Project:Support desk

Welcome to the MediaWiki Support desk. This is a place where you can ask any questions you have about installing, using or administrating the MediaWiki software.

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See also

• Other places to ask for help

Before you post

• Check the FAQ and Errors and symptoms .
• If your question is about a specific feature, check the relevant technical manual , end-user help or extension page and consider asking on its talk page .
• For issues about the mediawiki.org website, report to Village Pump instead.
• Ask technical questions about Wikimedia websites on meta:Tech instead.

Post a new question

1. To help us answer your questions, please indicate which version of MediaWiki you are using, as found on your wiki's Special:Version page:
2. If possible, add $wgShowExceptionDetails = true;error_reporting( -1 );ini_set( 'display_errors', 1 ); to LocalSettings.php in order to make MediaWiki show more detailed error messages.
3. Please include the web address (URL) to your wiki if possible. It's often easier for us to identify the source of the problem if we can see the error directly.
4. To start a new thread, click the box with the text Add topic.

I need help with creating a wiki on MediaWiki.

I just need something to create a wiki, that anybody can edit, just like Wikipedia. Could you help me with that? I'm using a mobile device that runs Android, could you help me with that? それを手伝ってくれますか？ ~2025-36392-66 (talk) 22:02, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

@~2025-36392-66 We do not offer hosting for wikis, we just make the software that runs them. You might want to look at Professional development and consulting for someone to assist you professionally with this. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 19:59, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm a person who is a broadcaster in my school. Are there free wiki farms for me to create a wiki, for the 2^nd time? 私は学校で放送委員をいるひとです。2回目のためにウィキを作る無料ウィキファームはありますか？ ~2025-36392-66 (talk) 02:54, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

A question about pywikibot

Hello! I have a question about pywikibot. What is the module in pywikibot, what can undo changes? Julius 12345 (talk) 15:36, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

I am sorry if this section is on wrong place. Julius 12345 (talk) 15:37, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Maybe Manual:Pywikibot/revertbot.py? Jonathan3 (talk) 13:46, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for info. Julius 12345 (talk) 10:02, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

MediaWiki installation error

Hello, i am currently installing mediawiki on my domain because i wanted to, and while things were going well, i got a internal error for some reason in the middle of the installation, the Name part to be exact. I can't get to the next part of the installation, and i am having problems.
I am using SQlite, and the error message is: [aX5IvnJDOhv6BHdyIcwRMwAAAAE] /mediawiki-1.45.1/mw-config/index.php?page=Name Error: Failed opening required. Do you guys have a fix for this?
I am also using the current version of MediaWiki, which is 1.45.1. Orsomeburger (talk) 18:32, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm guessing it is an issue with the current version. Orsomeburger (talk) 21:50, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Still showing the same error, and i am still using SQlite. Does anybody have a fix for this yet? Is it an issue with my domain, mediawiki itself, what is happening? Orsomeburger (talk) 00:25, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Update: I tried installing MediaWiki via the command line, and put a link to my domain. Basically, the installation with the command line worked, and i did put the LocalSettings.php in the files but for some reason now it shows "MediaWiki internal error." and a bunch of code. Does anybody know how to fix this now? Orsomeburger (talk) 00:57, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Here is the error code. Original exception: [aYKZoQ16urqfA4qjyqPxEgAAAAU] /wiki/ Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBConnectionError: Cannot access the database: Connection refused (127.0.0.1) Orsomeburger (talk) 00:58, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

That sounds like your database connection is broken. Malyacko (talk) 08:34, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Nevermind, it is fixed now. All i had to do is move the mediawiki files to the main domain. There are no errors now. Yes, i am still using SQlite Orsomeburger (talk) 01:11, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Certain characters not displaying correctly - UTF related?

My wiki is version 1.33.1. I've been using it for the past five years without much issue. However, at some point during this past month, certain characters began displaying as garbled text (•) - examples being bullet points (•), runes (ᚨ), and certain apostrophes (’). I haven't manually updated anything lately and I'm fairly tech illiterate when it comes to Mediawiki's inner-workings so I'm not sure why exactly this is happening. If anyone has an explanation that'd be greatly appreciated.

Here's a link to a page where the issue is fairly noticeable - johnisdead.withinhubris.com/Videos ~2026-73279-2 (talk) 18:33, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Sounds like invalid encoding - did you change anything? Also you do need to upgrade - 1.33.1 is quite outdated by now. Leaderboard (talk) 15:18, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Found the issue - turns out one of my extensions, LinkTarget, was being loaded in a strange way in my LocalSettings.php.

