MediaWiki Release Notes

MediaWiki 1.45 is the current stable release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches from May 2025 to October 2025. The 1.45.0 stable release came out in December 2025. Download mediawiki-1.45.3.tar.gz or checkout the REL1_45 branch in Git to follow this release.

MediaWiki 1.45 drops PHP 8.1 support, and requires PHP 8.2 or above.

Configuration changes for system administrators in 1.45

• $wgPHPSessionHandling is now deprecated, and the default value has been changed to 'warn'. Any extension that uses PHP session handling ($SESSION, session_start(), etc.) will cause warnings to be emitted.
  Migration instructions: Manual:SessionManager and AuthManager/Updating tips#SessionManager
  Known affected extensions: https://codesearch.wmcloud.org/things/?q=%24_SESSION%7C%ssession\w+\s*(&files=.php%24
  Integration with PHP session handling will be removed in the future, making PHP session handling and MediaWiki session handling independent. Using PHP session handling may cause conflicts with the cookies used by MediaWiki.
  To silence the warnings and restore previous behavior, use $wgPHPSessionHandling = 'enable';. This configuration setting will be removed in a future release.
  To silence the warnings and disable integration with PHP session handling, use define('MW_NO_SESSION_HANDLER', 1);. This constant will always be defined in a future release.
• $wgSitemapNamespacesPriorities is deprecated and ignored.
• $wgCSPUploadEntryPoint to control if img_auth.php & thumb.php send CSP headers
• $wgEnableProtectionIndicators is now enabled by default. If your community already uses protection indicators you might want to disable this setting, or customize them with site CSS.

New configuration

• (T389281) $wgUseLeximorph - Defaults to false. When enabled, core parser functions for grammar, plural, gender, formality, and bidi use the Leximorph library’s modular handlers instead of the legacy Language methods. When disabled, the legacy methods are used.

Changed configuration

• (T402094) $wgReauthenticateTime now defaults to 3600 seconds instead of 60 seconds (1 minute to 1 hour) to improve the user experience

Removed configuration

• (T13555, T371756) $wgParserEnableLegacyHeadingDOM was removed. The skin option 'supportsMwHeading' was likewise removed. New heading markup is now always enabled, on all skins. More information: Heading HTML changes
• (T387856) $wgEnotifImpersonal and $wgEnotifMaxRecips, deprecated in 1.44, are no longer honoured.
• (T394054) $wgParserEnableLegacyMediaDOM and $wgUseContentMediaStyles were removed. New media markup is now always enabled. More information: Parsoid/Parser Unification/Media structure/FAQ
• (T299947) $wgPageLinksSchemaMigrationStage has been removed.
• (T405087) $wgDBDefaultGroup has been removed without deprecation. Use ILBFactory::setDefaultGroupName() instead.
• (T306325) $wgEnableSearchContributorsByIP has been removed.
• (T389893) 'multiPrimaryMode' has been removed from SqlBagOStuff config.
• (T299951) $wgCategoryLinksSchemaMigrationStage, a temporary setting which controls the database schema migration for the categorylinks table, has been removed.

New user-facing features in 1.45

• (T219543) Special:SpecialPages, the index of special pages, now has a search box that filters the list.
• (T118132) After using Special:MergeHistory to merge page histories, Special:Log will show entries for both the source and the destination page. Previously, the merge was only logged for the source page.
• (T384578) Attempting to create a redirect to an invalid target, such as Special:UserLogout, will now result in a warning.
• (T280531) Partial action blocks is now enabled by default. This feature allows administrators to block users from performing certain actions (such as moving pages) without blocking them from editing pages.
• (T328254) A new parser function has been added, {{#contentmodel:}}, which returns the localized name of the contentmodel of the current page. This is primarily meant for use in system messages.
• (T382958) Special:MergeHistory is now significantly more flexible about what it can merge. It can now merge sections taken from the middle of the history of the source (rather than only the start) and insert revisions anywhere in the history of the destination page (rather than only the start)

New developer features in 1.45

• The new built-in notifications framework is now stable for use by extensions. Manual:Notifications
• The Status and StatusValue classes can now be documented as generic classes with a type parameter for their value. These annotations allow IDEs and static analysis tools to better understand the types in code.
• The UserLinkRendererUserLinkPostRender hook was added.
• The LocalUserOptionsStoreSave hook was added.
• The User::getConfirmationToken(), User::getConfirmationTokenUrl() and User::getInvalidationTokenUrl() methods were added.
• The User::getTokenUrl() method was made public.
• The SpecialLogResolveLogType hook was added.
• Domain events modeling changes to pages are now stable for use by extensions. See Manual:Domain events/Hierarchy#Page Events
• CentralIdLookup::getScope() has been added, for easier namespacing of central IDs.
• SessionManager::getJwtData() has been added, to standardize JWT format for session providers which use a JWT.
• The JwtCodec service has been added, for encoding/decoding JWTs.
• The LeximorphFactory service was added.
• (T402154) MessagePostProcessText and MessagePostProcessHtml hooks were added.
• (T396889) In the past, messages that have to exist for technical reason but shouldn't be translated, were added to the usual en.json and qqq.json files, and then configured as 'ignored' in translatewiki. From now on, such messages should be added to the en.json and qqq.json file under nontranslatable/.
• (T315128) The UserCanChangeEmail hook was added.
• (T295568) The jqueryMsg parser now supports self-closing HTML tags (
  , and ).

Action API changes in 1.45

• (T396049) The list of domains supported by the upload-by-URL feature is now exposed via meta=siteinfo.
• (T399897) The parsoid parameter to action=parse has been deprecated. Use parser=parsoid instead.

Languages updated in 1.45

MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• (T314476) Make Perso-Arabic the primary writing system for Kashmiri, under the language code "ks". "ks-arab" and "ks-deva" are preserved for backwards compatibility. "ks-deva" may be removed in a future release.
• Update language fallback chains for Minnan (nan/nan-*) by changing to only fallback to Mindong - Traditional Han script (cdo-hant).
• (T296188) Sites using "zh" as site language now using English special page name in URL.
• (T384155) Updated plural rules for Maltese (mt) language.
• (T395223) Added language support for Yucatec Maya (yua).
• (T397435) Added language support for Dolgan (dlg).
• (T398790) Added language support for Antigua and Barbuda Creole English (aig).
• (T402159) Added language support for Sasak (sas).
• (T406198) Added language support for Bono (abr).
• (T408150) Added language support for Jju (kaj).

MediaWiki 1.44 is a legacy release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches from October 2024 to April 2025. The 1.44.0 stable release came out on 2 July 2025. Download mediawiki-1.44.5.tar.gz or checkout the REL1_44 branch in Git to follow this release.

Some specific notes for MediaWiki 1.44 upgrades are below:

• The default HTML markup used for headings has changed. Some skins may need updates. You can temporarily revert to the old markup by setting $wgParserEnableLegacyHeadingDOM to true (see below), but this option will be removed in the next release. See Heading HTML changes for more information.

For notes on 1.43.x and older releases, see HISTORY.

Configuration changes for system administrators in 1.44:

• (T382987) The default value of 'http.dnsbl.sorbs.net.' in $wgDnsBlacklistUrls has been removed. This is because sorbs.net have stopped providing their services. This means that if you have $wgEnableDnsBlacklist set to true, it will no longer provide any value unless you add other servers to $wgDnsBlacklistUrls.
• Google search removed (T384678): If site search is disabled with $wgDisableTextSearch but $wgSearchForwardUrl is not set to a URL to which to forward searches, then MediaWiki used to show a Google search form. This has been removed, and instead a notice is displayed. System administrators should set e.g. $wgSearchForwardUrl = 'https://duckduckgo.com?q=$1' to avoid this.
• The 'exception-json' log channel has been removed. It previously provided structured exception data in a custom machine-readable format. Since MediaWiki 1.26, structured exception data conforming to the PSR-3 logging standard is also available on the 'exception' log channel. (Log channels can be configured using $wgMWLoggerDefaultSpi.)
• $wgUsersNotifiedOnAllChanges now requires the listed users to have confirmed email addresses, just like other kinds of email notifications do. You can confirm the email address by logging in as the user and using "Confirm your email address" in user preferences, or by running a maintenance script: resetUserEmail.php --no-reset-password

New configuration:

• (T377829) $wgAutopromoteOnceRCExcludedGroups - Defaults to an empty list, can be used to define a denylist of user group names. One-shot autopromotions into these groups will never result in an RC entry, even if $wgAutopromoteOnceLogInRC is true, as long as they were the only new groups the user was autopromoted into.
• (T240542) $wgAutoblockExemptions - IP addresses and CIDR ranges listed here will not be affected by autoblocks, similar to MediaWiki:Block-autoblock-exemptionlist. Defaults to an empty list.

Changed configuration:

• (T13555) $wgParserEnableLegacyHeadingDOM now defaults to false. You can set it to true to temporarily restore the legacy HTML markup for wikitext headings in the output from the Parser, in case you find that your wiki's content or an extension is incompatible with the new markup. More information: Heading HTML changes. This option will be removed in a future release.
• (T45646) $wgAllowRawHtmlCopyrightMessages now defaults to false, which means that the 'copyright-footer' and 'copyright-footer-history' wikitext messages will be used instead of 'copyright' and 'history_copyright' that supported raw HTML, and the 'SkinCopyrightFooter' hook will not be called. This helps protect your wiki against attacks by a rogue administrator account. You can set it to true to temporarily re-enable them until you can update your overrides. This option will be removed in a future release.
• (T386210) $wgAddGroups and $wgRemoveGroups now use the correct merge strategy of array_merge_recursive. This lets extensions add entries from the extension.json file, which would previously have been silently ignored.
• (T382987) $wgDnsBlacklistUrls now defaults to an empty array. See the comment in the "Configuration changes for system administrators" section above.
• (T387856) $wgEnotifImpersonal and $wgEnotifMaxRecips are now deprecated.

Removed configuration:

• $wgResourceLoaderUseObjectCacheForDeps, deprecated in 1.43, has been removed. It is now always enabled (T343492).
• $wgBaseDirectory, unused, has been removed in favour of MW_INSTALL_PATH. If a variable value is needed, inject an optional parameter instead.

