MediaWiki 1.39 upgrade

MediaWiki 1.39.0 was released on November 30, 2022. It is the next long-term support (LTS) version of MediaWiki.

We launched MediaWiki 1.39 support in beta on December 25, 2022. MyWikis is committed to upgrading all clients to MediaWiki 1.39 as soon as it is feasible.

This page serves as a central hub for information about MyWikis's upgrade to MediaWiki 1.39 for wikis on MyWikis Cloud, which include all wikis hosted under mywikis.wiki. Check back here for updates.

Upgrade news

• March 28, 2024: Effective March 31, 2024, MyWikis Backups Plus will only support MediaWiki 1.39. All MediaWiki 1.35 wikis need to be upgraded to 1.39 if they wish to continue using Backups Plus.
• March 25, 2024: Sitemaps will now only be generated for public wikis on MediaWiki 1.39. We are retiring support for sitemaps for MediaWiki 1.35 effective immediately.
• March 22, 2024: All new wikis will now be created on MediaWiki 1.39.
• March 17, 2024: Many wikis have now been automatically upgraded to MediaWiki 1.39.
• June 26, 2023: Most wikis are now eligible for auto upgrades. To request it sooner, follow the instructions in How to request an upgrade.
• June 19, 2023: MyWikis Self Service now supports MediaWiki 1.39.
• June 3, 2023: Wikis with custom domains and wikis using SocialProfile are now supported.
• December 28, 2022: SocialProfile may be incompatible with MediaWiki 1.39 going forward. Wikis using the SocialProfile extension will not be eligible to upgrade to 1.39 at this time.
• December 25, 2022: We are moving forward carefully with select wikis which are small and do not have many extensions installed or any extensive modifications.
• December 3, 2022: Our team has identified several issues with upgrading MediaWiki due to several bugs in MediaWiki 1.39.0. We have filed bug reports with the Wikimedia Foundation and will update you when a patch fix is issued. The MediaWiki 1.39.0 bug affects all existing MyWikis WaaS wikis, so unfortunately, we will be unable to proceed with upgrading any wikis to MediaWiki 1.39 until further notice.
  • As of December 25, we have determined this is not a major issue affecting every single wiki. Smaller wikis will be able to proceed forward with the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.39 as long as they meet the eligibility criteria.

Upgrade eligibility criteria

Eligibility criteria will change to gradually include more and more wikis on MyWikis Cloud.

Currently, your wiki is automatically eligible if all of the following criteria are met:

• Your wiki does not have any custom extensions or skins installed.
• Your wiki is hosted under mywikis.wiki or mywikis.eu (although custom domains are fine) rather than mywikis.net.
• Your wiki has fewer than 50 users (not including the maintenance account called "Mywikis"), fewer than 1,000 pages, and fewer than 500 media files.

Currently, if your wiki is not automatically eligible, then your wiki may be eligible if all of the following criteria are met, pending a review by a member of our tech team:

• All extensions and skins your wiki is using must be compatible with MediaWiki 1.39. For almost all of our extensions and skins, this is true. If you're not sure about this, our tech team will perform the investigation for you.
• Your wiki is not using Semantic MediaWiki.
• MyWikis has performed a manual review of your wiki's configuration and confirmed that it's ready for an upgrade.
• No blocking bugs exist. If there are any identified, they will be posted in the "Upgrade news" section.

Eventually, all of these eligibility criteria will disappear, except for third-party community-developed extensions that remain incompatible with MediaWiki 1.39, which is outside of MyWikis's control.

Note: automatic eligibility does not mean the upgrade will happen automatically. It only means that no additional checks will need to be performed by our tech team.

How to request an upgrade

Before requesting an upgrade, please keep the following in mind:

• Please read the above eligibility criteria and confirm your wiki meets the criteria before making your request.
• Upgrades cannot be reversed. Once you upgrade to MediaWiki 1.39, you cannot downgrade back to MediaWiki 1.35.
• MyWikis is unable to assist with compatibility issues in extensions and third-party skins not maintained by MyWikis, the Wikimedia Foundation, or trusted partners.
• Some extensions and skins may have significantly differing functionality or appearances between their MediaWiki 1.35 and 1.39 versions. MyWikis is not responsible for fixing such issues.
• While we have performed extensive testing to make sure your 1.39 experience is flawless, MediaWiki 1.39 is a newly released MediaWiki version and every wiki is different. Please keep in mind there may still be some issues with using MediaWiki 1.39 at this time. Proceed with upgrading at your own risk.

If you understand the above stipulations, please visit mywikis.com/contact, log in to the Client Panel, and open a ticket with the subject line "MediaWiki 1.39 upgrade" and inform us of which wikis you'd like for us to upgrade to 1.39. We will then analyze your wiki to determine whether it's eligible for an upgrade at this time. If so, we'll upgrade you and let you know.

With limited exceptions, we cannot schedule upgrades for a specific time. If all goes well, the upgrade will take anytime between a few seconds to 5 minutes (yes, it's quick!) and will not have much impact on your wiki's uptime. Should something go wrong with your wiki's upgrade, we will restore from the latest backup and inform you that it failed.

Common questions

Will my wiki be automatically upgraded?

Many wiki owners would prefer to have finer-grained control over their wiki's version and the extension versions they use. Some wikis will be automatically upgraded. Wikis that do not currently meet our automatic eligibility criteria won't be automatically upgraded, but the upgrade process is very simple. See below answers for more details.

Is it possible to upgrade to MediaWiki 1.39 right now?

This depends on whether your wiki meets the above eligiblity criteria or not.

Over time, as we add support for more features, more wikis will become eligible for an upgrade to 1.39.

Is it possible to create a wiki on MediaWiki 1.39?

As of March 23, 2024, all new wikis are created on MediaWiki 1.39.

Do I have to do any manual actions for the upgrade?

Other than requesting the upgrade, the vast majority of users will not need to perform any further actions. Our support team will reach out to you in case we need your assistance with processing your wiki's upgrade.

Is the upgrade free?

For all wikis already hosted under mywikis.wiki, the upgrade is free.

Why isn't the upgrade automatic?

MediaWiki (the wiki software used by Wikipedia, MyWikis, and many other wikis on the internet) is heavily customizable. Therefore, to ensure compatibility with everyone's wiki configuration settings, we will place the choice of using MediaWiki 1.35 or 1.39 in the hands of wiki owners until just before MediaWiki 1.35 is deprecated.

Does this upgrade impact my use of MyWikis Self Service?

It won't, because MyWikis Self Service supports both versions of MediaWiki as of June 19, 2023.