For some reason I was using require_once "$IP/extensions/SimpleTooltip/SimpleTooltip.php"; instead of wfLoadExtension( 'LinkTarget' );. Making that change fixed the issue.

Also yeah, I probably should. Just now updated to 1.35.0 and will try to get a newer version put in place soon. Thanks. ~2026-73279-2 (talk) 17:36, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Question about redisJobRunnerService and redisJobChronService

Hi, I've tried to improve the documentation on the use of Redis for MediaWiki sites, though I do hope others more knowledgeable than me can jump in and have a better look at it.

Because information on using cronjobs for the job runner is few and far between, I hesitantly gave ChatGPT a try and one of the suggestions it gave surprised me. My impression, as was that of others, is that you need both redisJobRunnerService and redisJobChronService to run in the background. What ChatGPT suggested, however, is that you can use one or the other: either redisJobRunnerService if you can ensure it runs continuously, or redisJobChronService if you run it every 2 minutes or so. https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-services-jobrunner does not make that claim but then it does not say anything to the contrary either, merely that those services are available and what they do.

Any clarification would be welcome! Rand(1,2022) (talk) 11:44, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Composer fails since a few days

composer update --no-dev fails:

• - Root composer.json requires phpunit/phpunit 9.6.21 (exact version match: 9.6.21 or 9.6.21.0), found phpunit/phpunit[9.6.21] but these were not loaded, because they are affected by security advisories ("PKSA-z3gr-8qht-p93v"). Go to https://packagist.org/security-advisories/ to find advisory details. To ignore the advisories, add them to the audit "ignore" config. To turn the feature off entirely, you can set "block-insecure" to false in your "audit" config.
• Problem 2
• - Root composer.json requires johnkary/phpunit-speedtrap ^4.0 -> satisfiable by johnkary/phpunit-speedtrap[v4.0.0, v4.0.1].
• - johnkary/phpunit-speedtrap[v4.0.0, ..., v4.0.1] require phpunit/phpunit ^7.0 || ^8.0 || ^9.0 -> found phpunit/phpunit[7.0.0, ..., 7.5.20, 8.0.0, ..., 8.5.52, 9.0.0, ..., 9.6.34] but these were not loaded, because they are affected by security advisories ("PKSA-z3gr-8qht-p93v"). Go to https://packagist.org/security-advisories/ to find advisory details. To ignore the advisories, add them to the audit "ignore" config. To turn the feature off entirely, you can set "block-insecure" to false in your "audit" config.
• Running update with --no-dev does not mean require-dev is ignored, it just means the packages will not be installed. If dev requirements are blocking the update you have to resolve those problems.

i overcame with the following though isn't good idea in production: composer install --no-dev --no-security-blocking, but i will set up crom scratch

MW: 1.45.1, PHP 8.3.30

Composer version 2.9.5 2026-01-29 11:40:53

PHP version 8.3.30 (/opt/plesk/php/8.3/bin/php)

any ideas ? ~2026-83879-3 (talk) 10:27, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

this error occurred when i tried to add WikiBase extension --- see Wikibase/Installation - MediaWiki ~2026-83879-3 (talk) 10:42, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

See now https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T416292 Rand(1,2022) (talk) 17:19, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Help with a Featured Article Box

I need help with creating and inserting a "Featured Article" box into my Fandom box on my Wiki Fandom page. I also need help inserting a Discord Server on my wiki, along with a star that goes along with my Wiki Fandom

ER98765 (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Pre-1.19 versions of CheckUser

Hello, does anyone know where the pre-1.19 versions of the CheckUser extension are? this is the earliest version I can find. ~2026-87581-7 (talk) 20:48, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Disregard that, I found them here. ~2026-87581-7 (talk) 21:01, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

where are the NS translations ?

fighting since 1 hour: I check Special:NamespaceInfo here on mediawiki.org but all NS are in english; please where do I find that the NS "Help" is translated as "Aide" (in french)  ? Thanks. --Christian 🇫🇷 FR 🚨 (talk) 13:13, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

You can see that on French Wikipedia: fr:Spécial:NamespaceInfo, or any wiki where French is used as content language. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:03, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Missing Special:Account Security

I just set up my wiki recently Version: 1.45.1 and I don't seem to have the special page account security. ~2026-89092-6 (talk) 18:32, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

