Manual:FAQ/oc

What are the differences between MediaWiki, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, and wiki?
Please see 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 hosts offer one-click installs, or allow creating a wiki on-request. See Hosting services for different options.

This site (MediaWiki.org) or the Wikimedia Foundation does not allow individuals to create wikis.

Ont pòdi joscargar MediaWiki ?
Download the latest stable release of MediaWiki. Files are supplied in a .tar.gz archive. MediaWiki peut aussi être obtenu directement à partir de notre référentiel Git.

Consi pòdi enjaçar MediaWiki ?
Installer MediaWiki prend entre 10 et 30 minutes (lorsqu'on utilise MySQL), et implique de télécharger/copier des fichiers, créer une base de données et un utilisateur, et exécuter le script d'installation pour configurer le logiciel. See, where you will also find the minimum system requirements.

Comment puis-je installer MediaWiki en utilisant un package ?
Bien qu'il existe des packages (par exemple Debian, RPM, etc.) disponibles pour installer MediaWiki sous un système d'exploitation Linux/Unix. The MediaWiki development team refers you to your Linux distribution for assistance with installing, configuring or using them. Les communautés individuelles qui maintiennent de tels packages fourniront normalement le support et la documentation.

Be warned that third-party distributions may be older versions, so pay close attention to compatibility information for directions and extensions.


 *  See also: 

Puis-je installer plus d'un wiki sur un serveur en utilisant MediaWiki ?
Il est possible d'installer plus d'un wiki sur un serveur tant que :


 * 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


 * Vous utilisez une base de données différente pour chaque wiki

OU


 * Vous utilisez un préfixe de base de données différent pour chaque wiki.

Pour plus d'information sur ces options, voir ' et ' respectivement.

Pour plus d'informations sur la configuration d'une famille de wikis, voir.

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 for information about installing and writing extensions. See to find existing extensions.

How do I add extra namespaces?
See Creating a custom namespace.

Comment puis-je permettre le téléchargement ?
Les téléchargements de fichiers sont une fonctionnalité de MediaWiki souvent utilisée, mais est désactivée par défaut dans toutes les versions finales actuelles. Pour les autoriser, faites d'abord un répertoire de téléchargement (par défaut ) dans lequel le serveur web a l'autorisation d'écrire (CHMOD 777 ou permettre à l'utilisateur Apache d'écrire dans celui-ci, etc.) et ensuite configurez  à   dans votre 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: 

Comment puis-je permettre le téléchargement d'autres formats de fichier ?
MediaWiki demande à ce que les formats de fichier téléchargeables soient spécifiés en utilisant la directive de configuration . Usually this directive is situated in LocalSettings.php in the root of your MediaWiki installation.

Par exemple, pour permettre de télécharger des fichiers PDF, ajoutez la ligne suivante dans LocalSettings.php :

To extend uploading to more than one type of file, use the following syntax


 *  See also: 

How do I enable embedded math formulas?
MediaWiki allows embedded math formulas. See for complete setup instructions.

How do I set the timezone for my MediaWiki?

 *  See 

Comment purger le cache d'une page
Pour purger le cache d'une page, ajoutez  à la fin de l'url de la page.

Par exemple https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=purge

Or  to the end of the page's short form URL:

E.g. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Main_Page?action=purge


 *  See also:, 

How do I completely disable caching?
Add in your LocalSettings.php file the following lines:

"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 . Under Unix or Linux, this would be
 *  See also: 

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
Append  to command line if you want that user to become a bureaucrat, in addition to becoming an administrator.
 * Execute from the shell.

This will create a new user and promote them to an administrator. For help, run the script with the parameter.

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:
 * above should be replaced with the appropriate user ID which you can see on the user's preference page.
 * Note: if is defined in LocalSettings.php, prepend its value to the table name. For example, if   is "XYZ", then the table name to use is
 * Note: if is defined in LocalSettings.php, prepend its value to the table name. For example, if   is "XYZ", then the table name to use is

Temporarily let everyone assign rights to promote your initial user
This method essentially involves letting all users temporarily modify user permissions in order to promote one user

Be logged in using that account. This step is very important, as until you remove it anyone can alter permissions, which is bad.
 * Register a new account using the regular method (Special:UserLogin).
 * Add the following line to the bottom of LocalSettings.php
 * Go to special:userrights and add the user you just created to the Administrator and Bureaucrat groups.
 * Remove the  line from your LocalSettings.php.

