Documentation

Overview
Technical documentation refers to any documentation that contains information regarding a technical product, process, or task.

Documentation for Wikimedia projects is widely spread across different wikis and websites. This page focuses on technical documentation for MediaWiki and related software.

Documentation pages

 * MediaWiki documentation style guide
 * Templates for formating text
 * Resources for technical documentarians
 * Guidelines for technical documentation tasks
 * Different technical writing genres
 * A guide for new technical writers

Documentation structure

 * On :
 * A Technical Manual for information about the MediaWiki Software.
 * Project based documentation. This includes user guides, API documentation, tutorials, development information and reference materials related to specific projects.
 * Help pages contain end-user specific documentation and  provide some on-demand documentation.
 * Auto-generated API documentation:
 * Action API reference
 * REST API reference


 * Documentation generated from the source code of MediaWiki: doc.wikimedia.org.
 * Text files in the /docs directory of MediaWiki source tree have code related information.

Supporting resources include blogs, talk pages and discussion forums.

Documentation audiences
Primary users of the MediaWiki documentation and the most useful set of pages for each user-group are listed below.

at and meta are concise forms of end-user documentation. Pages linked to Category:MediaWiki for site admins and contain sysadmin specific information. Manual:Contents serves as the reference guide. MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook and contain resources for administrators. serves as the reference guide. , and linked pages are a starting point for beginners. Experienced developers refer to. References include, , , , , , etc., besides the software installation guidelines. Pages linked to. and for getting started followed by the project specific mediawiki pages.
 * Wiki users (end users of the MediaWiki software)
 * System administrators
 * Wiki administrators
 * Developers
 * Code developers and administrators
 * Add-ons developers
 * Designers
 * Translators and technical writers