It's provided by Extension:OATHAuth. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:08, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-89092-6 were you expecting it because something in the new wiki you setup linked you to that page ? Or because you saw that page on another wiki, or read it somewhere in the documentation ? —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 11:05, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I was looking up how to add 2FA to my page and everything I kept finding said it would need to be setup in Special:Account Security. No one said it wasn't just part of the wiki. Thank you for letting me know I will add the extension. ~2026-89092-6 (talk) 16:12, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Manual:$wgSMTP/Gmail doesn't work

Followed all of the instructions exactly, and getting error:

Mail object returned error: Failed to connect to smtp.gmail.com:465 [SMTP: Failed to connect socket: Network is unreachable (code: -1, response: )]

The one possibility thought of is that I'm trying to set things up so that my user account's personal email (set in preferences) is different from the site email ($wgPasswordSender).. perhaps MediaWiki doesn't support this? (i.e. is it required that the initial sysadmin user account have the same email address as the internal site email?) ~2026-92410-1 (talk) 23:11, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Older versions of the documentation have IDhost set to gmail.com. Flounder ceo (talk) 20:40, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Refresh MediaWiki

I changed Translations:Template:Main page/ca. But the Main page (or MediaWiki) page doesn't refresh when the language is the Catalan (MediaWiki/ca does it). Can you refresh it? Thank you very much. Jmarchn (talk) 07:58, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Extension:NewUserMessage template substing

Hi, I'm from n:Wikinews. We're using Version 1.46.0-wmf.15 (1aae4f1). n:User:Wikinews Welcome uses n:Template:Welcome but doesn't subst it. Per n:WN:Template messages/User talk namespace, the Welcome template and n:Template:Proxyblock shouldn't be substituted, but I don't know why. I have limited technical knowledge, so I don't really know how subst works. I am currently updating the Template messages page, so can someone help me determine if these templates should be substituted or not? Thanks! HKLionel (talk) 10:43, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Dynamic tables with Wikibase

Hello! On a language wiki, I'm trying to create tables that update automatically when new articles are added to a category. The table should contain article names and associated properties via their Wikibase items.

The Idea behind it is that I  enter the data into Wikibase items, instead of adding it manually into tables. I'm currently trying to set this up using Wikibase, Lua, and DynamicPageList4. I've been working on this for days now with Grok, ChatGPT, and Gemini, and it feels like I'm getting nowhere. The AIs are also suggesting me to use SMW, which I try to avoid if it is not necessary.

Are those dynamic tables something that can be done with my current setup, or do I indeed have to add the extensions Semantic MediaWiki and Semantic Wikibase? Thanks for any info on this, cheers and all the best! Till Kraemer (talk) 15:16, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Looks like it is not possible using DynamicPageList4. I installed the extensions Semantic MediaWiki and Semantic Scribunto, and created a Lua module thanks to the help of Gemini. Now the dynamic tables work perfectly! PS: Thanks to Grok's advice, I did not install the Semantic Wikibase extension. Apparently, it is outdated and not needed for my tables. Till Kraemer (talk) 22:20, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Make $wgParserCacheType conditional on user group? [answered]

I was wondering if it is possible to make the $wgParserCacheType config in LocalSettings conditional: use one setting for anonymous users while disabling parser cache for logged in users only. The main reason here is that users editing dynamic data need to be able to rely on those data to reflect latest revisions and in fact, an extension like FlexForm recommends wgParserCacheType to be set to CACHE_NONE. For anonymous visitors, this would be much less of a concern. If it all possible, is there any 'catch'?

To get the best of both worlds then, I tried to add a user group check - $currentUserGroups = MediaWiki\MediaWikiServices::getInstance()->getUserGroupManager()->getUserEffectiveGroups( \RequestContext::getMain()->getUser() ); - but doing so at that stage just logs out users. My guess LocalSettings simply would be the wrong place to check for user groups.

P.S. I do know that there are parser functions that disable parser cache but a global setting seems cleaner. Rand(1,2022) (talk) 08:46, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

If you are using file cache for anonymous users, it shouldn't make much of a difference how their parser cache type is set. For performance, CACHE_NONE for all users should be close to CACHE_NONE for logged-in only. Flounder ceo (talk) 20:26, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm currently trying out LiteSpeed caching (another acceleration solution) instead of file caching, but I believe that comes down to the same thing. Rand(1,2022) (talk) 09:42, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

how do I upload anything?

Why is your website so difficult?

I’m trying to upload pictures of ice vehicles with license plates, but nothing lets me in

I dropped my brave shields and shut off my VPN

Do I need to be a programmer to use this site?