How do I reset a user's MediaWiki password?

 *  See 

How can I create interwiki links in my wiki?

 *  See 

How do I make my base URLs shorter?
(i.e. /wiki/Article_Name as opposed to /w/index.php?title=Article_Name)


 *  See 

How do I organize pages into subdirectories like /wiki/subdir/PageName?

 *  See 

Is downloading and using all of MediaWiki.org free?
Yes, it is free in the sense of Free software. See for licensing issues regarding the written content of this site.

How do I administrate/manage user rights?
See for general information. See for methods and strategies for restricting access.

Comment empêcher l'édition par les utilisateurs anonymes ?
Ces permissions sont contrôlées par l'option de configuration. Edit  and add the line:

If you use, any admin can also disable IP editing temporarily as needed.


 *  See also:, 

How do I stop anonymous users from reading any page?

 * Add this to the bottom of LocalSettings.php:

See also. 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:

See Manual:Preventing access#Restrict account creation for more information.

How do I require an email address be specified at registration?

 *  See 

How do I put MediaWiki into Read Only mode?

 *  See 

How do I change default user preferences?
The MediaWiki default user preferences are in  Don't edit that file, just use it for reference.

Say if you want to hide minor edits in recent changes by default. DefaultSettings.php says:

To change the preference, put this in your LocalSettings.php:

To change the default namespaces to be searched, in any version of MediaWiki, set in LocalSettings.php to an array mapping namespace indexes to boolean values. For example, to search the main namespace and the category namespace, use:

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 script in the   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: 

How can I make MediaWiki run faster?

 *  See: 

How do I enable a drop-down list of search suggestions?

 *  See 

How do MediaWiki and GDPR go together?

 *  See GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and MediaWiki software 

Mettre à jour MediaWiki

 * Voir aussi 

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.

Comment puis-je changer le logo ?
Le logo du site visible en haut à gauche de chaque page est déterminé par le préfixe de configuration inclus dans le fichier.

There are two ways to change the logo:


 * 1) Vous pouvez télécharger un fichier sur votre wiki et utiliser son adresse (ce qui permettra de plus facilement modifier le logo ou le protéger)
 * Then add the $wgLogo line to LocalSettings.php, for example:
 * 1) ou utiliser une image téléchargée sur votre serveur par d'autres moyens.
 * Add the $wgLogo line to LocalSettings.php, for example:
 * (In this example, the image is in the same folder as the LocalSettings.php file.)
 * (In this example, the image is in the same folder as the LocalSettings.php file.)
 * (In this example, the image is in the same folder as the LocalSettings.php file.)

If you want to change the logo in only specific pages, override #p-logo css's background-image property or use third party extension like.

How do I edit the wiki's CSS?
You shouldn't edit the CSS files (such as common.less) 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:

To instead hide the toolbar when the user presses F11, enter this in your wiki's MediaWiki:Common.js:

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:

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 add a hook to your LocalSettings.php to override the mainpage href which is used by the logo.

Here is an alternative way using jQuery code within MediaWiki:Common.js:

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 setting in LocalSettings.php and add

See 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:

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.

Comment puis-je personnaliser la barre de navigation ?
Le contenu de la barre de navigation qui apparaît à gauche de chaque page (lorsqu'on utilise le skin par défaut Monobook) est déterminé par la page MediaWiki:Sidebar. Pour plus d'information sur cette personnalisation possible, vous pouvez aller voir Manual:Navigation bar.

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.

Comment puis-je changer la page d'accueil ?
Par défaut, MediaWiki montre une page avec le titre Main Page et donne celle-ci comme page par défaut. Ceci peut être changé en modifiant MediaWiki:Mainpage pour pointer vers un autre titre. 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".

MediaWiki 1.38+
The displayed title of the main page can be changed using the MediaWiki messages and  (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).

MediaWiki 1.37 and below
MediaWiki does not have a built-in option to hide the main page title (see ), but you can use CSS to hide the title. Alternatively, you can use the extension.

Add the following to on your wiki:

If your main page uses a localized name or you have renamed the main page you need to change the  part. You can find a correct parameter by viewing HTML source of the main page and searching for the  tag.

For example, if your language is Lojban, the body tag looks like this:

Therefore you should put this line in your instead:

If you would like to hide the title of a "Main Page" in a specific namespace like "Help:Main_Page" add the following to on your wiki:

Note the difference:  in comparison to. The latter will not work.

If this doesn't work, you may be using a skin that doesn't support this, or you moved your main page without updating MediaWiki:Mainpage, or you have a really old MediaWiki version.

If the skin uses a different element for the title than a  element with class , you'll need to find the appropriate CSS selector to apply for that skin.

Comment puis-je cacher la table des matières ?
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.


 * Pour une page
 * Placez le mot magique  dans le texte de la page.


 * Pour toutes les pages
 * Install
 * or
 * Add the following rule to MediaWiki:Common.css:


 * Par utilisateur
 * Users can add the same CSS rule to their common.css personal stylesheet.

Comment puis-je changer le texte de l'interface ?
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.


 * Pour avoir une liste de tous les messages système, voir Special:Allmessages
 * Pour désactiver l'espace de nom MediaWiki, voir le paramètre de configuration.
 * To remove the Privacy policy 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.

Comment puis-je changer la langue de l'interface ?
Changez la valeur de  dans le fichier

Exécutez le script de maintenance   pour reconstruire l'espace de nom MediaWiki.

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 extension, which can make your wiki multilingual.

If you want to change the language settings for all existing users, use the maintenance script. For instance, to have all users with English set use French instead, run:

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:

See the page source for the various #ca-* ids used in the content tabs.

How do I add/remove tabs throughout my wiki?
See or write your own extension (See: ):

For example, to remove the talk tab and then add a tab that always goes to the main page you would save this code in :

and then add

to the bottom of LocalSettings.php

How do I remove a tab on only one page?
For example, to remove the Discussion (talk) page tab from the Main Page, on the MediaWiki:Common.css page add:

To modify MediaWiki:Common.css you must be an.


 *  See also: 

How do I remove a tab on all pages
For example, to remove the Discussion (talk) page tab on all wikipages, on the MediaWiki:Common.css page add:

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.

How do I remove the "Talk for this IP" link at the top right (e.g. when is true)?
One option is to hide the link using the following CSS in the wiki page MediaWiki:Common.css in your wiki:

Another option is, inside your LocalSettings.php file, to use the PersonalUrls hook to remove the link to the talk page of anonymous users:

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 to hook in and remove them:

How can I suppress actions and special pages?
There are two different ways:

Using .htaccess file
Suppressing actions and special pages can be useful when you want to create the illusion of a static website via a particular URL or VirtualHost, but also have an 'internal' view that is a true wiki. i.e. if you have an inward facing 'view' of your wiki that users can edit, and an outward facing 'view' that should appear like a static website (no history, no discussion, etc., etc.).

After hiding all the appropriate links (see above), if you are using the Apache web server, you can disable actions and special pages using the following rewrite rules:

Above, a request for, for example, will be simply rewritten to. Similarly any page in the Special namespace (except for Special:Search) will be rewritten to.

Alternatively, you may also serve a "403 Forbidden" for all such requests using:. Remember, this is only a hack, and isn't intended as a solution for a secure CMS.

Note that you will need to adjust the above rules to match your specific URL naming schema.

Other issues to consider when trying to lock down a site like this is the API and POST requests for the wiki content (rather than GET).

Using LocalSettings.php
To disable a specific special page (such as Special:SpecialPages), you may use:

where  is the canonical (English) name of the special page to disable, and   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:

See 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:, 

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:

If you want to remove it completely, you can use to remove it using this in your :

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 ' documentation.

