Maintaining a wiki

This document covers the things to consider when you are maintaining your own MediaWiki installation.

These should be considered best practices for maintaining your own wiki.

• Use a VCS
  • Put unmodified, upstream code (i.e. MediaWiki and any extensions) in a separate branch.
  • Only keep code in the VCS.
    • Your VCS is not the right place to put all your uploaded files.
    • Any log files that appear under your MediaWiki root shouldn't end up in your VCS.
• Create a deploy script.
  • This should get the production (or testing) branch from your VCS, merge the different branches, and push it to production.
  • Should complain loudly or even halt if there are un-versioned changes.
• Don't modify the MediaWiki source
  • Use Hooks
    • Check the manual for available hooks.
  • If you don't see what you need, try asking on IRC in #mediawiki ^connect for help.
  • If you still can't find what you need…
    • add a hook.
    • Typically this means adding a single line of code.
    • If you do this, file a bug and upload your patch in Gerrit. Don't forget to update documentation; see Manual:Hooks#Documentation.
  • Use LocalSettings.php for configuration changes — don't modify DefaultSettings.php.
• Keep a separate file for private information, like database passwords.
• Use the MediaWiki namespace.
  • Much of the appearance of MediaWiki can be modified this way.
  • Add ?uselang=qqx to the URL to find out which pages to modify.
    • Adding uselang=qqx to a user page will show that the “User page” tab at the top uses the nstab-user token to find the string to display.
    • Modifying MediaWiki:nstab-user will change the text that is displayed.
    • If you need to provide different strings based on the User's language, then have a look at the gadget description templates on Commons.
• Don't use message strings, instead use keys and Localisation — maybe point to coding guidelines
• Try to use extensions that Wikimedia uses.
• Avoid extensions that are out of date or un-maintained.