New user-facing features in 1.44:

• (T363538, T204792) New parser functions {{#interlanguagelink:prefix|title}} and {{#interwikilink:prefix|title|caption}} to unambiguously create interlanguage and interwiki links, respectively, even when the "prefix" might conflict with a namespace on the local wiki.
• (T326057) Attempting to create a redirect to a nonexistent page will now result in a warning.
• (T33951) The Interwiki extension has been moved to MediaWiki core. It is now possible to view and edit the interwiki table without installing an extension. $wgInterwikiCentralDB and $wgInterwikiCentralInterlanguageDB have been removed, use $wgVirtualDomainsMapping['virtual-interwiki'] and $wgVirtualDomainsMapping['virtual-interwiki-interlanguage'] instead. $wgInterwikiViewOnly has been removed, (un)assign "interwiki" right instead.
• (T302140) Rollbacked edits are marked as manually patrolled instead of auto-patrolled since the rollback action was a manual patrol of the edit.
• (T56145) Introduces a new tag 'mw-recreated' to note edits which create pages that have been previously deleted by having an associated deletion log entry. This does not consider deletion log entries that were suppressed.
• (T326056) Attempting to create a redirect to another redirect will now result in a warning.
• (T322944) Developers using the Action API can now use the new crossorigin= parameter. If used with a supported session provider, such as OAuth, this permits authenticated cross-origin requests against the Action API, similar to how origin=* allows unauthenticated cross-origin requests.
• (T24521, T62109) Embedding a file (e.g., [[File:MediaWiki.png]]) on a page protected with cascading protection will no longer restrict edits to the file description page, only file uploads. Transcluding a file description page (e.g., {{:File:MediaWiki.png}}) will now restrict edits to the page.
• (T333211, T385346) The link to 'Special pages' was removed from the toolbox. If it is not explicitely added in MediaWiki:Sidebar, then MediaWiki automatically adds it at the end and a log is emitted. Note that it will no more be automatically added in future versions; administrators should add it explicitely or it will disappear from the interface.

New features for sysadmins in 1.44:

• (T267477) Users with rename userright can now rename themselves through Special:RenameUser.
• (T104830) Special:RenameUser can now be used in wiki families using shared tables. A renameuser-global right is added and required when renaming global users. No groups have this right by default.
• (T310051) uppercase-ckb collation added. uca-xx-ckb collation deprecated.

New developer features in 1.44:

• The AuthenticationAttemptThrottled hook was added.
• The CodexTablePager class was added.
• UserFactory now has newFromNameOrIp() method to quickly create a User object for either an IP or a named user.
• The ApiQueryCheckCanExecute hook was added.
• The ChangesListInsertLogEntry hook was added.
• The TempUserDetailsLookup service was added.
• The UserLinkRenderer service was added.
• The AuthPreserveQueryParams hook has a new option, $options['request'], to avoid having to rely on the global context.
• You can use LoggerFactory::getContext() to add extra context to all PSR-3 log events.
• New helper methods Html::addClass() and Html::expandClassList().
• The new FeatureShutdown service can be used to provide controlled outages for deprecated interfaces.

Action API changes in 1.44:

• The list=blocks API now accepts a parsedreason parameter to get the block reason as parsed HTML.
• (T357846) siteinfo now lists all user groups and granted permissions, including those from $wgGroupInheritsPermissions.

Languages updated in 1.44:

MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• (T377856) Updated the autonym for Shan (shn)
• (T379137) Added language support for Hunde (hke).
• (T381463) Added language support for Coptic (cop).
• (T381894) Added language support for Fur (fvr).
• (T379137) Added language support for Mindong (Traditional Han script) (cdo-hant).
• (T379137) Added language support for Mindong (Latin script) (cdo-latn).
• (T384234) Added language support for Wali (wlx).
• (T384245) Added language support for Lampung Api (ljp).
• (T389916) Added language support for Buginese (bug-bugi).
• (T393086) Added language support for Ho (Latin script) (hoc-latn).

Changes to extensions:

Now bundled:

• Extension:CheckUser
• Extension:TemplateStyles

Merged into core:

• Extension:Interwiki

See also:

• Highlights from MediaWiki 1.44 — Blog post about the MediaWiki 1.44 release; published July 4, 2025

MediaWiki 1.43

MediaWiki 1.43 is a long-term support release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches between April 2024 and October 2024. The 1.43.0 stable release came out on 21 December 2024. Download mediawiki-1.43.8.tar.gz or checkout the REL1_43 branch in Git to follow this release.

Some specific notes for MediaWiki 1.43 upgrades are below:

• It is now necessary that the OpenSSL PHP extension is installed.
• Users of the Linter extension should note that update.php updates that extension's database table with two migration scripts that can take a long time to run: with the provided settings, each migration script updates roughly 500 rows per second. If at all possible, it is highly recommended to let update.php run these migration scripts. However, if this is deemed too long a maintenance operation (depending on the number of rows in the Linter database table), it is possible, for an upgrade from 1.40 onwards, to run the migration scripts before updating the MediaWiki and extensions files to 1.43: set $wgLinterWriteNamespaceColumnStage and $wgLinterWriteTagAndTemplateColumnsStage to true, and run the extensions/Linter/maintenance/migrateNamespace.php and extensions/Linter/maintenance/migrateTagTemplate.php migration scripts before proceeding with any other code update. When upgrading from a version <= 1.39, a multi-step update is necessary to be able to run the migration scripts independently from update.php: first update to 1.42, then proceed as indicated. For further details see #Removed configuration below and Extension:Linter#Upgrading to MediaWiki 1.43.x.

For notes on 1.42.x and older releases, see HISTORY.

Configuration changes for system administrators in 1.43

• $wgBlockTargetMigrationStage, which was introduced in 1.42, is now deprecated and has no effect.
• …

New configuration

• (T13555) $wgParserEnableLegacyHeadingDOM - Defaults to true, can be set to false to enable new, more accessible HTML markup for wikitext headings. Note that each skin must also use the 'supportsMwHeading' option to allow it. More information: Heading HTML changes. In a future release the new markup will become the default, and later this option will be removed.
• (T12347) $wgEnableProtectionIndicators - Defaults to false, setting it to true shows a lock icon indicator on protected pages.
• (T373480) $wgSortedCategories - Defaults to false, setting it to true will sort the categories shown on article pages. This is an experimental setting; its future will depend on community adoption and feedback on the phab task is welcome.
• (T45646) $wgAllowRawHtmlCopyrightMessages - Defaults to true, can be set to false to disable the use of the localisation messages 'copyright' and 'history_copyright' and the hook 'SkinCopyrightFooter', which have been deprecated in this release. This helps protect your wiki against attacks by a rogue administrator account and will become the default in the future.
• (T4085) $wgParserEnableUserLanguage - Defaults to false, can be set to true to let {{USERLANGUAGE}} magic word return the user's language, instead of the page language. Beware that accessing the user language may reduce the efficiency of the parser cache.
• …

Changed configuration

• $wgPageLinksSchemaMigrationStage – (T299947) This temporary setting, which controls the database schema migration for the page links table, is now set by default to write to both old and new data and read from the new data.
• $wgFooterIcons – (T256190) The default "Powered by MediaWiki" button icon has been updated to an SVG icon, and the footer icons are now wrapped as buttons in HTML, rather than faking it within the icons themselves. You should adjust any footer icons you provide or over-ride to match.
• The "error-json" channel, configurable via $wgDebugLogGroups, has been removed. For structured logging, use the "error" channel directly instead. Since MediaWiki 1.25, structured logging is supported via Monolog for all channels, including the "error" channel. For silenced errors, you use the "silenced-error" channel added in MediaWiki 1.42. (T193472)
• $wgResourceLoaderUseObjectCacheForDeps - (T343492) This is now enabled by default. This means ResourceLoader writes information to the MainStash instead of a core database table, which can be set to a separate database via $wgMainStash. If you find issues, please drop a comment on T343492. It is now deprecated and will be removed in MediaWiki 1.44.
• …

Removed configuration

• $wgSessionInsecureSecrets has been removed since OpenSSL is now a required PHP extension.
• $wgTemplateLinksSchemaMigrationStage has been removed.
• $wgSamplingStatsdClient has been removed. It was introduced in MW 1.28 for use in the Wikibase extension, but never used. The new StatsFactory service should be used for new instrumentations, which already supports sampling. Beware that sampling is generally not needed even at scale, and that sampling does not significantly reduce runtime overhead, thus making it slow to instrument very hot code even with built-in sampling.
• (T294397) The 'writeapi' userright, which controlled access to some API modules, has been removed.
• (T331883) The variables $wgLinterWriteTagAndTemplateColumnsStage, $wgLinterUserInterfaceTagAndTemplateStage, $wgLinterWriteNamespaceColumnStage, and $wgLinterUseNamespaceColumnStage have been removed. The namespace, tag and template column of the Linter database table are now written and used. The existing data from the Linter database is migrated to the new columns by extensions/Linter/maintenance/migrateNamespace.php and extensions/Linter/maintenance/migrateTagTemplate.php, which are both called by the update script (T367207).
• …

New user-facing features in 1.43

• (T338341) Support reading XMP and EXIF from WebP files
• (T365636) Wiki's with $wgAllowExternalImages enabled now detect urls with AVIF, SVG and WebP images.
• (T242346) Special:TalkPage is a new special page that will redirect to the associated talk namespace page, e.g. Special:TalkPage/Foo redirects to Talk:Foo; Special:TalkPage/Project:Foo goes to Project talk:Foo. This allows for links by templates and tools without having to parse what namespaces are valid and have associated talk pages.
• New preference: "Send password reset emails only when both email address and username are provided."
• (T4085) Added new magic word {{USERLANGUAGE}} which returns the language code of the interface set by the user.
• (T263513) Special:NamespaceInfo is a new special page that displays a list of namespaces available on the wiki, their descriptions and configuration.
• …

New features for sysadmins in 1.43

• …

New developer features in 1.43

• StatusValue class gained new method getMessages(): MessageSpecifier[], allowing the errors to be inspected and displayed more easily, for example:

  foreach ($status->getMessages() as $msg) {
    if ($msg->getKey() !== 'ignored-message') {
      $this->getOutput()->addWikiMsg($msg);
    }
  }
  

