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A Guide to Using MediaWiki in a Hosted Environment
An instructional website by the developer of mh370wiki.net - a MediaWiki site about Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
2026
A revolution has occurred in web browsing. Instead of using a search engine to provide a list of possible sources containing a match to a keyword or phrase, AI is collating a response from training data and/or live websites to produce a summary and invites exploration by suggesting additional lines of enquiry or facilitates a conversation. Instead of personally browsing established websites, AI provides an interactive response. This is more engaging.
The AI models, however, can 'get it wrong' and the summaries may lead to incorrect conclusions. For example, in the context of flight MH370, one AI model produced an authoritative-looking response to a question but confused times expressed as MYT and UTC, misrepresenting events on a time scale.
A review of my website statistics recently showed that the overwhelming majority of 'hits' were from AI bots, not individuals. But they didn't stay long. Although the site has a site map, a lot of content is transcluded from hidden namespaces. Apparently a page filled with transcluded content rates low from an SEO perspective. Unfortunately, the MH370wiki site was designed with a majority of public content transcluded from hidden namespaces.
So the goal for an upgrade commenced in mid-2026 is to make the website authoritative for AI and improve SEO to be more highly ranked for AI, including these steps:-
- Redesign the interface so it is just colours with nothing fancy.
- Reduce the use of transclusion.
- Convert embedded .pdf documents to html (but provide a link to the .pdf original).
- Remove custom horizontal menus and expand the sidebar menu.
- The timeline(s) are a core feature of the MH370wiki site but the timeline and event page URLs are unfriendly, so figure out a way to improve the URL and, consequently, SEO.
2025
This is an instructional website about MediaWiki based on what I have learned during the development of a website about Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which went missing on 8 March 2014.
Construction of the website mh370wiki.net started in 2015 and I chose MediaWiki as the platform. With over ten years of development that site now has significant content. But is the structure of the site and the way MediaWiki has been configured or customised that will be the focus of this one, mw.mh370.wiki.
Along the way I faced many challenges, made quite a few mistakes, and spent a lot of time working with MediaWiki instead of adding content. I hope that what I present here may be encouraging and helpful to new developers.
Unlike a purely tutorial site, this one is written in 'first person' using 'I' a lot. The journey has been personal and the experience is mine, but I want to share it.
Even the colours on this website have been selected for instructional purposes, not for elegance in graphical design. See below:-
Grant
Website Theme - Colours
| Color Variable | Color Hex Code | Class and Color |
|---|---|---|
| --SteelBlue-80 | #B6CEE2 | #mw-head |
| --SteelBlue-70 | #91B6D4 | .mw-body |
| --SteelBlue-60 | #6C9DC6 | .mw-footer |
| --SteelBlue-50 | #4785B8 | #mw-panel.vector-legacy-sidebar.collapsible-nav |
| --SteelBlue-40 | #396A93 | body |
| --PageBackground | #F2F2F2 | .mw-body-content |
| --LightSteelBlue | #B0C4DE | .catlinks |
| --LightSteelBlue-90 | #DBE4F0 | .mw-normal-catlinks |
| --Tan-80 | #E2CFB6 | .vector-menu-content |
| --Tan-70 | #D4B791 | .vector-menu-heading-label |
| --Tan-60 | #C69F6C | .vector-menu-heading |
| --Tan-50 | #B88747 | .vector-menu-portal |
| --Tan-40 | #936C39 | #p-tb |
For more detail, see Apply a Custom Colour Scheme.
Note: This site is 'under construction'. Development started in July 2025.