How do I add a reply link to default signature tildes ( ~ ) template?
You can customize signatures in MediaWiki:Signature / MediaWiki:Signature-anon.

For example, changing the entries to  will put a link to users' talk pages and   would give a more direct link.

Users can change their signature in their preferences.

How can I change what the 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 - by default. If is producing the wrong text for you, you need to set  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 configuration setting.

How do I make external links open in a new window?

 *  See 

How can I suppress MediaWiki from formatting URLs, tags, etc?
Put "" tags around the URL or tag.

Example:

svn co http://svn.example.com/myproject/

Produces: svn co http://svn.example.com/myproject/

How can I force users to preview before they save?

 *  See:, 

How do I add more buttons on the edit page?

 *  See: 

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.

How can I use a different skin on my wiki?
See 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:

This will override the styles defined in the CSS files coming with the MediaWiki source code. For more information, see.

If instead you want to have the external links underlined in the printable version, then also add the following code:

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 " ".

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 :

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 https://fonts.google.com/, 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. The examples below use Noto Sans and Noto Serif. They are default fonts for Android operating system and have good support for Unicode text.

Comment éditer une page ?
Pour éditer une page, cliquez simplement sur le lien modifier qui apparaît sur chaque page. Lorsqu'on utilise le skin par défaut MonoBook, celui-ci est dans la liste d'onglets en haut de la page. Un formulaire apparaît, contenant le wikitexte (code source de la page) existant pour la page donnée. Lorsque vous avez fini vos modifications, cliquez sur le bouton Sauvegarder pour enregistrer vos changements.


 *  See also: 

Comment créer une nouvelle page ?
Il y a plusieurs façons de créer une nouvelle page :


 * Cliquer sur un lien rouge existant ; ou s'il n'y en a pas, en créer un.
 * Aller à l'adresse de la page, par exemple http://www.foowiki.org/index.php/New_page et cliquer sur le lien modifier.

On some wikis, a failed search for a page will contain a link which allows you to edit that page.


 *  See also: 

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
 * For newer MediaWikis (1.14+), you can enable the core RevisionDelete feature that allows privileged users to remove single revisions from page histories.
 * The  maintenance script can mass-delete all old revisions of pages and their associated text records.


 *  See also: 

How do I use oversight/delete revisions in the page history?

 *  See: 

You can also delete a page, and then restore only the revisions you want.

Existe-t-il des tutoriaux à propos de l'édition ?
Il y a plusieurs tutoriaux sur l'édition, la plupart sur les projets Wikimédia, tels que Wikipédia. Il y a aussi des références de syntaxe, etc. disponibles sur Meta.


 * The page Help:Editing pages on this site
 * Aide de Meta en anglais : Editing
 * Le guide How to edit a page sur la Wikipédia anglophone

Comment puis-je avoir un format imprimable de la page ?
MediaWiki inclut des feuilles de style qui donnent automatiquement un style approprié à une page pour l'impression ; en utilisant la fonction d'impression ou de prévisualisation d'impression du navigateur, celle-ci doit rendre la page dans un format imprimable.

Vous pourrez aussi voir le format imprimable en utilisant le lien Version imprimable de la boîte à outils.

How do I use templates?

 *  See 

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.


 *  See also: 

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.


 * 1) Create the first page (FIRST PAGE)
 * 2) Go to your preferences, check "raw signature" and put  in the signature.
 * 3) Create a second page (SECOND PAGE) (possibly a sub-page of the first)
 * 4) Go back to the first page (FIRST PAGE) and do
 * 5) 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, 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 add a "Sandbox" link to personal tools (top right)?
You need to install the extension.

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 extension; there's extensive documentation.

Importing from MediaWiki XML dumps

 *  See: 

Importing from other types of wiki software
This section lacks information - please feel free to add it.

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 and  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, , or sometimes. Also, make sure that you copied all site CSS and JavaScript required by the template.

