Manual:Contents

This is a technical manual for the MediaWiki software. It contains information for developers and system administrators on installing, managing and developing for the MediaWiki software.

This manual is not for end users of MediaWiki. If you are looking for documentation to help you use MediaWiki, read the MediaWiki Handbook.

Main sections
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For system administrators

 * Installation
 * Guide to setting up a new MediaWiki installation.
 * Download | Installing | Initial configuration


 * Configuration
 * Information about the various configurations settings that can be used to customize the MediaWiki software.
 * Alphabetical list of settings | Settings listed by function


 * System administration
 * Guide to do administrative tasks on your wiki.
 * Backing up | Maintenance scripts


 * Upgrading
 * Guide to upgrade your MediaWiki installation.

More on Sysadmin hub.
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For developers

 * Architecture
 * An overview of the key parts of MediaWiki's source code.
 * Code | Global object variables | Doxygen-generated documentation


 * Database layout
 * Details about the database architecture used by MediaWiki.
 * MySQL | PostgreSQL | SQLite | IBM DB2 engines


 * Developing extension
 * An overview of the ways to create a new MediaWiki extension.
 * Hooks | Parser functions | Tag | Special page | Skins


 * Web access
 * Details about query string parameters than can passed to MediaWiki access scripts.
 * index.php | api.php

More on Developer hub.
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Others

 * MediaWiki FAQ
 * Frequently asked questions about MediaWiki.

Browsing the manual
There are multiple ways to browse through the documentation. Readers having trouble finding a particular topic in the section above or the category list may find the following ways of browsing to be helpful.
 * Special:Allpages/Manual: - An automatically generated list of all pages in the Manual: namespace.
 * Category:Manual - the top-level Manual category

Improving the manual

 * There are still a lot of holes in this manual! See the 'to do' page for details.
 * There is still content on http://meta.wikimedia.org which may need to be migrated. If you can't find information on a particular issue in this documentation, please visit MediaWiki_FAQ and meta:Help:Contents.
 * Project:Manual is a place to discuss and co-ordinate the development of the Manual: namespace.
 * See also Project:Current issues.