• (T358779) The MessageValue class can now be used instead of Message in most places (in methods that accept the MessageSpecifier interface). This allows using localisation messages in code that doesn't know the user's language, such as many hooks, without relying on global state. To convert between them, use MessageValue::newFromSpecifier() and Message::newFromSpecifier().
• The REST API framework now supports defining redirects in route definition files. See MediaWiki\Rest\Handler\RedirectHandler for details.
• (T13555) Skins can enable the 'supportsMwHeading' option for new, more accessible HTML markup for wikitext headings. MediaWiki's own styles and scripts have been updated to support it, but your skin may also need updates. More information: Heading HTML changes. A future release will emit deprecation warnings for skins with 'supportsMwHeading' set to false.
• The AuthPreserveQueryParams hook was added.
• (T219397) New Language::formatDurationBetweenTimestamps() function added which takes two timestamps and a precision in order to calculate a more accurate text representation of duration.
• Added an interactive mode to the install.php maintenance script.
• The ResourceLoaderModifyEmbeddedSourceUrls hook was added.
• The AuthManagerFilterProviders hook was added.
• The AuthManagerVerifyAuthentication hook was added.
• The OutputPageRenderCategoryLink hook was added, as a replacement for the deprecated OutputPageMakeCategoryLinks hook.
• PreAuthenticationProvider, PrimaryAuthenticationProvider, and SecondaryAuthenticationProvider now receive a canAlwaysAutocreate flag in the options of the testUserForCreation invocation. This flag is true when the session provider is exempt from autocreate user permissions checks.
• The CentralIdLookup service gained the isOwned() method, which can be used to check if a local username is reserved for a central user, even if a local user account does not exist yet. This can be used by extensions to look up information about the central user.
• (T251790) A Jest-based test suite has been introduced for testing front-end code such as Vue components. Tests can be run via npm run jest, and test files live in tests/jest/. See Jest for more information.
• The SpreadAnyEditBlock hook was added.
• The ConditionalDefaultOptionsAddCondition hook was added.
• …

Action API changes in 1.43

• APIQueryUserInfo now returns null in the field registrationdate for users created before December 2005 (their registration date was not recorded).
• …

Action API internal changes in 1.43

• …

Languages updated in 1.43

MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• (T375891) Updated the autonym for Kadazan Dusun (dtp)
• (T357853) Added unidirectional script conversion for Meitei to Bengali script.
• (T367377) Updated the autonym for Tai Nuea (tdd)
• (T375947) Updated the autonym for Komering (kge)
• (T354937, T362041) Added language support for Minnan (Traditional Han script) (nan-hant).
• (T290657) Added language support for Levantine Arabic (apc).
• (T364291) Added language support for Musi, also known as Palembang (mui).
• (T364737) Added language support for Haryanvi (bgc).
• (T365365) Added language support for Chakma (ccp).
• (T367991) Added language support for Iban (iba).
• (T367688) Added language support for Interslavic (Latin) (isv-latn).
• (T375360) Added language support for Interslavic (Cyrillic) (isv-cyrl).
• (T370123) Added language support for Nupe (nup).
• (T371051) Added language support for Saint Lucian Creole (acf).
• (T354937, T370987) Added language support for Minnan (Pe̍h-ōe-jī) (nan-latn-pehoeji).
• (T354937, T369899) Added language support for Minnan (Tâi-lô) (nan-latn-tailo).
• (T375052) Added language support for Tigre (tig).
• (T375999) Added language support for Luba-Lulua (lua).
• (T376248) Added language support for Duala (dua).
• (T375377) Added language support for Southern Ndebele (nr). This is done experimentally, with only a Names.php entry and namespace translations, before we have actual localized strings. For details, see Future of Language Incubation.
• (T356144) Deprecated the Kanuri language (kr) and replaced it with Central Kanuri (knc). The language code kr is kept for backwards compatibility and falls back to knc.
• …

See also

• New in MediaWiki 1.43 LTS — Blog post about the MediaWiki 1.43 release; published December 23, 2024

MediaWiki 1.42

MediaWiki 1.42 is an obsolete release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches between October 2023 and March 2024. The 1.42.0 stable release came out on 27 June 2024. Download mediawiki-1.44.5.tar.gz or checkout the REL1_42 branch in Git to follow this release.

MediaWiki 1.42 dropped PHP 7.4 and 8.0 support, and requires PHP 8.1 or above.

MediaWiki 1.42 reached end-of-life with version 1.42.7 on 30 June 2025.

Some specific notes for MediaWiki 1.42 upgrades are below:

• MediaWiki now requires Composer 2.x, and any related (vendor) files generated by Composer must be generated by Composer 2.x. Composer 1.x is mostly end-of-life upstream, and using it will result in slower actions when downloading and installing packages. See the upstream blog post at https://blog.packagist.com/deprecating-composer-1-support/ for further information.

For notes on 1.41.x and older releases, see HISTORY.

Configuration changes for system administrators in 1.42

• Composer 1.x is no longer supported and cannot be used with MediaWiki.

New configuration

• $wgMicroStashType: The object cache backend for the MicroStash service.
• $wgEditRecoveryExpiry: Number of seconds to keep edit recovery data after the edit is stored.
• $wgDjvuUseBoxedCommand and $wgDjvuShell: A temporary flag to control whether or not to use BoxedCommand when wrapping DeJaVu rendering and the command to call if so.
• $wgConditionalUserOptions: It allows defining user properties with defaults varying by user without growing the user_properties table. A typical use case is to enable a feature only for users created after a certain date.
• $wgGrantRiskGroups: Grant risk levels indicate on various UIs which grants should be considered risky. (T290790)
• $wgTempAccountCreationThrottle: Like AccountCreationThrottle, but for managing temporary account creations.

Changed configuration

• $wgAutoCreateTempUser: 'matchPattern' now supports multiple match patterns.
• $wgLogActionsHandlers is now ObjectFactory compatible.
• $wgBotPasswordsCluster and $wgBotPasswordsDatabase have been deprecated; use $wgVirtualDomainsMapping['virtual-botpasswords'] instead.
• The $wgMainPageIsDomainRoot setting is no longer considered experimental.
• $wgAutoCreateTempUser is updated to use a different format for temporary accounts. This configuration value is marked as unstable, so breaking changes were expected. If your wiki used temporary accounts before 1.42, you must override the configuration value to match the old format of *$1.

Removed configuration

• $wgDisableCookieCheck has been removed.
• $wgStatsCacheType has been removed. Set $wgMicroStashType instead.
• $wgJobSerialCommitThreshold has been removed without deprecation. According to a code search, it wasn't used anywhere, and any setups using this configuration will perform fine but might be less performant.
• $wgLogoHD, deprecated since 1.35, has been removed. Use $wgLogo instead.
• $wgContentHandlerTextFallback, deprecated since 1.37, has been removed. It is no longer customizable.
• $wgSquidPurgeUseHostHeader, deprecated since 1.33, has been removed. It is no longer customizable and always true.
• $wgAllowImageTag, deprecated since 1.35, has been removed. Register an extension tag named <img> instead.
• $wgMinimalPasswordLength and $wgMaximalPasswordLength, deprecated since 1.26, have been dropped. Use $wgPasswordPolicy instead.
• $wgUseMediaWikiUIEverywhere has been removed.
• $wgHTMLFormAllowTableFormat has been removed.
• $wgOpenSearchTemplate, deprecated since 1.25, has been removed. Use $wgOpenSearchTemplates['application/x-suggestions+json'] instead.
• $wgUseSameSiteLegacyCookies has been removed.

New user-facing features in 1.42

• (T308160) filter: is now allowed in inline CSS in wikitext
• The vector 2022 skin is bundled with this and future releases.

New developer features in 1.42

• (T326466) MediaWikiIntegrationTestCase's database and set-up code now avoids using dynamic properties, which was causing deprecation warnings in PHP 8.2.
• (T13555) MediaWiki now includes styles that allow more accessible markup for section headings. MediaWiki's own HTML output will be changed in the future. More information: Heading HTML changes
• (T193472) PHP Notice and Warning errors that are silenced (e.g., by the "@" operator, error_reporting directive, or Wikimedia\AtEase) are now logged to a new "silenced-error" channel.
• (T347347) The CLI installer accepts a "--with-developmentsettings" argument to require the DevelopmentSettings.php file at install time.
• (T350054) MediaWiki's ResourceLoader has been updated to add basic support for code-splitting (aka "tree-shaking") when using the Codex component library. A ResourceLoader module can now specify a list of "codexComponents" in its module definition and ensure that only the code for those components gets sent to the client. More information: Codex § Loading a subset of Codex components (recommended for skins and extensions)
• (T345185) The SessionProviderInterface now allows defining providers that are exempt from rights checks when auto-creating users.

Action API changes in 1.42

• APIQueryTags now includes "software" in the "source" array for software-generated tags. Reliance on this array's "extension" entries is now deprecated, but they will remain for backward compatibility.

Languages updated in 1.42

MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below, only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• (T268143) Language variant conversion has been removed for Kazakh.
• (T352776) Updated autonym spelling for the Mon language (mnw).
• (T351874) Added language support for Komering (kge).
• (T351992) Added language support for Efik (efi).
• (T352954) Added language support for Rutul (rut).
• (T353058) Added language support for Arbëresh (aae).
• (T353307) Added language support for Guadeloupean Creole (gcf).
• (T353500) Added language support for Southeastern Kolami (nit).
• (T354519) Added language support for Tooro (ttj).
• (T354926) Added language support for Nyoro (nyo).
• (T356616) Added language support for Chinook Jargon (chn).
• (T357879) Added language support for Ibibio (ibb).

See also

• Discover MediaWiki 1.42 Features — Blog post about the MediaWiki 1.42 release; published June 27, 2024

MediaWiki 1.41

MediaWiki 1.41 is an obsolete release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches between March and October 2023. The 1.41.0 stable release came out on 21 December 2023.

Some specific notes for MediaWiki 1.41 upgrades are below:

• (T178356) MediaWiki now requires browsers to support ES6 for them to receive JavaScript, up from ES5. In practice, this primarily means that users of Internet Explorer 11 (EOL in 2022) will no longer get JavaScript tools.

