner of all pages that activates when the site-logo is clicked upon?
By default, clicking the site-logo takes you to the main site-page.
If you want to change which internal site-page is the "main" site-page, edit
MediaWiki:Mainpage
To make the link of the site-logo link externally to any other arbitrary URL, you can use jQuery code within MediaWiki:Common.js:
"a.mw-wiki-logo"
).
attr
"href"
"http://www.example.com"
);
"a.mw-wiki-logo"
).
attr
"title"
"Go to example.com website"
);
How do I change the icon in the browser's address line (favicon)?
Simply upload your favicon.ico to the root of your domain/subdomain, make sure file name is in lower case and its name is favicon.ico
Alternatively edit the
$wgFavicon
setting in LocalSettings.php and add
$wgFavicon
$wgScriptPath
/path/to/your/favicon.ico"
See
Manual:$wgFavicon
for more details.
Tip: The favicon image should be either 16 x 16 pixels or 32 x 32 pixels.
Rewrite Rule
If you are using a rewrite rule in .htaccess to remove "index.php" from the URL, you will also need to add an exception for .ico files.
Simply add the following rule to your .htaccess:
RewriteRule
.*\.ico$
[L]
This rule must appear
before
the index.php rule.
Case sensitivity
When uploading the favicon file, be sure the filename is in lowercase. (That is, "favicon.ico", not "Favicon.ico".)
A lot of servers (e.g., those on UNIX-like operating systems) will not be able to find the file unless its name is in lowercase.
How do I customize the navigation bar?
The contents of the navigation bar which appears to the left of each page using the Vector or the Monobook skin are determined by the
MediaWiki:Sidebar
page there on your wiki.
For information on customising these, please see
Manual:Interface/Sidebar
How do I put a text message (sitenotice) on every page?
Put a text in the
MediaWiki:Sitenotice
page. It will be displayed on top of every article page.
You can also add text to
MediaWiki:Anonnotice
to create a message that only displays for logged-out users.
It is often a good idea to transclude the site notice on the anon notice to make sure that logged-out users still get the information on the site notice.
How do I change which page is the main page?
By default, MediaWiki looks for a page with the title
Main Page
and serves this as the default page.
This can be changed by altering the contents of
MediaWiki:Mainpage
to point to a different title.
If this does not change the 'Main Page' link included on the sidebar at install time, edit
MediaWiki:Sidebar
How do I change the Main Page title?
Simply click on the "Move" tab, and move the page to the desired page title.
Usually you also want to
change which page is the configured as "main page"
How do I hide the main page title?
The displayed title of the main page can be changed using the MediaWiki messages
MediaWiki:mainpage-title
and
MediaWiki:mainpage-title-loggedin
(for logged-out and logged-in users respectively). The main page title can be hidden by setting both messages to empty (or only either of them if the title should still be displayed to logged-out or logged-in users).
How can I hide the table of contents?
The table of contents (
TOC
) is automatically shown once there are four or more headings in the article.
There are multiple ways to hide it.
For one page
Place the magic word
__NOTOC__
in the page's wikitext.
For all pages
Install
Extension:NoTOC
or
Add the following rule to
MediaWiki:Common.css
toc
toc
display
none
Per user
Users can add the same CSS rule to their
common.css
personal stylesheet
How do I change the interface text?
Interface text is altered using the MediaWiki namespace.
For each deviation from the default in the site language there is a page MediaWiki:
Englishmessagename
, and for each deviation from the default in each other language a page MediaWiki:
Englishmessagename
languagecode
(Since release 1.9 there are no pages for messages equal to the default.).
On creation of a page the edit box autofills with the default.
When creating a page to override the default it is useful to first save the default version, to allow diffs with it.
See also
Help:System message
For a list of system messages, see
Special:Allmessages
To switch
off
the MediaWiki namespace, see the
$wgUseDatabaseMessages
configuration setting
To remove the
or
Disclaimers
links at the bottom of each page, set the content of pages
MediaWiki:Privacy
or
MediaWiki:Disclaimers
respectively to a single hyphen (
).
