Manual:FAQ/en



What are the differences between MediaWiki, Wikimedia, Wikipedia and wiki?
This is a common question; 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.

Where do I download MediaWiki?
Click here to 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, 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: 

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)

For information on the latter two options, see ' and ' respectively.

For more information on setting up a wiki family (wikifarm), see.

For information on an alternative way of setting up more than one wiki using the same server, database and source, see Steve Rumberg's (archived version) excellent exposé and additional comments from users.

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 work with safe_mode enabled?
Yes, but only to a limited degree. See Safe mode for information.

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.

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 ) writable by the web server (  or allow the Apache user to write to it, etc.) then set  to   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: 

How do I allow uploading of additional formats?
MediaWiki requires that allowed file upload formats are specified using the  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:

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 

How do I purge a cached page?
To purge a cached page, such as when making changes to the navigation bar, add  to the end of the page's dynamic URL.

E.g. 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:

= false; // deprecated method = CACHE_NONE; = 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.

Possible solutions:


 * Set the value of , e.g. under Unix or Linux, this would be
 * Compile/install the fileinfo PHP extension
 * Fedora - yum install php-pecl-Fileinfo
 * Fedora - yum install php-pecl-Fileinfo


 * 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

 * If your MediaWiki is older than 1.16, make sure  is set up (see  )
 * Execute  from the shell. Append   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.

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
 * Register a new account using the regular method (Special:UserLogin). Be logged in using that account.
 * Add the following lines 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 . This step is very important, as until you remove it anyone can alter permissions, which is bad.
 * Remove the  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 

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.

How do I stop anonymous users from editing any page?
The recommended method is by changing the value of the  configuration option. 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 the language file, i.e.  if you're using English. Don't edit that file, just use it for reference, like you do with DefaultSettings.php.

Say if you want to change the default number of search results on a page. Language.php says:

To change it to 50, put this in your LocalSettings.php:

Note that you are setting, which contains the site overrides, not $wgDefaultUserOptionsEn, which contains the software defaults. Any settings in $wgDefaultUserOptions will override those set in the language file.

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 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 searchlimit --old 20 --new 50

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 

Upgrading

 * See 

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.

How do I change the logo?
The logo that appears in the top left of each page is determined by the configuration line in the  file.

There are two ways to change the logo:


 * 1) Upload a picture 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.
 * Then add the $wgLogo line to LocalSettings.php, for example:
 * 1) Upload an image to your server by other means (such as FTP).
 * 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:

Can I customize the logo in the top left corner? If so, how?
The logo is a portlet block without a pBody section. It is identified by the p-logo id. The background image is specified by the variable, which is defined in. This location is relative to the web server root and not the system root. Redefine this in to change the image. If set wrong there will be no image on the page; check your web server error log and adjust accordingly. However the size of the p-logo will need to be big enough for the logo if it is not to be clipped. This is set in the stylesheet (main.css in Monobook), under the p-logo style, the default setting is:

Note, if you are using a different sized logo, and want to change the CSS, please do not modify any of the core MediaWiki stylesheets. Instead add to the on-wiki css page (MediaWiki:Monobook.css for monobook, MediaWiki:Vector.css for vector. MediaWiki:Common.css will also work for all skins)

Reducing the size of the logo
Note that a tag is on top of the logo so if you are trying to reduce the size of the logo's portlet you will also need to change the #p-logo a and #p-logo a:hover rules. The default setting for these is:

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.

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:


 * 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?
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.

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  in the page's wikitext.


 * For all pages
 * Install
 * or
 * Add the following rule to MediaWiki:Common.css:


 * Per user
 * Users can add the same CSS rule to their common.css personal stylesheet.


 * There was a user preference to hide the table of contents, it was removed in MediaWiki 1.23 (T54813).

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.


 * For a list of system messages, see Special:Allmessages
 * To switch off the MediaWiki namespace, see the  configuration setting
 * 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 change the interface language?
To change the default interface language, alter the value of  in , for example

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 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 have administrative privileges.


 * 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 have administrative privileges.

How do I hide the section edit links for users who are not logged in?
You can change the value of the configuration option.

Edit and add the line:


 * Also see How do I stop anonymous users from editing any page?

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?
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:


 * 1) Lock down the site (disable MediaWiki commands)

RewriteEngine On


 * 1) RewriteLog /tmp/rewrite.log


 * 1) RewriteLogLevel 9


 * 1) See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php#Actions

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (.*action=.*) RewriteRule .* http://www.my.domain.com?

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php/Special:Search RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*Special:.*) RewriteRule .* http://www.my.domain.com?

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*Special:.*) RewriteRule .* http://www.my.domain.com?
 * 1) Catch a trick...

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

How do I edit error messages?
Special:Allmessages contains a complete list of messages (error or otherwise), that can be edited.

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 in 1.17 and newer you can use to remove it using this in your :

In 1.16 and below you will have to use a hook to remove it:

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.

If $wgSitename is correct in LocalSettings.php but is still wrong, it may be that you're using a user-contributed language file which incorrectly sets $wgSitename to a transliteration of "Wikipedia". Edit the language file to correct this. For example, the Hebrew language file is at  in your wiki directory.

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 (e.g. Wikipedia's old Monobook skin) on my wiki?
While the Vector skin is the default skin for all installations made with MediaWiki 1.17 and newer, the Monobook skin has been the default before. 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 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 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 Save button to commit your changes.