For notes on 1.40.x and older releases, see HISTORY.

Configuration changes for system administrators in 1.41

• $wgGroupPermissions: The 'purge' permission is now considered an implicit right that can be rate limited, but not revoked. This has effectively already been the case for a long time, see T291316.

New configuration

• $wgPrivilegedGroups – Users belonging in some of the listed groups will be audited more aggressively.
• $wgPageLinksSchemaMigrationStage – This temporary flag lets you control the migration stage for converting the pagelinks database table into normal form.
• $wgExternalLinksDomainGaps – Can be used by large wikis to optimize certain external link queries.
• $wgResourceLoaderEnableSourceMapLinks - Add a SourceMap header to ResourceLoader responses for JavaScript modules (T47514).
• $wgVirtualDomainsMapping - Mapping of virtual domains to other dbs. It's useful to get connection to the external cluster.
• $wgChronologyProtectorSecret - Secret string for HMAC hashing in ChronologyProtector
• $wgEnableEditRecovery - Whether to enable the client-side Edit Recovery feature, which is not yet stable.
• $wgEditRecoveryExpiry - Number of seconds to keep Edit Recovery data after the edit is stored.
• $wgImplicitRights - A list of implicit rights, in addition to the ones defined by the core. Rights in this list are granted implicitly to all users, but rate limits may apply to them.
• $wgInterwikiLogoOverride - List of interwiki logos overrides.
• $wgSVGNativeRendering - Whether native SVG rendering by the browser agent is allowed
• $wgSVGNativeRenderingSizeLimit - If $wgSVGNativeRendering is set to 'partial', this sets the size limit for an SVG file to be rendered as a PNG instead of directly by the browser.
• $wgUserRegistrationProviders - User registration timestamp provider classes
• $wgUseXssLanguage - Whether to enable the x-xss language code, used to make checking for cross-site scripting (XSS) issues more convenient.
• $wgVirtualDomainsMapping - Maps virtual database domains to actual databases.
• $wgWikidiff2Options - Configuration for Wikidiff2.
• $wgUseLegacyMediaStyles - Temporary flag to re-enable the old thumbnail styles provided by core for the legacy media HTML structure.

Changed configuration

• $wgAuthManagerAutoConfig – When using this setting to modify the authentication system in MediaWiki, the classes TemporaryPasswordPrimaryAuthenticationProvider, LocalPasswordPrimaryAuthenticationProvider and EmailNotificationSecondaryAuthenticationProvider now require DBLoadBalancerFactory, not DBLoadBalancer, as a service.
• $wgUseFileCache is no longer used for ResourceLoader module caching.
• $wgLBFactoryConf['secret'] has been replaced by $wgChronologyProtectorSecret.
• viewmywatchlist and editmywatchlist user rights are now moved from * to the user group.

Removed configuration

• $wgCommentTempTableSchemaMigrationStage – This temporary flag did let you control the migration stage for the temporary comment database table, from revision.
• $wgExternalLinksSchemaMigrationStage – This temporary flag did let you control the migration stage for the externallinks database table.
• $wgParserOutputHooks - This array interacted with ParserOutput::addOutputHook(), which has been deprecated since 1.38 and was removed in this release.

New user-facing features in 1.41

• Special:RandomPage can now take multiple namespaces in its URL, split by ','.
• The aria-level HTML attribute is now allowed in wikitext by the Sanitizer.
• Special:Contributions now shows the edit count and the account creation date of users.
• Special:ListGroupRights now shows the name of user rights specified in LocalSettings.php
• The default skin is vector 2022 after installation.

New features for sysadmins in 1.41

• $wgDBssl can now enabled in the installer when the database type is Postgres or MariaDB/MySQL (T335828).
• MWHttpRequest will forward 'tracestate' and/or 'traceparent' headers when those are present in the original request and $wgAllowExternalReqID is set to true.
• MultiHttpClient will send X-Request-Id header and additionally will forward 'tracestate' and/or 'traceparent' headers when those are present in the original request and $wgAllowExternalReqID is set to true.

New developer features in 1.41

• Added ForeignResourcesDir extension.json / skin.json attribute, which should point to the directory holding your foreign-resources.yaml file. See Foreign resources for background.
• Added PrivilegedGroups attribute for extension.json / skin.json, which lets you add any new user groups you define to wgPrivilegedGroups (see above).
• Added a .gitmessage commit template. To use it, run: git config commit.template .gitmessage
• A new hook, TextSlotDiffRendererTablePrefixHook, has been added to allow extensions to add content within #mw-content-text but after the DifferenceEngineViewHeader or DifferenceEngineShowDiffPage hooks have been run. The new hook is used to add elements within a horizontal display area, where their order can be explicitly set. Examples of uses for this include adding the VisualEditor diff-type switch, and the legend for inline diffs that is displayed if Wikidiff2 is installed.
• validation callbacks for HTMLForm fields can now return Status objects. HTMLForm::validate will convert good Status instances to true and Status instances to a string containing a list with the errors.
• ?action=rollback, if successful, will fire core's postEdit JavaScript hook; for now, we do not display a success message to the user via mw.notify(), as the RollbackAction form's success page is already shown
• MultiHttpClient constructor will accept headers property which defines a set of headers attached to every request performed by the client.
• New Wikimedia/Http/TelemetryHeadersInterface interface that provides a telemetry information which could be attached to HTTP Requests
• Wikimedia/Http/TelemetryHeadersInterface can be passed to MultiHttpClient via 'telemetry' option.
• UserRegistrationLookup adds support for multiple kinds of registration dates Extensions providing support for wiki-farm can use this to provide a global registration date (across all wikis), for example.
• When $wgUseXssLanguage is set to true (enabled by default in DevelopmentSettings.php), ?uselang=x-xss can be used to easily test whether all messages are being escaped correctly.
• Html::noticeBox accepts new optional parameters, 'heading' & 'iconClassName'. 'heading' allows to pass an string as title; 'iconClassName' overwrites the default info icon.

Action API changes in 1.41

• (T322944) Authorization was added to the default list of headers allowed for cross-origin API requests ($wgAllowedCorsHeaders).

Languages updated in 1.41

MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• (T345807) Added language support for Karekare (kai).
• (T333765) Removed language support for Akan (Ak).
• (T332113) Added language support for Northern Hindko (hno).
• (T333425) Added language support for Iraqi (Mesopotamian) Arabic (acm).
• (T336919) Added language support for Crimean Tatar (Romania) (crh-ro).
• (T338416) Added language support for Betawi (bew).
• (T341545) Added language support for West Coast Bajau (a.k.a. Sama; bdr).
• (T332118) Namespace translations for Angika (anp) were added
• (T341942) The autonym of the Buginese language is changed to the Latin-script name "Basa Ugi", and the localization in the language code "bug" is now only in the Latin script. It's possible to add localization in the Lontara script in translatewiki under the code "bug-bugi".
• (T341943) Main Page name translation was changed from "Leppa Indoë" to "Watangpola". If you manage a wiki in this language, make sure that links to the main page are correctly updated. See https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Support&oldid=11723654#Change_MediaWiki:Mainpage/bug

MediaWiki 1.40 is an obsolete release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches between September 2022 and March 2023. The 1.40.0 stable release came out on 30 June 2023. Download mediawiki-1.44.5.tar.gz or checkout the REL1_40 branch in Git to follow this release.

Important changes

• The RenameUser extension has been merged into MediaWiki core. If you have it installed, you should deactivate it in LocalSettings.php and uninstall it.

Other changes

Some specific notes for MediaWiki 1.40 upgrades are below:

• Maintenance scripts should now be executed using maintenance/run.php, e.g. maintenance/run.php update not maintenance/update.php as before.
• Five extensions have now been bundled with MediaWiki:
  • The DiscussionTools extension, which provides a forum-like editing experience for wikitext-based discussion pages.
  • The Echo extension, which provides a system of user notifications.
  • The Linter extension, which warns about use of deprecated wikitext.
  • The LoginNotify extension, which warns users about failed attempted logins.
  • The Thanks extension, which lets users thank editors for edits.
• The Renameuser extension has been moved to MediaWiki core. It is now possible to rename users without installing an extension. The extension had already been bundled with MediaWiki since 1.18.

For notes on 1.39.x and older releases, see HISTORY.

Configuration changes for system administrators in 1.40

• When computing PBKDF2 password hashes, MediaWiki now detects and uses OpenSSL support if available, unless $wgPasswordConfig['pbkdf2']['class'] is set in LocalSettings.php. OpenSSL is more efficient, so if that setting is present, you should remove it (or set it to 'Pbkdf2PasswordUsingOpenSSL' if possible). If users get an internal error when trying to log in, you can try setting it to 'Pbkdf2PasswordUsingHashExtension'. In particular, this would be necessary if existing PBKDF2 password hashes were computed using a hash algorithm other than "sha512" or "sha256" (the current and prior defaults).
• You should configure your webserver to return the http header 'X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff' for the /images directory. This will instruct browsers to not apply content sniffing when accessing the files. MediaWiki before 1.40 shipped with a content sniffer which disallowed potentially dangerous files at upload time, but this protection has now been removed in favor of this 'X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff' header and the installer will return a warning when it is not in place.
• Support for MW_USE_LEGACY_DEFAULT_SETTINGS has been removed, setting this constant will not have any effect. Use of MW_USE_LEGACY_DEFAULT_SETTINGS had been deprecated since 1.39.

New configuration

• $wgThumbnailNamespaces - This setting lets you define the namespaces for which image thumbnails (or a placeholder in the absence of a thumbnail) will be displayed on Special:Search.
• $wgResourceLoaderClientPreferences – This experimental flag lets you enable client-side preferences for logged-out users.
• $wgExternalLinksSchemaMigrationStage – This temporary flag lets you control the migration stage for the new schema for the external links database table. Ignore it unless you have a large wiki farm with complex migration needs.
• $wgCommentTempTableSchemaMigrationStage – This temporary flag lets you control the migration stage for the temporary comment database table, from revision. Ignore it unless you have a large wiki farm with complex migration needs.
• $wgSpecialContributeSkinsEnabled – This setting lets you list skins on which Special:Contribute is available, for where others don't work for the feature.
• $wgPrivilegedGroups – Users belonging in some of the listed groups will be audited more aggressively.