How do I edit error messages?
Special:Allmessages
contains a complete list of messages (error or otherwise), that can be edited.
You may also add ?uselang=qqx or &uselang=qqx to a URL which will display the name of each messages in the interface.
How do I change the interface language?
To change the default interface language, alter the value of
$wgLanguageCode
in
LocalSettings.php
, for example:
$wgLanguageCode
"fr"
You may also need to
bypass your browser's cache
to see the changes.
The new default interface language will be applied to all users who haven't ever customised it.
If you want to provide users the possibility to create and choose pages and interface elements in languages other than the default one of the wiki, you need the
Translate
extension, which can make your wiki multilingual.
If you want to change the language settings for all existing users, use the
userOptions.php
maintenance script
For instance, to have all users with English set use French instead, run:
php
userOptions
php
language
--
old
en
--
new
fr
How do I remove the article/edit etc tabs?
For a little more control see:
User:Subfader/Hide_page_tabs
Edit
MediaWiki:Common.css
on your wiki, and add this:
li
ca-edit
display
none
See the page source for the various #ca-* ids used in the content tabs.
This will only work for Monobook and derived skins such as Modern and Vector (the default skin), and doesn't actually stop people from editing. To do that, see
Manual:User rights
How do I add/remove tabs throughout my wiki?
See
Manual:User group CSS and JavaScript
How do I remove a tab on only one page?
MediaWiki version:
1.9
For example, to remove the Discussion (talk) page tab from the Main Page, on the
MediaWiki:Common.css
page add:
body
page-Main_Page
li
ca-talk
display
none
!important
To modify
MediaWiki:Common.css
you must be an
Interface administrator
See also:
Manual:Hide page tabs
How do I remove a tab on all pages
MediaWiki version:
1.9
For example, to remove the Discussion (talk) page tab on all wikipages, on the
MediaWiki:Common.css
page add:
ca-talk
display
none
!important
Other tabs to remove are
#ca-history
#ca-viewsource
#ca-view
(Read tab),
#ca-nstab-main
(Page tab).
Other drop down menu items you can remove are
#ca-watch
#ca-move
#ca-delete
To modify
MediaWiki:Common.css
you must be an
Interface administrator
How do I remove the 'Talk for this IP' link at the top right (e.g. when
$wgDisableAnonTalk
is true)?
One option is to hide the link using the following CSS in the wiki page
MediaWiki:Common.css
in your wiki:
p-personal
pt-anonuserpage
display
none
How do I remove the "Create an Account or Login" link at the top right of the screen?
To remove the login / create account links from the personal_urls you can use this code in your
LocalSettings.php
to hook in and remove them:
$wgHooks
'SkinTemplateNavigation::Universal'
][]
function
$skinTemplate
$links
unset
$links
'user-menu'
][
'login'
);
unset
$links
'user-menu'
][
'login-private'
);
unset
$links
'user-menu'
][
'createaccount'
);
};
How can I suppress actions and special pages?
To disable a specific special page (such as Special:SpecialPages), you may use:
$wgSpecialPages
'Name'
DisabledSpecialPage
::
getCallback
'Name'
'message'
);
where
Name
is the canonical (English) name of the special page to disable, and
message
is the message to be shown to users when they try to access the special page.
To disable an action (such as edit), you may use:
$wgActions
'edit'
false
See
API:Restricting API usage
to disable an API module.
This is only the basic usages. Usually you may want to disable special pages, actions or API modules conditionally.
How do I change the footer?
See:
Manual:Footer
Manual:Configuration settings#Copyright
How can I edit / remove the Powered by MediaWiki image (and possible other images) from the footer?
You can hide the Powered by MediaWiki image by adding the following to your wiki's
MediaWiki:Common.css
footer-poweredbyico
display
none
If you want to remove it completely, you can use
$wgFooterIcons
to remove it using this in your
LocalSettings.php
unset
$wgFooterIcons
'poweredby'
);
Note that this will also remove
other
powered-by icons, e.g. also the one coming from BlueSpice.
