How to Put a User into a Group in MediaWiki

What is MediaWiki?

MediaWiki is the free program that runs Wikipedia. You can use it to build your own wiki. A wiki is a website where many people can write and edit pages together.

What are groups?

A group is a set of rights. Think of school badges. A class helper can do more than a new student. In MediaWiki, common groups are:

bureaucrat: can change the groups of other users.
sysop (administrator): can delete pages, protect pages and block users.
interface-admin: can edit site-wide code and style pages.

Every logged-in user also gets basic groups on their own. Your wiki may have other groups too.

Before you begin

You must be logged in as a user who may change groups. This is normally a bureaucrat. The first account made at install time usually has this right.

Steps

Log in to your wiki.
Go to the page Special:UserRights. You can type that in the search box, or add /index.php?title=Special:UserRights to your wiki address.
Type the user name in the box. Click Load user groups.
Look at the list of groups. Tick the box of the group you want to give.
To remove a group, untick its box.
Type a short reason in the Reason box, for example "New moderator".
Click Save user groups.

The user can use the new rights the next time the page loads.

Safety

Warning: Be careful with the sysop and bureaucrat groups. These users can change or delete a lot. Give them only to people you trust.

Tip: If the user cannot see the new rights, ask them to log out and in again.

If you locked yourself out of the only admin account, open a support ticket with Hostvento.

Quick recap

Groups decide what a user can do.
Open Special:UserRights.
Load the user, tick or untick groups, add a reason.
Click Save user groups.