Changed configuration

• $wgPasswordPolicy – This setting, which controls what makes for a valid password for wiki accounts, has been adjusted to raise the minimal password length from 1 to 8 characters. The initial limit of 1 has been in place since MediaWiki 1.26. If you wish to allow shorter passwords, you can over-ride it in your LocalSettings following the guidance on MediaWiki.org.
• New accounts can no longer use an equals sign (=) in their usernames because of issues it causes in wikitext syntax. This can be adjusted by changing the value of $wgInvalidUsernameCharacters.
• $wgParserEnableLegacyMediaDOM – This setting has been changed, so the alternative modern HTML structure for media is now the default. You can disable it for now by over-riding this back to true in LocalSettings, but this configuration will be removed in future versions of MediaWiki. For more details, see the documentation at: Parsoid/Parser Unification/Media structure/FAQ.
• $wgWatchlistExpiryMaxDuration – This setting, which controls the maximum allowed duration for users to set their temporary watchlist entries for expiry if that feature is enabled, has been increased from 6 months to 1 year.

Removed configuration

• $wgShellboxUrl – This setting, deprecated in 1.37, has now been removed; use $wgShellboxUrls instead.
• $wgMainWANCache and $wgWANObjectCaches – These never-used settings have been removed. To inject WANObjectCache parameters, use $wgWANObjectCache instead. These variables were introduced for multi-DC wiki farms to add a separate memcached proxy for cross-DC relaying of purges but never used because WANObjectCache works based on route prefixes, which can be transparently handled by the main memcached proxy.
• $wgParserTestFiles – This setting, deprecated in 1.30, has now been removed; extensions can place their parser test files in tests/parser instead.
• $wgAutoloadAttemptLowercase – This setting, deprecated in 1.35, no longer has any effect. If you run into difficulties, fix the names of miscased local files.
• $wgVerifyMimeTypeIE – This setting, to provide extra security checks for very old versions of Internet Explorer clients, was removed. These user agents aren't used in practice, and haven't been served JavaScript content for years.

New user-facing features in 1.40

• Special:Search can now show thumbnails for results for titles outside NS_FILE. This is controlled via the new onSearchResultProvideThumbnail hook.
• A new preference ('search-thumbnail-extra-namespaces') to allow users to control whether to show more thumbnails (per $wgThumbnailNamespaces).
• On pages using multi-content revisions, the raw content of a specific slot can be retrieved using the action=raw&slot= query parameters.
• The preferences page now provides a search bar to find preferences, regardless of the tab on which they appear.

New developer features in 1.40

• The MediaWiki-Docker development environment is now configured to run on PHP 8.1 by default, up from PHP 7.4 now that that's EOL.
• Vue development mode is enabled by default in DevelopmentSettings.php.
• The @noVarDump annotation from the DebugInfoTrait tool can now be added to references to stop them from being expanded when their object is passed to var_dump(), to make its use for debugging more feasible.
• The ApiSandbox will now by default request responses in the latest API format, rather than the original format. Users can set formatversion to a different value if needed.
• A new hook, GetBlockErrorMessageKeyHook, allows extensions' block error messages to be received and displayed by BlockErrorFormatter.
• A new hook, SpecialCreateAccountBenefits, lets extensions and local code set custom content on the signup page about the benefits of using an account.
• A new 'PageUndeleteComplete' hook has been added for more thorough information about a page post restoration than the 'PageUndelete' hook passes. This provides similar functionality to the 'PageDeleteComplete' hook.
• The Linker::specialLink() method can now link to a Special page's with a sub-page or action parameter set, e.g. Special:Contributions/JohnDoe.
• The PHPUnit entrypoints (tests/phpunit/phpunit.php and vendor/bin/phpunit) now check if composer dependencies are up-to-date, like update.php, using CheckComposerLockUpToDate. To disable this check, use MW_SKIP_EXTERNAL_DEPENDENCIES=1 environment flag when running PHPUnit.
• ManualLogEntry::setForceBotFlag() has been added to allow the forcing of the bot flag for log entries which are inserted to the recent changes.

Action API changes in 1.40

• New cancreateaccount parameter on action=query&meta=userinfo that allows you to check if the user can create an account. Some of the errors that have previously been returned by action=query&list=users&usprop=cancreate are now returned here.

Languages updated in 1.40

MediaWiki supports over 400 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• Added language support for Toki Pona (tok).
• Added language support for Magahi (mag).
• Added language support for Arakanese (rki).
• Added language support for Khakas (kjh).
• Added language support for Igala (igl).
• Added language support for Kusaal (kus).
• Added language support for Southern Dagaare (dga).
• Added language support for Obolo (ann).
• Added language support for Nogai (nog).
• Added language support for Wolaytta (wal).
• Add no to fallback chain of nb and nn.

See also

• What is New in MediaWiki 1.40? — Blog post about the MediaWiki 1.40 release; published July 5, 2023

MediaWiki 1.39 is an obsolete long-term support release of MediaWiki.

Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches between March and September 2022. The 1.39.0 stable release came out on 30 November 2022. Download 1.39.17 or checkout the REL1_39 branch in Git to follow this release. It went end-of-life on December 31, 2025.

MediaWiki 1.39 drops PHP 7.3 support, and requires PHP 7.4.3 or above.

Configuration changes for system administrators in 1.39

New configuration

• $wgAutoCreateTempUser – This configures automatic user creation on page save.
• $wgCopyUploadAllowOnWikiDomainConfig – This configures if administrators can use the MediaWiki:Copyupload-allowed-domains system message to define which domains can be used with the upload-by-url tool.
• $wgCdnMatchParameterOrder – This can be set to false if MediaWiki is behind a CDN that re-orders query parameters. This will make the code that matches request URLs to canonical CDN URLs insensitive to parameter order.
• $wgMultiShardSiteStats – This allows you to split site_stats across multiple rows. Only useful for very large, heavily edited wikis. (T306589)

Changed configuration

• $wgInvalidUsernameCharacters – This setting now contains the char '>' , which is now the reserved delimiter for external user names.
• $wgLocalFileRepo – The default serialization method for file meta-data has been changed to JSON. You can revert it to PHP by setting the property useJsonMetadata to false.
• $wgLBFactoryConf – The configCallback flag can now be set to a callback function that returns an array with keys to update in $wgLBFactoryConf. This can be used to update the database configuration on the fly, e.g. to take replica hosts out of rotation.
• $wgDBservers, $wgLBFactoryConf – The DBO_SSL flag has been deprecated in favour of a boolean ssl parameter.
• $wgObjectCaches – The globalKeyLB and localKeyLB flags are no longer supported.

Removed configuration

• $wgMultiContentRevisionSchemaMigrationStage – This transition flag, deprecated since MediaWiki 1.35, has been removed; the data migration is over.
• $wgActorTableSchemaMigrationStage – This transition flag has been removed; the data migration is over.
• $wgWikiFarmSiteDetector – This experimental setting has been removed without replacement. Use the MW_WIKI_NAME environment variable to specify the name of the site for which to load configuration. Using the WIKI_NAME environment variable for this purpose is deprecated.
• $wgParserCacheUseJson – The ParserCache now always uses JSON serialization. Reading old non-JSON cache entries is still supported. The setting had been deprecated since 1.36.
• $wgAllowJavaUploads – To allow uploads of JAR files, remove application/java from $wgMimeTypeExclusions.
• $wgMaxRedirects – This broken feature was removed, as it never worked as intended (T296430).
• $wgElementTiming – This experimental, default-disabled feature has been removed without replacement.
• $wgPriorityHints, $wgPriorityHintsRatio – The related experimental feature has been removed without replacement.
• $wgIncludeLegacyJavaScript – This flag has been removed, without loss of any functionality in this release. Most former "wikibits" functions were removed after deprecation in previous releases. The remaining functions, such as importScript, are now available unconditionally.
• $wgLegacySchemaConversion – This unused setting has been removed.
• $wgInterwikiPrefixDisplayTypes – This unused setting has been removed.
• $wgMangleFlashPolicy – This is no longer functional, and is now deprecated. Users who are somehow still using Flash as a browser extension will be exposed to CSRF vulnerabilities.

New user-facing features in 1.39

• Optional automatic user creation on page save ($wgAutoCreateTempUser).
• Administrators now have the option to delete/undelete the associated "Talk" page when they are (un)deleting a given page. deletetalk and undeletetalk options were added to the 'delete' and 'undelete' action APIs in MW 1.38+.
• {{=}} is now a wikitext built-in magic word, expanding to =. This is conventionally used as an escape mechanism to allow the use of = in unnamed template arguments. Defining Template:= to expand to something other than = has been deprecated since 1.36, with affected pages put into a special tracking category for migration.
• (T284020) Bot passwords are now supported when using the REST API.

Bug fixes in 1.39

• (T314013) $wgExtraNamespaces no longer overrides canonical namespace names specified in extension.json files. While this setting can still be used to rename extension-defined namespaces, system administrators may need to run namespaceDupes.php after upgrading.

Action API changes in 1.39

• New undeletetalk parameter on action=undelete that allows you to restore all revisions of the associated talk page.

Languages updated in 1.39

MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• Actual localization was added for several languages, which were already in Names.php and even used for a Wikipedia:
  • (T313200) Added language support for Rundi (Kirundi, rn).
  • (T310976) Added language support for Tumbuka (ChiTumbuka, tum).
  • (T314270) Added language support for Kanuri (kr).
  • (T313199) Added language support for Sylheti (syl).
  • (T311975) Added language support for Ghanaian Pidgin (gpe).
  • (T307080) Added language support for Okinawan (ryu).
  • (T307887) Added language support for Mooré (mos).
  • (T308813) Added language support for Nigerian Pidgin (pcm).
  • (T309763) Added language support for Tai Nüa (tdd).
  • (T310040) Added language support for Fante (fat).
  • (T311034) Added language support for Campidanese Sardinian (sro).
  • (T315406) Fixed the autonym of the Iñupiaq language to "Iñupiatun".
  • (T315677) Removed French fallback from the Fula language (ff).
  • (T304920) In Swahili, The "Media" namespace is now "Media", as in English, and the "File" namespace is now "Faili". The old name of the "File" namespace was "Picha", and it's kept for backwards compatibility. If you manage a wiki in Swahili, and you use "Faili:" as a namespace anywhere in wikitext, and you mean to use it as "Media:", these need to be replaced to "Media:".
  • (T309866) Some namespace translations were updated for Kyrgyz (ky). The old ones are retained as aliases for backwards compatibility.
  • (T117845) Started the renaming of the language codes for Serbian from sr-ec and sr-el to sr-cyrl and sr-latn.

