Editing MediaWiki Development Services (section)

== Limitations and Challenges ==

=== Technical Complexity ===

While MediaWiki is technically mature, its architecture reflects decisions made in 2001–2003, before modern PHP frameworks were established. Extension development requires familiarity with MediaWiki-specific APIs (Hooks, ResourceLoader, the ParserOutput object model) that have no direct equivalents in mainstream PHP frameworks such as Laravel or Symfony.

=== Wikitext Learning Curve ===

Despite the availability of VisualEditor, many MediaWiki installations still expose editors to Wikitext syntax for complex formatting tasks such as multi-column tables, nested templates, and conditional logic. Non-technical editors can find this steep compared to WYSIWYG-native platforms such as Confluence or Notion.

=== Infrastructure Requirements for High Traffic ===

Achieving production-level performance for high-traffic deployments requires significant infrastructure investment: multiple application servers, a dedicated database cluster with read replicas, a Memcached or Redis object cache cluster, a Varnish reverse proxy, and a CDN. Smaller deployments on shared hosting may experience performance degradation under moderate load.

=== Upgrade Path Management ===

Keeping a production MediaWiki installation current requires careful management of compatibility between the core version, installed extensions, and the PHP version on the underlying server. Poorly maintained installations can accumulate technical debt as extensions lag behind core updates.

=== Mobile Experience ===

Although the Minerva Neue skin and the MobileFrontend extension provide a mobile-optimised interface, achieving a high-quality mobile experience requires deliberate custom skin development beyond the default configuration.