How to show all categories in MediaWiki Main or other pages?

Question

I want to display all the categories in main page or any other page in MediaWiki just like how it displays in Special:Categories page.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

The only built-in ways to display all categories are the special pages Special:Categories and Special:AllPages (in a default MediaWiki setup the categories are in NS 14, so Special:AllPages?namespace=14). Of those two, AllPages is transcludible, meaning that you can do like this on your main page:

{{Special:AllPages|namespace=14}}

If you want more control over the output, I suggest you use an extension like Semantic MediaWiki (advanced, full control), or CategoryTree (but as you noted, you will have to organize your category in a tree structure, with a common root).