See also

• Top Features in the New MediaWiki 1.39 — Blog post about the MediaWiki 1.39 release; published February 10, 2023

MediaWiki 1.37 is an obsolete release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches starting in April 2021. The 1.37.0 stable release came out on November 18, 2021. Checkout the REL1_37 branch in Git to follow this release. The 1.37 branch, with the version 1.37.6, reached its end-of-life on 30 November 2022.

Warning

MediaWiki 1.37.0 contains a very severe security issue. Please upgrade to 1.37.1 or later. See 2021-12 security release/FAQ for more information.

New features

• New wikipage.indicator hook for JavaScript (change 721324).
• MediaWiki now has limited support for JPEG2000 files.

Action API changes

• (T280806) The API methods for fetching tokens which were deprecated in MediaWiki 1.24 have been removed. action=query&meta=tokens&type= should be used instead. Please note, some token types no longer exist, and you should just use type=csrf for those instead.
  • action=query&prop=info&intoken -> action=query&meta=tokens&type=csrf
  • action=tokens&type= -> action=query&meta=tokens&type=
  • action=query&list=recentchanges&rctoken -> action=query&meta=tokens&type=csrf
  • action=query&prop=revisions&rvtoken=rollback -> action=query&meta=tokens&type=rollback
  • action=query&meta=userinfo&uiprop=preferencestoken -> action=query&meta=tokens&type=csrf
  • action=query&list=users&ustoken=userrights -> action=query&meta=tokens&type=userrights

Configuration changes

• (T242768) The PasswordCannotMatchUsername password policy has been removed, please use PasswordCannotBeSubstringInUsername instead. If you have not customised your password policies, there will be nothing to do here.

New configuration

• $wgBrowserFormatDetection - This setting allows the enabling or disabling of automatic detection of possible phone numbers in a webpage in iOS Safari.
• $wgParserEnableLegacyMediaDOM - This setting defaults to true, and enables the legacy media HTML structure in the output from the Parser. The alternative modern HTML structure for media is described at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsing/Media_structure. In a future release of MediaWiki, this option will default to false, so it's a good idea to test this setting on your wiki early and report any issues.

Changed configuration

• $wgContentHandlerTextFallback - This migration setting, which defines how to react if a plain text version of a non-text Content object is requested using ContentHandler::getContentText(), is deprecated.
• $wgActions – This setting lets sysadmins override which actions can be used. It has been re-worked to support injecting dependencies into Action sub-classes as part of wider work on dependency injection. Previously, $wgActions was an array where the keys were the names of actions, and the values had the following impacts (for a given key 'Foo'):
  • true: use the class 'FooAction' unless for a specific page WikiPage::getActionOverrides() wants to override that action
  • a string: use the class with that name, and do not allow over-riding on a per-page basis
  • false: the action is disabled
  • a callable: use the Action instance returned by invoking that callback, and do not allow overriding on a per-page basis
  • an object: use that specific Action instance, and do not allow overriding on a per-page basis.
    As part of T253078, values can now be arrays that are not callables, which are treated as ObjectFactory specs, allowing for services to be injected. Additionally, the distinction between values that allow per-page overrides and those that do not be removed - all actions can now be overridden on a per-page basis using WikiPage::getActionOverrides().
• $wgShellboxUrl – This setting, new in 1.36 to configure the novel Shellbox encapsulation system, is now deprecated; use $wgShellboxUrls as a mapping of service => URL instead.
• $wgIncludejQueryMigrate – This setting, introduced in 1.29 to on whether to provide a migration layer for jQuery, has now switched its default value from true to false. This may break gadgets that depended on methods that were removed in jQuery 3 in 2017. See T280944 for more information.
• A number of settings have been renamed. The former configuration variable names are deprecated, but will be used as the fallback if they are still set, and remain temporarily available for extensions which might try to read them:
  • $wgFileBlacklist is now $wgProhibitedFileExtensions
  • $wgMimeTypeBlacklist is now $wgMimeTypeExclusions
  • $wgEnableUserEmailBlacklist is now $wgEnableUserEmailMuteList
  • $wgShortPagesNamespaceBlacklist is now $wgShortPagesNamespaceExclusions
  • $wgMimeTypeExclusions - As well as being renamed, this configuration array now also prohibits the RFC 4329 form of JavaScript, 'application/javascript', as well as previous MIME types.
• $wgFragmentMode - This setting, which determines the encoding of section IDs, has now switched its default value from legacy-first to html5-first: both the HTML5 anchor and the legacy percent-encoding-style anchor will still be generated for section titles, but references to them will use the HTML5 version, resulting in human-readable fragments.

Removed configuration

• $wgLegacyJavaScriptGlobals, deprecated in 1.36.
• (T274695) $wgAjaxEditStash, deprecated in 1.36.
• $wgShowDBErrorBacktrace, deprecated and non-functional since 1.32.
• $wgShowSQLErrors, deprecated and non-functional since 1.32.
• $wgLangObjCacheSize, without deprecation; the LanguageFactory service now always retains at most 10 objects in its LRU-cache.
• $wgDjvuToXML, without deprecation; the tool it enables is obsolete and abandoned upstream. Use $wgDjvuDump to use that tool instead.

MediaWiki 1.38 is an obsolete release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches between September 2021 and March 2022. The 1.38.0 stable release came out on 2 June 2022. Download 1.38.7 or checkout the REL1_38 branch in Git to follow this release.

Configuration changes for system administrators

MediaWiki 1.38 is introducing a new system for configuration loading. The new system is fully compatible with the traditional way of configuring, but it offers some new features. Interested parties are encouraged to experiment with the new ways to load configuration and report any issues they come across.

New configuration

• (T297708) $wgMaxExecutionTimeForExpensiveQueries – This setting can be used to control the maximum execution time for several expensive query pages (e.g. RecentChanges and UserContribs).
• $wgBrowserFormatDetection – This setting allows overriding browsers' automatic detection and handling of formats. It's initially used to prevent auto-linking of possible telephone numbers in wiki pages' output in Safari on iOS; this can be re-enabled if you wish, or locally extended for other browsers' quirks.
• (T240685) $wgMetricsTarget, $wgMetricsFormat, and $wgMetricsPrefix – These provide configuration for a new MetricsFactory service with support for the dogstatsd format, intended for integration with Prometheus.
• $wgGroupInheritsPermissions – This setting allows inheriting permissions, both granted and revoked, from another group.
• $wgForeignApiRepos – ForeignAPIRepo now has a apiMetadataExpiry option to control for how long file metadata is cached. Additionally, the default changed from 1 hour to 4 hours.
• $wgSkinsPreferred – This lets you set a list of preferred skins to be listed higher in Special:Preferences.
• Warning: EXPERIMENTAL (see the docs on the new system to load configuration)
  • $wgWikiFarmSettingsDirectory – A directory that contains site-specific configuration files. Setting this will enable multi-tenant ("wiki farm") mode, causing site-specific settings to be loaded based on information from the web request.
  • $wgWikiFarmSettingsExtension – The file extension to be used when looking up site-specific settings files in $wgWikiFarmSettingsDirectory, such as json or yaml.
  • $wgWikiFarmSiteDetector – A callback function that returns the name of the wiki for the current request. Replaced by the MW_WIKI_NAME environment variable in 1.39. This is used in multi-tenant ("wiki farm") mode to determine which settings file to load from $wgWikiFarmSettingsDirectory.
• $wgEnableRemoteBagOStuffTests – This replaces the environment variable PHPUNIT_USE_BAGOSTUFF.
• (T230211) $wgForceDeferredUpdatesPreSend – Force deferred updates to be run before sending a response to the client, instead of attempting to run them after sending the response. Setting this to true is useful for end-to-end testing, to ensure that the effects of a request are visible to any subsequent requests, even if they are made immediately after the first one. Note however that this does not ensure that database replication is complete, nor does it execute any jobs enqueued for later.
• $wgTemplateLinksSchemaMigrationStage – templatelinks table schema migration stage, for normalizing tl_namespace and tl_title fields.

Changed configuration

• $wgStyleDirectory and $wgExtensionDirectory – These are now set later, so can no longer be used within LocalSettings.php unless explicitly set in that file.
• $wgFileBackends – This setting no longer takes fileJournal as an option.
• $wgMaxImageArea – This setting may now be set to false to disable size checking before scaling. Extensions can still override its value by using the BitmapHandlerCheckImageArea hook.
• $wgAjaxUploadDestCheck – (deprecated) Act as always-true.
• $wgInterwikiCache – This no longer supports the string value for CDB files.
• (T292321) $wgParserOutputHooks – (deprecated) Adjustments using this should be done with OutputPageParserOutputHook instead.
• $wgExternalStores – This is newly documented in includes/externalstore/README.md.

Removed configuration

• $wgShellLocale – This setting has been removed, as it was a flawed solution to the problem of locale dependence. MediaWiki will now always set a locale of C.UTF-8 or C and works around the remaining problems of the C locale by not using escapeshellarg. This follows the direction of PHP 8.0, which sets a locale of C by default instead of respecting LC_CTYPE.
• (T293848) $wgLoggedOutMaxAge – Experiment removed, originally added in 1.35.
• $wgIncludejQueryMigrate – (deprecated in 1.36) We only support jQuery v3.
• $wgUseCategoryBrowser – This experimental feature has been removed. If you still need to use this feature, please see Extension:CategoryExplorer.
• $wgStyleSheetPath – (deprecated in 1.3) Alias for $wgStylePath.

