Release notes/1.13

From mediawiki.org

MediaWiki 1.13[edit]

Security reminder: MediaWiki does not require PHP's register_globals setting since version 1.2.0. If you have it on, turn it *off* if you can.

MediaWiki 1.13.5[edit]

February 22, 2009

This is a maintenance update to the Summer 2008 snapshot release of MediaWiki.

MediaWiki is now using a "continuous integration" development model with quarterly snapshot releases. The latest development code is always kept "ready to run", and in fact runs our own sites on Wikipedia.

Release branches will continue to receive security updates for about a year from first release, but nonessential bugfixes and feature developments will be made on the development trunk and appear in the next quarterly release.

Those wishing to use the latest code instead of a branch release can obtain it from source control: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_SVN

Changes since 1.13.4[edit]

  • (bug 17449) Fixed PostgreSQL installation
  • (bug 17527) Fixed missing MySQL-specific options in installer

Changes since 1.13.3[edit]

A number of cross-site scripting (XSS) security vulnerabilities were discovered in the web-based installer (config/index.php). These vulnerabilities all require a live installer -- once the installer has been used to install a wiki, it is deactivated.

Note that cross-site scripting vulnerabilities can be used to attack any website in the same cookie domain. So if you have an uninstalled copy of MediaWiki on the same site as an active web service, MediaWiki could be used to attack the active service.

If you are hosting an old copy of MediaWiki that you have never installed, you are advised to remove it from the web.

Changes since 1.13.2[edit]

David Remahl of Apple's Product Security team has identified a number of security issues in previous releases of MediaWiki. Subsequent analysis by the MediaWiki development team expanded the scope of these vulnerabilities. The issues with a significant impact are as follows:

  • An XSS vulnerability affecting all MediaWiki installations between 1.13.0 and
 1.13.2. [CVE-2008-5249]
  • A local script injection vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer clients for
 all MediaWiki installations with uploads enabled. [CVE-2008-5250]
  • A local script injection vulnerability affecting clients with SVG scripting
 capability (such as Firefox 1.5+), for all MediaWiki installations with SVG 
 uploads enabled. [CVE-2008-5250]
  • A CSRF vulnerability affecting the Special:Import feature, for all MediaWiki
 installations since the feature was introduced in 1.3.0. [CVE-2008-5252]

XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerabilities allow an attacker to steal an authorised user's login session, and to act as that user on the wiki. The authorised user must visit a web page controlled by the attacker in order to activate the attack. Intranet wikis are vulnerable if the attacker can determine the intranet URL.

Local script injection vulnerabilities are like XSS vulnerabilities, except that the attacker must have an account on the local wiki, and there is no external site involved. The attacker uploads a script to the wiki, which another user is tricked into executing, with the effect that the attacker is able to act as the privileged user.

CSRF vulnerabilities allow an attacker to act as an authorised user on the wiki, but unlike an XSS vulnerability, the attacker can only act as the user in a specific and restricted way. The present CSRF vulnerability allows pages to be edited, with forged revision histories. Like an XSS vulnerability, the authorised user must visit the malicious web page to activate the attack.

These four vulnerabilities are all fixed in this release.

David Remahl also reminded us of some security-related configuration issues:

  • By default, MediaWiki stores a backup of deleted images in the images/deleted
 directory. If you do not want these images to be publicly accessible, make
 sure this directory is not accessible from the web. MediaWiki takes some steps
 to avoid leaking these images, but these measures are not perfect.
  • Set display_errors=off in your php.ini to avoid path disclosure via PHP fatal
 errors. This is the default on most shared web hosts.
  • Enabling MediaWiki's debugging features, such as $wgShowExceptionDetails, may
 lead to path disclosure.

Other changes in this release:

  • Avoid fatal error in profileinfo.php when not configured.
  • Add a .htaccess to deleted images directory for additional protection against
 exposure of deleted files with known SHA-1 hashes on default installations. 
  • Avoid streaming uploaded files to the user via index.php. This allows
 security-conscious users to serve uploaded files via a different domain, and
 thus client-side scripts executed from that domain cannot access the login
 cookies. Affects Special:Undelete, img_auth.php and thumb.php.
  • When streaming files via index.php, use the MIME type detected from the
 file extension, not from the data. This reduces the XSS attack surface.
  • Blacklist redirects via Special:Filepath. Such redirects exacerbate any
 XSS vulnerabilities involving uploads of files containing scripts.
  • Internationalisation updates.

