MediaWiki/Search

Interwiki

MediaWiki has an interwiki prefix system that lets you search, or link to, external wiki content. And it doesn't have to be "wiki"; it just has to be structured. So, because we have an entry for 'Google' in our interwiki table, you can link to Google results with Google:"Rail+Trail"+Paths+In+Salisbury+Massachusetts.

And you can search Google directly from the search bar of this wiki: Just enter the "shortcode" (Google), followed by a colon (:), and your search query. This works for ALL interwiki prefixes. So, to search Wikipedia for "roses", just enter 'w:roses' in the search bar.

Templates

Templates are useful for linking other search engines. See Help:External_searches for example. You can create a template that makes it convenient for editors to post links to search or database query results in the wiki.

Application (Internal) Native Search

The default search system for MediaWiki is based on MySQL database technology; and is not the most powerful search engine. To make it better, use the Elasticsearch system instead.