Wikimedia Cloud Services (WMCS) provides tools, services, and support for technical collaborators who want to contribute to Wikimedia software projects. Use Cloud Services to host your software tools for theWikimedia movement, without charge.

Tools and bots make it easier to edit and maintain Wikimedia projects. For developers who support Wikimedia projects by developing tools and bots, Toolforge provides the following features:

• Free, reliable, and scalable shared hosting, including web servers, databases and other data storage
• A distributed job processing system
• Support for multiple users to collaboratively maintain and manage tools

To use Toolforge you need:

• Some programming knowledge
• An understanding of Unix command line

To get started, visitHelp:Toolforge. Or,learn more about creating bots.

PAWS is a Jupyter notebook installation hosted by Wikimedia. PAWS notebooks can be used for creating tutorials, running live code, creating data visualizations, running basic bots, and more.

A single PAWS notebook is maintained by a single user, but they can be downloaded and forked by other users. To use PAWS you need only a Wikimedia login and a web browser. Knowledge of Python is helpful, but not required.

Open source software projects help the Wikimedia movement by improving core infrastructure (like MediaWiki), powering research and analytics, and supporting Wikimedia operations and software development. For advanced projects that aren't viable in the Toolforge environment, Cloud VPS (Virtual Private Server) provides the following features:

• Free cloud computing environment, powered byOpenStack
• Collaboratively-owned collections of virtual private servers, storage, firewall, and HTTPS proxy resources to projects
• Access to a variety of data services
• Freedom to install packages not provided by Debian or the Wikimedia Foundation

To use Cloud VPS, you need:

• An open source project that isn't viable in the Toolforge environment, or can't be accomplished using other WMCS offerings
• One or more active project maintainers who meet basic requirements
• Advanced programming knowledge
• Advanced experience with Unix command line
• The ability to administer your own servers and manage your project's applications, data, runtime, middleware, and operating systems

To get started, visitHelp:Cloud VPS.

Cloud VPS is anInfrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution. It provides virtual machines, storage, firewall, and HTTPS proxy resources to projects. The members of each individual project are responsible for managing applications, data, runtime, middleware, and operating systems themselves. Cloud VPS projects use the domainwmcloud.org (some older projects use the legacy domainwmflabs.org).

Toolforge is aPlatform as a service (PaaS) solution. It providesweb servers,databases, and adistributed job processing system as managed services for tool maintainers. Toolforge tools use the domaintoolforge.org.

Tools and software hosted on Toolforge and Cloud VPS can directly access public data dumps and production wiki replicas.

• Learn about accessing wiki replica databases from a tool account.
• Learn about accessing dumps through shared storage services for Cloud VPS and Toolforge.

• PAWS provides a Jupyter notebook environment you can use to query wiki replicas and dumps, create interactive graphs, and use APIs for analysis.
• Superset andQuarry are web interfaces for querying live replica SQL databases of public Wikimedia wikis.

To use Superset or Quarry you need only a Wikimedia login and a web browser, but you should have a basic understanding of SQL. Learn aboutSQL queries.

To use Cloud Services products, you must firstcreate a Wikimedia account and a developer account.

• 🎬 Video:Wikimedia Cloud Services introduction (2019)
• 📣 Slides:An introduction to Cloud Services presentation (2019)

Support and administration of the WMCS resources is provided by theWikimedia Foundation Cloud Services team andWikimedia movement volunteers. Please reach out with questions and join the conversation:

• Overviews
• Cloud Services