MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation and others, it is used to run all of the projects hosted by the Foundation, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikimedia Commons.
MediaWiki (MW) is a free and open-source wiki application licensed under GPLv2+ that powers Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. It is written in PHP and is run on an Apache server with a SQL relational database management system, usually MariaDB, MySQL or PostgreSQL. These pieces of prerequisite software, when installed together on a Linux operating system, like Ubuntu, are often referred to as a LAMP stack.
MediaWiki also has several extensions that can be used to extend its functionality, including several that come bundled with the latest releases of the software such as:
- Cite, which adds citation functionalities and footnote capabilities.
- Gadgets, which enables users to add JavaScript and CSS-based "gadgets" to the Wiki, for example, wikEd.
- ImageMap, which allows users to insert pieces of text (potentially hyperlinked text) into images, such as annotations.
- ParserFunctions, which adds parser functions as {{#if:}} and other conditionals.
- WikiEditor. WikiEditor changes the edit interface, that is, what users see when they edit Wiki pages. It adds several tools to aid users in editing Wiki pages.
Further reading
- Extensions manual
- Frequently-asked questions (FAQ)
- MediaWiki Virtual Library, which contains freely-downloadable manuals in PDF and ePUB format for offline use.
- Manual for running MediaWiki on Ubuntu
- News, such as recent releases
- Official website
Resources for immediate online help
- MediaWiki-l mailing list, note you must subscribe to this list before emailing it.
- mediawiki IRC channel (irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki)