MediaWiki

MediaWiki puts the Wiki in Soyjak Wiki!

This topic relates to this very wikiHere be edit wars, censorship and template spam.

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This site currently uses Mediawiki 1.46, any discussion should be contained in the Janny noticeboard.

MediaWiki is the most common and versatile wiki software, created and maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. Being created for the purpose of making Wikipedia, it has the advantage of Wikipedia using it, alongside this very wiki, Encyclopedia Dramatica, SNCApedia and practically any other wiki you can think of. It was made using PHP.

Setting up MediaWiki locally

Before installing MediaWiki, if you want to set it up on your computer and only your computer, you need to install a bundled software stack like XAMPP, which gives you things like an Apache web server, PHP, and MySQL all in one go.

After you download that, you can go ahead to the MediaWiki website, and download the latest stable version (which is 1.46.2 as of October 2026). After that, set up XAMPP, and activate Apache and MySQL.^{[Im not telling you how to, figure it out your xelf]}. The next step is to create a database. You need to go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin, then you click on the databases tab at the top, and then create a database.

Once you have created a database, you need to set up the MediaWiki files. Extract the MediaWiki files from the ZIP that you downloaded, rename the folder to something simple (e.g MediaWiki), and move the folder to the htdocs directory:

• for Windows: C:\xampp\htdocs\
• for macOS: /Applications/XAMPP/htdocs/
• for Linux: /opt/lampp/htdocs/

Now that all of that is done, go to localhost/<whatever you named your mediawiki folder>, where you will see a page that says "LocalSettings.php not found.". your going to want to click the link that says "set up the wiki first". You will then set up a bunch of stuff related to your wiki (language, environment checks, and connecting mediawiki to the database, also the name of the wiki, ect.). After all of this, MediaWiki will make the LocalSettings.php file mentioned before. You WILL download it, and then place it inside of the MediaWiki folder.

Good job, you have now set up MediaWiki!

Recommended extensions

MediaWiki has a number of extensions that enhance the software's functionality. The following are some notable ones:

ContributionScores

Creates a leaderboard for the wiki's best editors.

Replace Text

Allows admins to do global text replacements.

VisualEditor

Enables the Visual Editor, a user-friendly WYSIWYG interface for editing. This already comes preinstalled with MediaWiki 1.46, you just have to enable it in localsettings.php

AnonPrivacy

Hides the IP addresses of anonymous editors.