Changes since 1.13.1[edit]

  • Security: Work around misconfiguration by requiring strict comparisons for
 in_array in User::isAllowed().
  • (bug 14944) Added $wgShellLocale for configuration of an appropriate locale
 to use for LC_CTYPE during shell invocation. For servers that don't have 
 en_US.utf8. Also added locale detection during install.
  • Localisation updates
  • Security: Fixed XSS vulnerability in useskin parameter.

Changes since 1.13.0[edit]

  • (bug 15460) Fixed intermittent deadlock errors and poor concurrent
 performance for installations without memcached.
  • (bug 13770) Fixed DOM module detection for installations with both dom
 and domxml.
  • (bug 15148) Fixed Special:BlockIP for PostgreSQL
  • Fixed SQLite support for non-memcached installations
  • Localisation updates, Achinese (ace) added.

MediaWiki 1.13.0[edit]

This is the first stable release of the Summer 2008 quarterly snapshot release of MediaWiki.

MediaWiki is now using a "continuous integration" development model with quarterly snapshot releases. The latest development code is always kept "ready to run", and in fact runs our own sites on Wikipedia.

Release branches will continue to receive security updates for about a year from first release, but nonessential bugfixes and feature developments will be made on the development trunk and appear in the next quarterly release.

Those wishing to use the latest code instead of a branch release can obtain it from source control: Download from SVN

Changes since 1.13.0rc2[edit]

  • (bug 13770) Fixed incorrect detection of PHP's DOM module
  • Fix regression from r37834: accesskey tooltip hint should be given for the minor edit and watch labels on the edit page.
  • Updated Chinese simplified/traditional conversion tables

Changes since 1.13.0rc1[edit]

  • $wgForwardSearchUrl has been removed entirely. Documented setting since 1.4 has been $wgSearchForwardUrl .
  • (bug 14907) DatabasePostgres::fieldType now defined.
  • (bug 14966) Fix SearchEngineDummy class for silently non-functional search on Sqlite instead of horribly fatal error breaky one.
  • (bug 14987) Only fix double redirects on page move when the checkbox is checked
  • (bug 13376) Use $wgPasswordSender , not $wgEmergencyContact , as return address for page update notification mails.
  • API: Registration time of users registered before the DB field was created is now shown as empty instead of the current time.
  • (bug 14904): fragments were lost when redirects were fixed.
  • Added magic word __STATICREDIRECT__ to suppress the redirect fixer
  • (bug 15035) Revert English linkTrail to /^([a-z]+)(.*)$/sD, as it was before r36253. Multiple reports of breakage due to old (pre-5.0) PCRE libraries, both bundled with PHP and packaged with distros such as RHEL.
  • (bug 14944) Shell invocation of external programs such as ImageMagick convert was broken in PHP 5.2.6, if the server had a non-UTF-8 locale.

Changes since 1.12[edit]

Configuration changes in 1.13[edit]

New features in 1.13[edit]