If you wish to change the icon images, urls, alt text, or add new icons please see
$wgFooterIcons
' documentation.
How do I add a reply link to default signature tildes (~~~~) template?
Install
DiscussionTools
to enable automatic reply links on talk pages.
How can I change what the
‎<
title
of each page is? Where do I make changes?
Most of the text that you want to change can be found in the namespace of MediaWiki.
In order to change titles, texts, announcements, etc., go to
Special:AllMessages
, where you will see the text associated with the pages you wish to change.
You need to log in as an administrator to edit the protected entries in the MediaWiki namespace.
If you want to change the title in your browser, you need to edit
MediaWiki:Pagetitle
Go there and edit it just like you would any other page in your wiki.
In recent versions of MediaWiki,
MediaWiki:Pagetitle
is $1 - {{SITENAME}} by default.
If {{SITENAME}} is producing the wrong text for you, you need to set
$wgSitename
in your LocalSettings.php.
Don't forget to clear your browser cache after you change your settings.
Does MediaWiki automatically capitalize the first letter of $wgSitename?
Yes.
This can be changed using the
$wgCapitalLinks
configuration setting.
How do I make external links open in a new window?
See
Manual:$wgExternalLinkTarget
How can I suppress MediaWiki from formatting URLs, tags, etc?
Put "
‎<
nowiki
‎nowiki
" tags around the URL or tag.
Example:
svn co
nowiki
nowiki
Produces:
svn co http://svn.example.com/myproject/
How can I force users to preview before they save?
See:
Manual:Force preview
Extension:ForcePreview
How do I add more buttons on the edit page?
See:
Manual:Custom edit buttons
How can I get more special characters or tags clickable on the edit page?
For adding more selectable special characters, etc., below the edit field, see
Extension:CharInsert
How can I use a different skin on my wiki?
See
Manual:$wgDefaultSkin
for more information on configuring your default skin.
How do I disable external links from showing in the printable version of a page?
Edit the page
MediaWiki:Print.css
on your wiki and add the following code there:
content
external
text
after
content
external
autonumber
after
content
none
This will override the styles defined in the CSS files coming with the MediaWiki source code.
For more information, see
Manual:CSS
If instead you want to have the external links
underlined
in the printable version, then also add the following code:
content
external
text-decoration
underline
!important
How do I print footnotes at the bottom of each printed page?
Try this StackOverflow solution:
Printed HTML per-page footnotes
How do I change the text of the article (page name) tab of my wiki's main page?
To change the text of the tab, as one example used in Wikipedia, you first open the page "
MediaWiki:Mainpage-nstab
".
After you've done that, click Edit and type in the edit box the text you want to be seen later on the main page - that's it.
Don't forget to save the page as well.
How do I change the background color?
To change the background color of the MediaWiki interface outside of the page content and tabs, add the following CSS to the MediaWiki page
[[MediaWiki:Common.css]]
/* Changes the background color of the bottom and left of each page, up to behind half of the logo: */
body
background
red
/* Changes the background color behind the top half of the logo and at top of each page: */
mw-page-base
background
red
This will change the background color outside of the tabs, search, and page content to
red
See
Manual:CSS
for more information.
How do I load external fonts?
This example refers to Google Fonts, a repository of free open-source fonts that you can use with MediaWiki.
Go to
, find fonts that you like, and select them by clicking the "plus" (+) icon.
Select one or more fonts to be added.
Click the tab for the pop-up notification, and then select "@IMPORT". Copy and paste the resulting CSS into
[[MediaWiki:Common.css]]
. The examples below use
Noto Sans
and Noto Serif. They are default fonts for Android operating system and have good support for
Unicode
text.
import
url
'https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Noto+Sans|Noto+Serif'
/* Changes the default font used for MediaWiki to Noto Sans (does not include headings or monospaced text): */
body
font-family
"Noto Sans"
sans-serif
/* Changes the default font used for MediaWiki headings to Noto Serif: */
content
h1
content
h2
font-family
"Noto Serif"
serif
How to hide the "Your edit was saved" notification?