New user-facing features

Bundled extensions

• (T191740) The AbuseFilter extension is now bundled with MediaWiki. This is an anti-abuse feature that allows privileged users to set specific actions to be taken when actions by users, such as edits or file uploads, match certain criteria.
• (T232948) The Math extension is now bundled with MediaWiki. This is a content feature that lets users create mathematical formulæ, written in a sub-set of LaTeX and rendered in MathML with a fallback SVG image. By default, it will use Wikimedia's mathoid service to render each formula, but local rendering can be set up for network isolation or performance.
• (T191743) The Minerva skin is now bundled with MediaWiki. This is a simple, light-weight, and scalable skin that is particularly optimised for mobile use, and integrates well with the MobileFrontend extension (available separately), but can also be used as a regular desktop skin.

Other changes

• (T284921) The "auto-number headings" feature was removed following a consultation, due to performance reasons.

New operator/developer features

• The configuration mechanism changed substantially; you can read more about how.
• Warning: EXPERIMENTAL: The environment variable MW_CONFIG_FILE can be used to specify the location of the settings file. This allows alternative settings files to be loaded depending on the environment. Settings files may be given as PHP files like the traditional LocalSettings.php file, or they may use JSON or YAML format. See Manual:YAML settings file format.
• Added a deleteUserEmail maintenance script – This file enables the deletion of a given user's associated email address. It can be helpful for privacy-preserving operations.
• The description array for constructing an HTMLForm now can use 'disable-if' to disable fields on a condition easily, supported expressions are the same as 'hide-if'.
• There is a new interface, IForeignRepoWithMWApi, to allow you to mark file repos provided by an extension as supporting making API queries against the foreign file repo so that extensions like TimedMediaHandler that depend on this can stop hard-coding looking for specific class names.
• Warning: EXPERIMENTAL Added support for an easy to configure multi-tenant ("wiki farm") mode: Settings for each site can be placed in a directory specified by $wgWikiFarmSettingsDirectory. Site detection is controlled by $wgWikiFarmSiteDetector and defaults to the requested host name. For example, setting $wgWikiFarmSettingsDirectory = "sites" would cause the settings for wiki.example.com to be loaded from "sites/wiki_example_com.yaml". WARNING: YAML files under the Web root may be accessible to browsers, please take appropriate measures to protect them from access via HTTP.
• Running QUnit tests for an individual test suite module is possible with grunt qunit --qunit-component={componentName}, where {componentName} is "MediaWiki" to run core's QUnit tests or the skin or extension name.
• The mediawiki.mixins module now has a .user-select() Less mixin.

External library changes

New external libraries

• symfony/yaml was promoted from development-only.

Changed external libraries

• Updated OOUI from v0.42.0 to v0.43.2.
• Updated Vue from 2.6.11 to 3.2.23.
• Updated WVUI from v0.3.0 to v0.4.0.
• Updated composer/semver from 3.2.5 to 3.2.6.
• Updated guzzlehttp/guzzle from 7.2.0 to 7.4.1.
• Updated pear/mail_mime from 1.10.9 to 1.10.11.
• Updated pear/net_smtp from 1.9.2 to 1.10.0.
• Updated psr/log from 1.1.3 to 1.1.4.
• Updated psy/psysh from 0.10.5 to 0.11.1.
• Updated symfony/polyfill-php80 from 1.23.1 to 1.25.0.
• Updated wikimedia/assert from 0.5.0 to 0.5.1.
• Updated wikimedia/cdb from 1.4.1 to 2.0.0.
• Updated wikimedia/ip-utils from 3.0.2 to 4.0.0.
• Updated wikimedia/minify from 2.2.4 to 2.2.6.
• Updated wikimedia/object-factory from 3.0.2 to 4.0.0.
• Updated wikimedia/parsoid from v0.14.0-a14 to v0.15.0.
• Updated wikimedia/purtle from 1.0.7 to 1.0.8.
• Updated wikimedia/request-timeout from 1.1.0 to 1.2.0.
• Updated wikimedia/shellbox from 2.0.0 to 3.0.0.
• Updated wikimedia/wrappedstring from 3.2.0 to 4.0.1.

Changed development-only external libraries

• Updated QUnit from 2.16.0 to 2.18.0.
• Updated composer/semver from 3.5.4 to 3.5.5.
• Updated composer/spdx-licenses from 1.5.4 to 1.5.5.
• Updated doctrine/dbal for PHP < 7.3 from 2.10.4 to 2.13.6.
• Updated doctrine/dbal for PHP >= 7.3 from 3.0.0 to 3.1.5.

Removed external libraries

• jquery.jStorage, deprecated since MW 1.28; use mediawiki.storage instead.

Action API changes

• New deletetalk parameter on action=delete that allows you to delete the associated talk page of a subject page.
• (T117549) New variant parameter for all API actions, for specifying language variant (akin to the existing variant parameter for index.php).

Languages updated

MediaWiki supports over 400 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• (T292166) Updated namespace names for the Lombard language.
• (T299201) Changed the autonym of the Angika (anp) language to अंगिका
• (T298309) Changed the autonym of the Abkhazian (ab) language to аҧсшәа
• (T302972) Changed the autonym of the Rundi (rn) language to ikirundi
• (T220303) Show numbered lists with Burmese numerals in relevant languages
• (T291899) Added language support for Xiang (hsn).
• (T292612) Added language support for S'gaw Karen (ksw).
• (T293656) Added language support for Frafra (gur).
• (T294729) Added language support for Pa'O (blk).
• (T296286) Added language support for Skolt Sami (sms).
• (T296612) Added language support for Makhuwa (vmw).
• (T296707) Added language support for Ga (gaa).
• (T297073) Added language support for Nanai (gld).
• (T297074) Added language support for Nawdm (nmz).
• (T298075) Added language support for Northern Thai (nod).
• (T298182) Added language support for Cape Verdean Creole (kea).
• (T298385) Added language support for Nheengatu (yrl).
• (T299329) Added language support for Fon (fon).
• (T300474) Added language support for Nyankole (nyn).
• (T302556) Added language support for Pannonian Rusyn (rsk).

MediaWiki 1.36 is an obsolete release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches between 21 July 2020 and 15 April 2021. The 1.36.0 stable release came out on May 27, 2021. Download 1.36.4 or checkout the REL1_36 branch in Git to follow this release. The 1.36 branch, with the version 1.36.4, reached its end-of-life on 03 June 2022.

Warning

MediaWiki 1.36.0 to 1.36.2 contain a very severe security issue. Please upgrade to 1.36.3 or later. See 2021-12 security release/FAQ for more information.

New features

• The logo of MediaWiki has changed. This means that the "Powered By MediaWiki" button shown in the skin footer will be different.
• All HTML5 named entities are now accepted in wikitext.
• (T106263) The file description page's alternate sizes now include 2048px.

Action API changes

• Access-Control-Max-Age was added to the default list of headers allowed for cross-origin API requests ($wgAllowedCorsHeaders).
• Accounts with the 'bot' right no longer have pages automatically added to the watchlist when making API edits, regardless of their preferences. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. To add API bot edits to the watchlist, explicitly set the 'watch' option.

Upgrade notes

• MediaWiki 1.36 now requires the PHP internationalisation extension (commonly referred to as Intl, ext-intl, or php-intl).
• The MediaWiki:Autoblock whitelist block exemption control has been moved to MediaWiki:Block-autoblock-exemptionlist. If you use this feature, please move the MediaWiki:Autoblock_whitelist page.
• (T275334) $wgExtensionFunctions is sometimes used to change configuration settings. This is not safe; extension functions are run relatively late, some services are already initialised by that point and so they use the old configuration. Changes in 1.36 make this kind of breakage even more common. You can use the MediaWikiServices hook instead. (In the future there might be a dedicated hook for configuration changes.)
• The MediaWiki update script, maintenance/update.php, used to accept --nopurge as an option to prevent clearing caches stored in the database during upgrade. This is no longer encouraged, and the option has been removed.

Configuration

New configuration options

• (T256001) $wgManualRevertSearchRadius – This setting controls a new feature that marks edits as reverts if they restore the page to an exact previous state. This configuration variable sets the maximum number of revisions of a page that will be checked against every new edit. Set this to 0 to disable the feature entirely.
• (T244058) $wgOldRevisionParserCacheExpireTime – This setting was added to control caching of ParserOutput for old (non-current) revisions.
• (T265263) $wgRememberMe – This setting configures the "remember me" checkbox on account log-in systems via RememberMeAuthenticationRequest.
• (T157145) $wgSkinMetaTags – This setting lets sysadmins configure skins that support meta tags. These tags make sharing of MediaWiki pages on a variety of social platforms more contentful and thus useful.
• (T280944) $wgIncludejQueryMigrate – This setting lets sysadmins disable the jQuery Migrate plugin. It has been enabled by default since MediaWiki 1.27. In future releases it will be disabled by default.

Changed configuration options

• $wgLogos – This setting selects the logo shown on the site. The default value for the site logo, which is shown in an install if you have not set one, will now be the new logo of MediaWiki.
• (T274695) $wgAjaxEditStash – This setting, to disable the edit stashing feature when users start writing an edit summary, has been deprecated. In future releases, this feature will always be enabled.
• $wgUploadStashScalerBaseUrl – This setting, to enable remote on-demand media scaling, was deprecated. Use the thumbProxyUrl setting in $wgLocalFileRepo instead.
• $wgSlaveLagWarning, $wgSlaveLagCritical – These settings have been renamed, to $wgDatabaseReplicaLagWarning & $wgDatabaseReplicaLagCritical respectively. The former configuration variable names are deprecated, but will be used as the fallback if they are still set, and remain temporarily available for extensions which try to read them.
• $wgWANObjectCaches – The "coalesceKeys" option was removed without deprecation and replaced by a new "coalesceScheme" option, set to "hash_stop" by default. If you use Dynomite, then set the new "coalesceKeys" option to "hash_tag". The "cluster" and "mcrouterAware" options were also removed without deprecation. Use "broadcastRoutingPrefix" instead.

