The Cite extension provides a way for users to create references as footnotes to articles.
See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Cite for detailed documentation.
$wgCiteStoreReferencesData
: If set to true, references are saved in the database so that other extensions can retrieve them independently of the main article content.$wgCiteCacheReferencesDataOnParse
: ($wgCiteStoreReferencesData
required) By default, references are cached only on database access. If set to true, references are also cached whenever pages are parsed.