Edit the wiki page
MediaWiki:Common.css
on your wiki to include the line
.postedit {display: none;}
See
Manual:Interface/Stylesheets
for more information.
Basic usage
How do I edit a page?
To edit a page, simply click the
edit
link that appears on each page.
Using the default Vector skin, this is in the form of a tab at the top of the page.
A form will appear, containing the existing markup.
When you have finished making modifications, click the
button to commit your changes.
See also:
Help:Editing pages
How do I create a new page?
There are several ways to create a new page:
Create a link to the page on another page, then click on the red link which appears
Browse to the intended location of the page, e.g.
and click on the "
Edit
", "
Create
" or "
Create source
" link.
On some wikis, a failed search for a page will contain a link which allows you to edit that page.
See also:
Help:Starting a new page
How do I delete an old version of a page?
Old versions of page data are retained in the database and can be accessed via the page history features.
This is useful for reviewing changes and correcting or reverting undesirable ones, but in some cases, administrators might want to make this information unavailable, for legal reasons, or to reduce the size of the database.
Administrators can delete an old revision of a page by deleting the page, and then selectively undeleting revisions to be kept
You can enable the core
RevisionDelete
feature that allows privileged users to remove single revisions from page histories.
The
maintenance/
deleteOldRevisions.php
maintenance script
can mass-delete all old revisions of pages and their associated text records.
See also:
Manual:Removing embarrassment
How do I use oversight/delete revisions in the page history?
See:
RevisionDelete
You can also delete a page, and then restore only the revisions you want.
Are there any editing tutorials available?
There are several editing tutorials available, mostly on Wikimedia sister projects, such as Wikipedia.
There are also markup references, etc. available on
Meta
The page
Help:Editing pages
on this site
The
How to edit a page
guide on the English Wikipedia
How do I view the printable form of a page?
See also:
Help:Printing
MediaWiki includes stylesheets which automatically style a page appropriately when it is printed; using the print or print preview function within your browser ought to render the page in a printable form.
You can also view this printable form using the
printable version
link in the sidebar under
Toolbox
or
Print/export
if using the
Collection
extension.
How do I use templates?
See
Help:Templates
Can I use media (images, video, audio, etc.) from
Wikimedia Commons
in my installed version of MediaWiki?
Yes, this is encouraged through the use of
Manual:$wgUseInstantCommons
See also:
InstantCommons
How do I use a template as a signature?
When you look at your preferences, you see a check box for "raw signature."
But the field will only take a certain number of characters.
What if you want more?
You will need to create two pages, possibly in your userspace.
Create the first page (FIRST PAGE)
Go to your preferences, check "raw signature" and put {{FIRST PAGE}} in the signature. Save
Create a second page (SECOND PAGE) (possibly a sub-page of the first)
Go back to the first page (FIRST PAGE) and do {{SECOND PAGE}}
Go to the second page (SECOND PAGE) and place the code you wish to have for your signature.
If you don't have this structure, you will still be inserting all your signature code into the raw code wherever your signature is used, because the software will insert "SUBST" in your preferences.
You may not mind this, in which case you only need one page.
If you want the raw code to only display {{FIRST PAGE}}, which looks a lot cleaner, then you need to use the two-page structure.
How do I add the sandbox functionality to my installation of the wiki?
In wiki terms, a
sandbox
is simply a "play pen"; a page which users can mess about in.
This is an ordinary page created in the normal manner, and can be located wherever you like.
There is no special sandbox functionality built into MediaWiki.
Users often inquire about the Wikipedia sandboxes, which seem to be self-emptying.
This is not quite correct; there are a number of volunteers who run
bots
to clean these up and return them to a certain state at regular time intervals.
See also
Extension:SandboxLink
which will add a link to user's personal sandbox (i.e. a subpage of personal user page) to personal tools menu.
How do I make my wiki serve all languages?
To allow user to switch the language of the interface, see
Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector
To allow translation of pages and of the custom interface (like the sidebar), use the
Translate
extension; there's
extensive documentation
Wiki importing
Importing from MediaWiki XML dumps
See:
Manual:Importing XML dumps
Importing from other types of wiki software
Main page:
Manual:Importing external content
Importing from other types of files
There are a variety of tools available to help convert content from HTML (and other formats) to MediaWiki markup.
Developer and SysAdmin tools
HTML::WikiConverter::MediaWiki
– a Perl module for converting from HTML to MediaWiki markup.
Wikificator
– a JavaScript MediaWiki extension that converts XHTML to MediaWiki markup.
The
Edit.php
and
importImages.php
maintenance scripts
can be used to import text and images into MediaWiki.
End-user tools
wikEd
– a text editor for MediaWiki that can import HTML (including Microsoft Word-generated HTML.)
Instructions
Brief notes on converting from Microsoft .chm help files to MediaWiki
Notes on converting from Microsoft Office formats to MediaWiki
Templates imported from other wikis (such as Wikipedia) don't work for me
You probably need to install some extensions used on the source wiki, such as
Scribunto
TemplateStyles
ParserFunctions
or sometimes
Cite
Also, make sure that you copied all
site CSS
and
JavaScript
required by the template.
Customising further
I want to have multiple wikis, but only require registration once
If you're starting from scratch or you're switching from one wiki to multiple, you can use
$wgSharedDB
and
$wgSharedTables
to have all wikis share the
user
table of the "main" wiki. You can share other tables as well, as long as they don't contain any data dependent on non-shared tables or data specific to one wiki. See
Manual:Shared database
for examples and more information.
If your wikis are already established and you want to switch to a single sign-on, you can use the
CentralAuth
extension. It has a few more features than a shared
user
table, but it's more difficult to configure and it's tailored toward a Wikimedia-style setup. However, it is easier than attempting to completely merge multiple
user
tables into one.
How can I allow use of HTML tags?
See
$wgRawHtml
as well as
$wgGroupPermissions
and
Manual:Preventing access
Caution:
Some HTML tags can be unsafe and may be misused to harm users or create security vulnerabilities. Only allow them if you are certain they are safe.
See
HTML restriction
for ways to make this safer.
How do I fix problems or add features to MediaWiki?
The basic steps to improving MediaWiki (that is,
becoming a MediaWiki developer
) are:
Install
Git
Download the Git "clone" of the MediaWiki source code
Get a server, a database, and PHP running on your computer (this can be annoying, so please ask for help if something isn't working)
Get MediaWiki running on your computer off that Git checkout (can be annoying as well, so, ditto)
Fix the problem or add the feature you were thinking of
Edit the source code of the relevant file(s) to fix the problem
Follow
Gerrit/Tutorial
How do I run a bot?
See:
Manual:Bots
You might want to use the
Pywikibot
framework.
How do I change noindex nofollow
Set
$wgNoFollowLinks
false
in
LocalSettings.php
How do I add
meta tags
The OutputPage class includes an addMeta method which can be used to add meta tags.
The
RequestContext
can be used to get the relevant OutputPage object.
$out
->
addMeta
'description'
'This is a meta description.'
);
Why...?
…is the Help namespace empty?
The Help namespace currently ships in a blank state.
It's up to you how much or how little help you give to your site visitors and whether this relates to other aspects of your site.
Obviously you can easily link your visitors to help resources elsewhere.
We don't currently have a clean, internationalised set of help pages under a free license.
However, if you want to copy in some help information onto your site, about how to use a wiki (a MediaWiki powered wiki) you are free to copy the
Help:Contents
from this wiki.
This set of pages have been deliberately created for this purpose, with wiki-neutral information, and no license restrictions.