What can we do with all our ice documentation?? ~2026-10537-83 (talk) 15:05, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I wonder if you're on the right platform for uploading and providing ICE license plates, etc. The MediaWiki is the core platform for Wikipedia and many other wikis on the web. If you like to, create your own wiki using the MediaWiki core installation on your server and start creating your own wiki articles about ICE on that wiki. Ulf Dunkel (talk) 11:26, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Maybe you want to become a contributor on this ICE List Wiki. Ulf Dunkel (talk) 12:24, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

produc of thai .app.pim dat papa same mama sum up pice wester map thai mon re ccy 5

help cc .at .model out .share meet f. all .0.0. ~2026-10466-17 (talk) 20:38, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

My first support desk topic on MediaWiki

I can't create a page on MediaWiki! How do I make a media wiki page online? ~2026-10598-42 (talk) 22:35, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Are you talking about adding an article page on the MediaWiki or rather adding a support desk topic like this one you have created yesterday?

If you have rights to add articles to MediaWiki, just search for that page name and start creating it. But I suggest you read the manual and create your article in a sandbox first, because it may or may not be relevant for MediaWiki.

If you just wanted to start a support desk topic (by clicking on [Add topic] at the right top of this page), you've already done that. Ulf Dunkel (talk) 11:29, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Raw and shared template transclusion in multi-MediaWiki no longer work for me in MW 1.45.1

I run the multi-language wiki IntactiWiki since 2014. After I upgraded to 1.45.1 (and PHP 8.3) some days ago, raw transcludes no longer work for me. I have deinstalled the Interwiki extension and set up new interwiki parameters in my CommonSettings.php which is included in all language wikis' LocalSettings.php. These are the parameters:

$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['interwiki'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['bureaucrat']['interwiki'] = true;
$wgInterwikiCentralDB = 'intactiwiki';          // using pool's Interwiki data for all IntactiWiki instances
$wgSharedDB = 'intactiwiki';
$wgSharedTables = ['interwiki'];
$wgInterwikiMagic = true;
$wgHideInterlanguageLinks = false;
$wgEnableScaryTranscluding = true;
$wgInterwikiViewOnly = false;

Whatever I try, I cannot get raw includes from e.g. the IntactiWiki pool to work properly again.

Since the upgrade to MW 1.45, I was hoping that I can transclude templates from the IntactiWiki pool's database 'intactiwiki' simply by using them like local templates. In pool.intactiwiki.org, I have e.g. made a Template:POOLIconREFweb which I included as {{raw:pool:POOLIconREFweb}} before. But this does no longer work. Instead, it seems as if the whole page content of IntactiWiki Pool's Main Page is being transcluded.

I have set up a test page where you can see this behavior. I have created a local identical Template:POOLIconREFweb in the English IntactiWiki in order to show the wanted behavior and template content.

The pool database name is 'intactiwiki'. All language databases are named like 'intactiwiki_<ISOLanguageName>', e.g. 'intactiwiki_en' for the English wiki.

Using {{POOLIconREFweb}} works fine, because it transcludes the local English template. Using {{pool:POOLIconREFweb}}, {{raw:pool:POOLIconREFweb}}, and {{msgnw:pool:POOLIconREFweb}} transclude the whole Main Page of IntactiWiki pool.

What am I doing wrong?

PS: By the way: I am experiencing high performance issues on that server since a while with too many database connections. I have increased the max_connections in my MySQL settings from 250 to 10000 but there must be a reason for these many connections. If you run into the same issues on my IntactiWiki server, please retry loading the page. Thank you. Ulf Dunkel (talk) 09:17, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

[3b01e2c64c990807549e884b] 2026-02-17 22:20:10: Krytyczny wyjątek typu „DomainException”

Hey, I edited the Sidebar page and added a link to the server. Now I get a blah error when I try to edit the Sidebar again, and unfortunately, returning to the updated version of the thesis is impossible. How can I fix this? ~2026-10723-70 (talk) 22:21, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Sitemap using the Rest API

Is anyone generating their sitemaps using the Rest API? I tried to, but it didn't seem like the pages were long enough to include every article in my wiki. Is there more info about $wgSitemapApiConfig somewhere besides Manual:$wgSitemapApiConfig? I'm using 1.45.1. Buster2223 (talk) 04:21, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Just setting $wgSitemapApiConfig['enabled'] = true; should be enough. sitemap/0 will then render an xml with references to pages, which in turn should list all the urls. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 08:57, 18 February 2026 (UTC)