I want to have multiple wikis, but only require registration once
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 for examples and more information. 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.
 * If you're starting from scratch or you're switching from one wiki to multiple, you can use and  to have all wikis share the user table of the "main" wiki.
 * If your wikis are already established and you want to switch to a single sign-on, you can use the extension.

How can I allow use of HTML tags?
See as well as.

See and  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: 

You might want to use the framework.

How do I change noindex nofollow
Set  in

How do I create a small wiki farm?

 *  See: 

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.

...l'espace de nom Help de ce site est-il vide ?
cependant l'espace de nom Help est encore en construction. 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.

Nous n'avons pas actuellement un ensemble propre et internationalisé de pages d'aide sous licence libre. 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 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. More help is available at the Meta-Wiki MediaWiki Handbook.

...certaines de mes images n'apparaissent pas après une mise à jour ?
Plusieurs utilisateurs ont rapporté que, après une mise à jour ou un déplacement de leur wiki, plusieurs images ne s'affichaient pas. Les fichiers existent, et la page de description de l'image montre un type MIME  (inconnu) et dans certains cas un avertissement concernant les fichiers potentiellement dangereux.

La solution à cela est d'exécuter le script de maintenance  à partir de la ligne de commande. Cela configure les types MIME pour tous les fichiers de la base de données, et devrait rétablir les choses à la normale.

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  attribute contains commas instead of dots when representing the   value.

...tous les fichiers PNG ne sont pas affichés en vignette ?
Après le téléchargement d'une version plus récente de PHP, il est possible qu'une fonction MimeMagic.php soit utilisée pour détecter les types MIME, particulièrement la fonction PHP générique mime_content_type, qui échoue à détecter les fichiers PNG. Cherchez sur les web mime_content_type png pour avoir des informations sur la résolution de ce bug pour la version de PHP, peut-être en éditant votre fichier magic.mime.

See File is corrupt or has an invalid extension for more info.

…can't I download MediaWiki {{#expr:{{MW stable branch number}}+.01}}?
MediaWiki 0000 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 (GitHub).

...ça ne marche pas ? Ça marche sur Wikipédia !
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia web sites use the current version of the code in development; at present, this is MediaWiki, 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 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 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  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?
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 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:



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 using the extension."

Another option is to give Admins the right, and indefinitely block the user with the Hide username from edits and lists option selected.

is also useful.

…is the number of pages so low on Special:Statistics?
By default, is set to. 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  to. Afterwards, run and/or. (On Wikimedia websites,  is run on the 1st and 15th of each month.) There might still be wrong behavior, see for example T212706.

Comment puis-je utiliser $wgSpamRegex pour bloquer plus d'une chaîne de caractères ?
est un puissant filtre pour le contenu d'une page. Ajouter plusieurs items de regex est parfois maladroit. Considérez le code suivant :

Cet exemple de code permet d'additionner facilement des items à la regex sans trop compliquer à chaque occurence. Il montre aussi deux filtres populaires qui bloquent quelques unes des attaques de spam les plus courantes.


 *  See also: 

Are there additional ways to fight spam?
See  for an overview of anti-spam measures such as Captcha, content filtering and restricting edition.

Anti-vandalism
See  for hints and suggestions on how to deal with wiki vandalism.

J'ai trouvé un bogue ou ai une demande de fonctionnalité. Où puis-je poster cela ?
Bugs and feature requests should be posted on. See How to report a bug.

I'm getting a strange error. What now?

 * See if it is covered by
 * Try to find out more about the problem, see
 * 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:

Upload it into your web directory and invoke it with your browser. Check the document root and the path to php.ini. Did you create a duplicate entry in php.ini? Add new settings to the end of LocalSettings.php, not to the beginning. Ask your hosting provider.
 * 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.
 * Were you editing the right part of the file?
 * If you created a .htaccess, are you sure AllowOverrides is on?

J'ai une question à laquelle il n'y a pas de réponse ici. Où puis-je aller ensuite ?
Si vous avez parcouru toute la FAQ ci-dessus, vous pouvez essayer les endroits suivants :


 * Check the other sources of help on this site
 * Search 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.