Removed configuration options

• $wgUseTwoButtonsSearchForm — This setting, deprecated in 1.35, has been removed.
• $wgAllowImageMoving – This setting, deprecated in 1.35, has been removed. Use group permission settings instead. For example, to prevent sysops from moving files, set $wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['movefile'] = false;
• $wgExtNewTables, $wgExtNewFields, $wgExtNewIndexes, $wgExtPGNewFields, $wgExtPGAlteredFields, $wgExtModifiedFields – These settings were removed. They became obsolete after 1.17 overhauled the database updater, but were kept for backward compatibility. The LoadExtensionSchemaUpdates hook should be used instead.
• $wgParserConf — This setting, deprecated in 1.35, has been removed. The last use of this setting was for pre-processor configuration, which was deprecated in 1.34 and removed in 1.35.
• $wgEnableRestAPI – This setting, ignored since 1.35, has been removed.
• $wgPagePropsHaveSortkey – This temporary setting has been removed, along with the schema change upgrade path it controlled. If your site is still using it, meaning you have not yet applied the pp_sortkey schema change from 1.24, you must now apply it before upgrading.
• The deprecated password policies PasswordCannotMatchBlacklist and PasswordNotInLargeBlacklist were removed. Please use PasswordCannotMatchDefaults and PasswordNotInCommonList respectively instead.

MediaWiki 1.35 is an obsolete long-term support release of MediaWiki.

Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches starting 1 October 2019. The 1.35.0 stable release came out on 25 September 2020. Download 1.35.14 or checkout the REL1_35 branch in Git to follow this release. It went end-of-life on December 21, 2023.

Warning:

MediaWiki 1.35.0 to 1.35.4 contain a critical security issue. Please upgrade to 1.35.5 or later. See 2021-12 security release/FAQ for more information.

Warning:

MediaWiki 1.35 no longer supports PHP 7.2. PHP 7.3.19 or later is required.

If you encounter any bugs when using MediaWiki with PHP 8, please report them. See T248925 for more information.

New features

• Special pages Special:EditPage, Special:PageHistory, Special:PageInfo, and Special:Purge have been created as shortcuts for each action. Special:EditPage/Foo redirects to title=foo&action=edit, with PageHistory, PageInfo, and Purge corresponding to &action= history, info, and purge respectively. When linked to, its subpage is used as the target. Otherwise, it displays a basic interface to allow the end user to specify the target manually (see T13456).
• The form at "?action=watch" has a new dropdown list to support expiry dates for watchlist items (if $wgWatchlistExpiry is true).

New bundled extensions

MediaWiki 1.35 bundled the VisualEditor extension, which provides a visual editing experience as an alternative to the traditional source editor. It will not be necessary to setup a separate instance of Parsoid, as it is built into MediaWiki core.

In addition SecureLinkFixer and TemplateData are bundled. The former forces HTTPS links on your wiki; the latter adds a tag and API to allow editors to specify how templates should be invoked.

Action API changes

• The suggest parameter of action=opensearch has been deprecated. The API behaves the same with and without this parameter. It was previously used by $wgEnableOpenSearchSuggest to partially disable the API if set to false. Specifically, it would deny internal frontend requests carrying this parameter, whilst accepting other requests.
• Integer-type parameters are now validated for syntax rather than being interpreted in surprising ways. For example, the following will now return a badinteger error:
  • "1.9" - formerly interpreted as "1"
  • " 1" - formerly interpreted as "1"
  • "1e1" - formerly interpreted as "1" or "10", depending on the PHP version
  • "1foobar" - formerly interpreted as "1"
  • "foobar" (formerly intepreted as "0") Ranges should be assumed to be enforced.
• Many user-type parameters now accept a user ID, formatted like "#12345".
• The assert parameter used by all API modules now supports the value anon. When specified, the API will return the 'assertanonfailed' error if the user is logged in.
• action=edit now supports the 'baserevid' parameter for edit conflict detection, as an alternative to 'basetimestamp'. Note that self-conflicts will continue to be ignored if 'basetimestamp' is set, but not if only 'baserevid' is set.
• A new module was added to change the content model of existing pages. Use action=changecontentmodel. Unlike Special:ChangeContentModel, the API module does not work for pages that do not already exist.
• If $wgWatchlistExpiry is true, the following API changes are made:
  • action=watch accepts a new 'expiry' parameter analagous to the expiry accepted by action=userrights, action=block, etc., except it must be no greater than $wgWatchlistExpiryMaxDuration, or an infinity value.
  • action=query&list=watchlistraw returns pages' watchlist expiry dates.
• (T249526) action=login will now return Failed rather than NeedToken on session loss.

Action API internal changes

• The Action API now uses the Wikimedia\ParamValidator library for parameter validation, which brings some new features and changes. For the most part existing module code should work as it did before, but see subsequent notes for changes.
  • The values for all ApiBase PARAM_* constants have changed. Code should have been using the constants rather than hard-coding the values.
  • Several ApiBase PARAM_* constants have been deprecated, see the in-class documentation for details. Use the equivalent ParamValidator constants instead.
  • The value returned for 'upload'-type parameters has changed from WebRequestUpload to Psr\Http\Message\UploadedFileInterface.
• Validation of 'user'-type parameters is more flexible. PARAM constants exist to specify the type of "user" allowed and to request UserIdentity objects rather than name strings. The default is to accept all types (name, IP, range, and interwiki) that were formerly accepted.
• Maximum limits are no longer ignored in "internal mode".
• The $paramName to ApiBase::handleParamNormalization() should now include the prefix.
• (T245931) meta=siteinfo&siprop=interwikimap no longer reports language or extralanglink when $wgInterwikiMagic is false.

Red Hat 8 and CentOS 7 provide PHP 7.2 by default. You will need to install updated versions from Software Collections (SCL) or AppStreams.

MediaWiki 1.33 is an obsolete release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf" alpha branches from 23 October 2018 until 10 April 2019. The 1.33.0 stable release was released on 2 July 2019. Download the latest releases or checkout the REL1_33 branch in Git to follow this release. The 1.33 branch reached with the version 1.33.4 its end-of-life in June 6, 2020.

Warning

MediaWiki 1.33 contains a very severe security issue. Please upgrade to newer versions of MediaWiki if possible. See 2021-12 security release/FAQ for workaround if you are not able to upgrade your MediaWiki.

Known issues

• MediaWiki enforces $wgDBprefix to end with the "" character if set, causing this error otherwise: InvalidArgumentException: A non-empty prefix must end with "".
• Upgrading from an old MediaWiki version (prior to 1.15) will cause the upgrade script to fail. You'll need to manually add the valid_tag table yourself before running the upgrade script. This has been fixed in MediaWiki 1.33.1.
• Upgrading from an old version may give an Unknown column 'ar_comment_id' in 'where' clause error. You may need to apply the patch-comment-table.sql file manually.
• The version of ConfirmEdit bundled with 1.33.0 will give OOUI\Exception errors when a link is added to a page. This has been fixed in 1.33.1 or you can download a newer version of that extension separately.
• Imported revisions of pages may disappear after the update. This can be worked around by running the maintenance script cleanupUsersWithNoId.php followed by migrateActors.php.

Upgrading notes

1.33 has several database changes since 1.32, and will not work without schema updates. Note that due to changes to some very large tables like the revision table, the schema update may take quite long (minutes on a medium sized site, many hours on a large site).

Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!

See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions, including important information when upgrading from versions prior to 1.11.

Some specific notes for MediaWiki 1.33 upgrades are below:

• Some external link searches will not work correctly until update.php (or refreshExternallinksIndex.php) is run. These include searches for links using IP addresses, internationalized domain names, and possibly mailto links.
• If you ran migrateActors.php using an older version of MediaWiki and want to run your wiki with $wgActorTableSchemaMigrationStage set to SCHEMA_COMPAT_READ_OLD, note that log_search rows needed to find revision deletions by target user were incorrectly deleted. See T215464 for details.
• If revision deletions were performed when the wiki was configured with $wgActorTableSchemaMigrationStage set to SCHEMA_COMPAT_WRITE_BOTH and without migrateActors.php having been run, the log_search table may contain rows with empty values for "target_author_actor" which will prevent log searches for revision deletions by target user from finding those log entries. These rows may be corrected by (re-)running migrateActors.php.

What's new

• The Blocks feature is gaining a new feature, "partial blocks", where IPs and accounts can be restricted from editing particular pages or namespaces. This is currently under development, but can be enabled by setting the $wgEnablePartialBlocks feature flag on. In future releases this feature will be available by default.
• (T96041) Categories can now be hidden from Special:UnusedCategories by adding the new behavioural flag EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY on the category's page.

Languages updated

MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• (T203908) Added language support for Eastern Pwo (kjp).
• (T213717) Fixed a translation error on Goan Konkani (Devanagari script) (gom-deva) translations for NS_TEMPLATE.
• (T212221) Added $digitTransformTable for Santali (sat).
• (T216479) Added language support for Saisiyat (xsy).
• (T219728) Added support for new Japanese era name "Reiwa".

Other changes

Upgrading system administrators should read carefully the specific notes on upgrading. Developers should read the full release notes.

• (T210814) SVGs with multiple language values within them are now by default displayed in the wiki's language on image pages.
• (T205040) Multilingual images are now be displayed in the current parse language where available.
• Special:ActiveUsers will no longer filter out users who became inactive since the last time the active users query cache was updated.
• Special:CreateAccount now warns the user if their chosen username has to be normalized.
• $wgMiserMode disables the {{REVISIONID}} magic word in content namespaces. It is substituted by a single dash after saving the page.

MediaWiki 1.34

MediaWiki 1.34 is an obsolete release of MediaWiki. Consult the RELEASE NOTES file for the full list of changes. It was deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches starting 10 April 2019. The 1.34.0 stable release came out on 19 December 2019. Download 1.34.4 or checkout the REL1_34 branch in Git to follow this release. The 1.34 branch, with the version 1.34.4, reached its end-of-life on 30 November 2020.

Warning

MediaWiki 1.34 contains a very severe security issue. Please upgrade to newer versions of MediaWiki if possible. See 2021-12 security release/FAQ for workaround if you are not able to upgrade your MediaWiki.

MediaWiki 1.34 no longer supports:

• Microsoft SQL Server
• Oracle Database
• PHP 7.0, 7.1
• HHVM

New bundled extensions

MediaWiki 1.34 bundled the Scribunto extension, which allow users to use Lua modules in MediaWiki.

In addition PageImages and TextExtracts are bundled. They provide new MediaWiki API modules that supply html extracts and images in an article which may be used by third-party tools. They are also dependencies of Popups, which still needs to be downloaded manually currently, but will be bundled in a future MediaWiki version.