Manual:update.php

From MediaWiki.org

This script checks if the database schema need to be updated in order to work with the current version of MediaWiki. You should run it after each update of MediaWiki as there is often some changes between releases or after an update of an extension that require a schema change (example: CheckUser).

Warning: always backup the database before running this script as there can be some errors!

Options:

• If you don't want to see the countdown at the beginning of the script, you can use the --quick option.
• This script purges the objectcache table in the database (generally contains the parser cache and the messages cache), if you don't want to purge this table, use the --nopurge option.

If you absolutely don't want to run it from a shell, you can rename the LocalSettings.php file to another name and then re-run the configuration script like when you installed the wiki, but you'll need to enter exactly the same settings as the first time in the form. Then drop the new LocalSettings.php created by the script (the one in the config directory) and restore the LocalSettings.php.