Manual:Upgrading MediaWiki

Install as with a fresh copy of MediaWiki, but give it the database information for the existing database. It will try to upgrade the database schema as necessary automatically.

Upgrades are not always foolproof; be sure to back everything up! You will have to make any LocalSettings.php customizations on the newly generated LocalSettings.php.

Be sure to backup all your files before you start.

Upgrading from 1.3.x betas
Should generally go smoothly.

Note that the 1.3 beta releases included a potential vulnerability if PHP is configured with register_globals on and the includes directory is served to the web. For general safety, turn register_globals *off* if you don't _really_ need it for another package.

If your hosting provider turns it on and you can't turn it off yourself, send them a kind note explaining that it can expose their servers and their customers to attacks.

Upgrading from 1.2.x
If you've been using the MediaWiki: namespace for custom page templates, note that things are a little different. The Template: namespace has been added which is more powerful -- templates can include parameters for instance.

Any MediaWiki: entries that are not used by the software will be automatically moved to Template: entries at upgrade time. Be sure to go through and check that everything is working properly.

Also, be sure to pick the correct character encoding -- some languages were only available in Latin-1 on 1.2.x and are now available for Unicode as well. If you want to upgrade an existing wiki from Latin-1 to Unicode you'll have to dump the database to SQL, run it through iconv or another conversion tool, and restore it. Sorry.

Upgrading from 1.1.x or earlier
This is less thoroughly tested, but should work.

You need to specify the *admin* database username and password to the installer in order for it to successfully upgrade the database structure. You may wish to manually change the GRANTs later.


 * If you have a very old database, you may need to manually run some of the update scripts from maintenance/archives to get up to circa November 2003 levels before the automatic updater works.

Upgrading from UseModWiki or old "phase 2" Wikipedia code
There is an unmaintained UseModWiki to MediaWiki conversion script at maintenance/importUseModWiki.php; it may require tweaking and customization to work for you.

Install a new MediaWiki first, then use the conversion script which will output SQL statements; direct these to a file and then run that into your database.

You will have to rebuild the links tables etc after importing.

Examples
upgrade from 1.2 to 1.3