See
Project:PD help
…are some of my images not showing up after an upgrade?
Several users have reported that, following an upgrade or a moving of their wiki, several images fail to be shown inline.
The files exist, and the image description pages show a MIME type of
unknowncode>/unknown
and, in some cases, a warning about potentially dangerous files.
To fix this, run the
maintenance/rebuildImages.php
script from the command line.
This will set MIME information for each file in the database.
MediaWiki 1.21 and newer implements
responsive images
Due to
a bug
, if the server locale is set to one that uses commas instead of dots for representing a decimal point, images may not render on some browsers/devices.
This can be confirmed by inspecting a thumbnail of a medium or big image on a page with the browser tools, looking at the HTML code, and see if the
srcset
attribute contains commas instead of dots when representing the
1.5x
value.
…are all PNG files not being turned into thumbnails?
After upgrading to a more recent version of PHP, it is possible a different MimeMagic.php function is being used to detect file MIME types, particularly the built-in PHP function mime_content_type, which fails to detect PNG files.
Search the web for
mime_content_type png
for information on fixing this bug at the PHP level, possibly by editing your magic.mime file.
See
File is corrupt or has an invalid extension
for more info.
…can't I download MediaWiki 1.46?
MediaWiki 1.46 is in a development state at present, and has not been packaged into a general release.
The code can be
downloaded from Git
if desired.
Or, if you want the latest development version packaged as an archive, get it at
mediawiki-master.tar.gz
(GitHub).
…doesn't this work? It works on Wikipedia!
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia web sites use the current version of the code in development; at present, this is MediaWiki 1.46.0-wmf.24 (f0e70b4), pulled from the current development branch.
Coupled with the use of several extensions, this means that functionality between these wikis and your particular setup may differ.
To obtain the current development code, read
Download from Git
To check what version a Wikimedia wiki is running, as well as what extensions are installed, visit the
Special:Version
page for that wiki
You may also be missing several
Extensions
that are installed on Wikipedia, see
#Templates imported from other wikis (such as Wikipedia) don't work for me
…do I get a 403 Forbidden error after setting permissions on my Fedora system?
Fedora enables
SELinux
by default.
Instructions for setting SELinux permissions for MediaWiki
are available
…do I get
Installing some external dependencies (e.g. via composer) is required
Many hosting providers only handle zip archives, and we only provide gz compressed tar archives, thus the archives has to be recompressed before uploading.
This should not be a hurdle, but it seems like some archive tools occasionally fail to include all files in large archives.
When this happen the vendor folder is left out, leaving the user with the rather non-explanatory error message.
Use a command line tool when recompressing the tar archive into a zip archive.
…do I get logged out constantly?
This is probably related to cookies or session data. See
Log in problems
for information.
If this is happening constantly to all users, it probably means that caching is misconfigured. Setting
$wgSessionCacheType = CACHE_DB;
can be used to determine if caching is the cause of the problem. If that solves the problem, you should still investigate what is wrong with your caching configuration.
…is it a good idea to keep user accounts?
Parts of this page (those related to Manual edits to
rev_user
fields in the database; MediaWiki uses the
actor
table now) are
outdated
It was written for an older version of MediaWiki and may not apply to the most recent version. If you have checked or updated this page and found the content to be suitable, please remove this notice. See the
talk page
for a possible discussion on this.
At many times you just want to remove a user account out of the wiki either because it belonged to a spammer account or you just feel like it.
The appropriate choice is to block the account or rename it if needed.
Here is why:
Do I just remove this row from the
user
table?
Rob Church posted the following
regarding this issue on the wikitech-l mailing list:
If the user has made edits, then removing rows from the
user
table cause theoretical loss of referential integrity.
Now, to be honest with you, I can't think of any conditions where this would cause an actual problem; "undefined behaviour" is the phrase we use.