 * See also: 

How do I create a new page?
There are several ways to create a new page:

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


 * 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.

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
 * Editing help content on Meta
 * The How to edit a page guide on the English Wikipedia

How do I view the printable form of a page?
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 extension.

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.

How do I add a "Sandbox" link to personal tools (top right)?
You need to add the extension and add the Sandbox gadget. You will probably also want to make it a default gadget.

How do I make my wiki serve all languages?
To make your wiki multilingual and a tool for translation, allowing 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
There is some documentation about importing in the UPGRADE file distributed with MediaWiki.

To follow on from those, this is how at least one individual imported pages from usemod to MediaWiki:

Because MediaWiki does not automatically link to CamelCase style links, you will need to add brackets  to all your links. You can do this with the following:

First, obtain ImportStage1.txt (or whatever you want to call it) from the importUseModWiki.php script ( use > to pipe the output to a file )

Second, do

sed '/Importing/!s/\ [A-Z]\w*[a-z]\w*[A-Z]\w*[a-zA-Z]/\ \[\[&\]\] /g' ImportStage1.txt > ImportStage2.txt

This should create proper links in place of your CamelCase links.

This doesn't work so well for SubPage links - someone care to fix?

Then,

sed 's/upload\:\w*\.\w*/http\:\/\/aberwiki\.org\/uploads\/& /g' ImportStage2.txt > ImportStage3.txt

This fixes your upload links. Change the replace text so it fills in your url such as http://www.yourwiki.org/uploads/filename

You are now ready to import ImportStage3.txt into your database with a command such as

mysql -u -p < ImportStage3.txt

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
 * HTML to Wiki Converter - an online HTML to MediaWiki markup conversion service. (Based on HTML::WikiConverter::MediaWiki)
 * 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

MediaWiki auto importing script
Taken from wiki_import - MediaWiki auto import script:

Description
The script is designed to import a whole folder of files into MediaWiki, with the folder directory tree mapped as wiki category hierarchy.

Features

 * economic, build wiki site from existing knowledge base collection without "double-entry"
 * persistent, map folder directory tree as wiki category hierarchy
 * sophisticated, import/handle all well-known file types automatically
 * complete, cover every applicable scenario, even the case when you need to control access to individual wiki pages
 * versatile, highly customizable

Quick Help
wiki_import.sh $ $Revision: 1.1 $

mediawiki automatic file import script

Usage: wiki_import.sh [OPTIONS]...

The script is designed to import a whole folder of files into mediawiki, with the folder directory tree mapped as wiki category hierarchy.

The specification of the file-to-import is passed from standard input.

Options: -s, --sect=n    the root category section of the wiki of the imported article (mandatory) -1, --header    include standard header (category hierarchy path & notice) -l, --link      link to actual file on the web site -f, --footer    include standard footer (article category) -R, --res[=p]   add restricted tag in the footer as                     '' (default=`$_opt_sect')

Configuration Options: -p, --php=fn    mediawiki import php script specification -r, --root=n    the root category name for the whole wiki site -m, --max=n     max_allowed_packet for mysqld to import -u, --user=n    wiki user used for the import -a, --arch=p    the root url that linked-to archive files based on

Examples:

echo ./path/to/file.ext | wiki_import.sh -1 -l -f -s 'Customer Support' -R

For the rest of details, check out wiki_import.

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

 * 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. 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 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 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.

To add further Meta tags just add further lines as last lines of the function addMetaTags like:

$out->addMeta ( 'description', 'This is a meta description.' );

…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 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.

…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  and, in some cases, a warning about potentially dangerous files.

To fix this, run the  script from the command line. This will set MIME information for each file in the database.

Recent versions of MediaWiki implement 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.

…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 here for more info.

…is a search for a short keyword giving no hits?
By default, MediaWiki uses MyISAM's fulltext matching functionality to allow searching page content. The default settings for this mean that words of less than four characters won't be indexed, so will be ignored in searches with older versions of MediaWiki.

MediaWiki 1.13 and earlier are unable to work around this; you must either change MySQL/MariaDB's configuration to index shorter words, or upgrade to a more recent version of MediaWiki.

Note that some particular words may still not be indexed if they are in MySQL/MariaDB's default stopword list.

…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).

…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, 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

…do I get a 403 Forbidden error after setting permissions on my Fedora system?
Fedora Core 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 web hotels 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 much of a hurdle, but it seems like some archive tools occasionally fails 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.

…doesn't my wiki work on Sourceforge?

 * See .

…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 his 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:



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 'hideuser' 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.

Where do I get the spam blacklist from and how do I install it?
The spam blacklist extension can be found in Git, just like all other officially supported extensions. For installation and configuration instructions, consult the file and  over here.

How do I use $wgSpamRegex to block more than one string?
is a powerful filter for page content. Adding multiple items to the regex, however, can be awkward. Consider this snippet:

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:

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.

I've found a bug or have a feature request. Where do I post it?
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:
 * 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
 * Search the rest of this site
 * Search older documentation archived on Meta; Useful developer documentation remains on Meta.wikimedia.org in the category Pages to be exported to MediaWiki.org until the m:Meta:MetaProject to transfer content to MediaWiki.org completes
 * 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?

 * Post a message at Project:Support desk
 * Email the mediawiki-l mailing list (try and search the archive first).
 * Ask the developers in our IRC channel.

Recommended reading

 * Asking smart questions
 * Effective bug reporting
 * Getting help on IRC
 * Books about MediaWiki