What I'd suggest doing, to be on the safe side, is running a couple of quick updates against the database:
UPDATE
revision
SET
rev_user
WHERE
rev_user
current_user_id
UPDATE
archive
SET
ar_user
WHERE
ar_user
current_user_id
What this will do is cause MediaWiki to treat the revisions as having been made anonymously when generating things like page histories, which should eliminate any problems caused by these routines attempting to check user details from other tables.
If the user has caused log entries, i.e. rows in the
logging
table, or uploaded images, then the situation becomes trickier, as you'll have to start mopping up all the rows everywhere and it could become a bit of a mess, so if the user's done anything other than edit, I would strongly recommend just blocking them indefinitely.
If the username is offensive or undesirable, then you could consider
renaming it
Another option is to give Admins the
'hideuser'
right, and indefinitely block the user with the
Hide username from edits and lists
option selected.
Extension:UserMerge
is also useful.
…is the number of pages so low on Special:Statistics?
By default
$wgArticleCountMethod
is set to
link
This means the number of "Content pages" on the
Special:Statistics
page only counts pages which include at least one internal link.
This can be changed by setting
$wgArticleCountMethod
to
any
Afterwards, run
updateArticleCount.php
and/or
initSiteStats.php
(On Wikimedia websites,
initSiteStats.php
is run on the 1st and 15th of each month.)
There might still be wrong behavior, see for example
phab:T212706
Anti-spam
How do I use $wgSpamRegex to block more than one string?
$wgSpamRegex
is a powerful filter for page content.
Adding multiple items to the regex, however, can be awkward.
Consider this snippet:
$wgSpamRegexLines
[]
'display\s*:\s*none'
$wgSpamRegexLines
[]
'overflow\s*:\s*auto'
...
$wgSpamRegex
'/('
implode
'|'
$wgSpamRegexLines
')/i'
This example code allows convenient addition of additional items to the regex without fiddling about each time.
It also demonstrates two popular filters, which block some of the most common spam attacks.
See also:
Extension:SpamRegex
Are there additional ways to fight spam?
See
Manual:Combating spam
for an overview of anti-spam measures such as Captcha, content filtering and restricting edition.
Anti-vandalism
See
Manual:Combating vandalism
for hints and suggestions on how to deal with wiki vandalism.
Where now?
I've found a bug or have a feature request. Where do I post it?
Bugs and feature requests should be posted on
Phabricator
See
How to report a bug
I'm getting a strange error. What now?
See if it is covered by
Manual:Errors and Symptoms
Try to find out more about the problem, see
Manual:How to debug
See the
section below
for information on how to contact
developers
and other knowledgable users.
I tried that but it didn't work
I had a problem, I came to this page and it told me how to fix it. But it didn't work, the problem is still there!!!!
Nine times out of ten this is because you didn't
clear your cache
The simple test for this is to request a page that hasn't been requested before.
Select the part of the URL in the address bar that contains the page title (e.g. Main_Page).
Twiddle your fingers on the keyboard for a while, hit enter.
Check if the problem is on that page too.
MediaWiki uses both a server-side cache and a client-side cache, so clearing your browser cache is often not enough.
See the
relevant entry above
for more details.
Here are some other things to check:
Were you editing the right file? Try inserting some garbage into the file you edited, does it break anything?
A great debugging tool in this case is to create a file called phpinfo.php, containing only

. Upload it into your web directory and invoke it with your browser. Check the document root and the path to php.ini.
Were you editing the right part of the file? Did you create a duplicate entry in php.ini? Add new settings to the end of
LocalSettings.php
, not to the beginning.
If you created a .htaccess, are you sure AllowOverrides is on? Ask your hosting provider.
I have a question not answered here. Where do I go next?
If you've exhausted the FAQ above, please try the following:
Check the
other sources of help
on this site
the rest of this site
Search the web
Dig into the source
See the
section below
for information on how to contact developers and other knowledgeable users.
Still no luck. Where can I ask for help?
See the support venues listed on
Communication
See also
Books about MediaWiki
Retrieved from "
Categories
Outdated pages
Manual
Configure
Manual
FAQ
Add topic