  • __HIDDENCAT__ on a category page causes the category to be hidden on the article page
  • Do not show edit permissions errors on a red link click, just redirect to the article. This is so that readers who don't know what a red link is are not confused when they are told they are range-blocked.
  • Add a new hook ImageBeforeProduceHTML to allow extensions to modify wikitext image syntax output
  • (bug 13100) Added 'preloadtitle' parameter to action=edit&section=new that pre-fills the section title field
  • (bug 13112) Added Special:RelatedChanges alias to Special:RecentChangesLinked
  • (bug 13130) Moved edit token and autosummary fields above edit tools to reduce broken form submissions
  • Add --old-redirects-only option to maintenance/refreshLinks.php, to add old redirects to the redirect table
  • Add links to page and file deletion forms to edit predefined delete reasons
  • (bug 13269) Added MediaWiki:Uploadfooter to the bottom of Special:Upload
  • (bug 2815) Search results for media now use thumbnail instead of text extract
  • When a page doesn't exist, the tab should say "create", not "edit"
  • (bug 12882) Added a span with class "patrollink" around "Mark as patrolled" link on diffs
  • Magic word formatnum can now take raw suffix to undo formatting
  • Add updatelog table to reliably permit updates that don't change the schema
  • Add category table to allow better tracking of category membership counts
    • (bug 1212) Give correct membership counts on the pages of large categories
    • Use category table for more efficient display of Special:Categories
  • (bug 1459) Search for duplicate files by hash: Special:FileDuplicateSearch
  • (bug 9447) Added hooks for search result headings
  • Image redirects are now enabled by default
  • (bug 13450) Email confirmation can now be canceled before the expiration
  • (bug 13490) Show upload/file size limit on upload form
  • Redesign of Special:UserRights
  • Make rev_deleted log entries more intelligible
  • (bug 6943) Added PAGESINCATEGORY: magic word
  • (bug 13604) Added Special:ListGroupRights
  • (bug 6332, 8617) Added message 'mainpage-description' as duplicate of 'mainpage' and added it to message 'sidebar'
  • Automatically add old redirects to the redirect table when needed
  • (bug 6934) Allow inclusions, links, redirects to be separately toggled on or off on Special:WhatLinksHere
  • Cache image redirects
  • (bug 10457) Organize Special:SpecialPages into sections
  • Add a new hook EditPageBeforeConflictDiff to allow extensions like FCKeditor to modify the output for edit conflicts
  • Add class="nested" for <fieldset>s so fieldsets inside fieldsets get a slightly less huge margin and padding
  • (bug 13527) Use sitemaps.org format 0.9 instead of a Google-specific format
  • Allow \C and \Q as TeX commands to match \R, \N, \Z
  • On Special:UserRights, when you can add a group you can't remove or remove one you can't add, a notice is printed to warn you
  • (bug 12698) Create PAGESIZE parser function, to return the size of a page
  • Allow the "log in / create account" link in the toolbar to have different text from Special:UserLogin title (new message 'nav-login-createaccount')
  • Say "log in / create account" if an anonymous user can create an account, otherwise just "log in", consistently across skins
  • Special:Shortpages and Special:Longpages now returns pages in all content namespaces, not just NS_MAIN.
  • (bug 889) Improve conflict-handling between shared upload repository and local one
  • Update documentation links in auto-generated LocalSettings.php
  • (bug 13584) The new hook SkinTemplateToolboxEnd was added.
  • (bug 709) Cannot rename/move images and other media files [EXPERIMENTAL]
  • Custom rollback summaries now accept the same arguments as the default message
  • (bug 12542) Added hooks for expansion of Special:Listusers
  • Drop-down AJAX search suggestions (turn on $wgEnableMWSuggest )
  • More relevant search snippets (turn on $wgAdvancedSearchHighlighting )
  • (bug 13950) Allow users to watch the user/talk pages of users they block.
  • (bug 13970) Allow MonoBook-based skins to specify their own print stylesheet
  • Show image links on Special:Whatlinkshere
  • Use rel="start", "prev", "next" appropriately on Pager-based pages
  • Add support for SQLite
  • AutoAuthenticate hook renamed to UserLoadFromSession
  • (bug 13232) importScript(), importStylesheet() funcs available to custom JS
  • (bug 13095) Search by first letters or digits in Special:Categories
  • Users moving a page can now move all subpages automatically as well
  • (bug 14259) Localisation message for upload button on Special:Import is now 'import-upload' instead of 'upload'
  • Add information about user group membership to Special:Preferences
  • (bug 14146) Wrap usage section on imagepages into <div>s.
  • New layout for Special:Specialpages. Restricted pages are marked but not separated from other pages in their group.
  • (bug 14263) Show a diff of the revert on rollback notification page.
  • (bug 13434) Show a warning when hash identical files exist
  • Sidebar is now cached for all languages
  • The User class now contains a public function called isActiveEditor. Figures out if a user is active based on at least $wgActiveUserEditCount number of edits in the last $wgActiveUserDays days.
  • SpecialSearchResults hook now passes results by reference, so they can be changed by extensions.
  • Add a new hook LinkerMakeExternalLink to allow extensions to modify the output of external links.
  • (bug 14132) Allow user to disable bot edits from being output to UDP.
  • (bug 14328) jsMsg() within Wikibits now accepts a DOM object, not just a string
  • (bug 14558) New system message (emailuserfooter) is now added to the footer of e-mails sent with Special:Emailuser
  • Add support for Hijri (Islamic) calendar
  • Add a new hook LinkerMakeExternalImage to allow extensions to modify the output of external (hotlinked) images.
  • (bug 14604) Introduced the following features for the LanguageConverter: Multi-tag support, single conversion flag, remove conversion flag on a single page, description flag, variant name, multi-variant fallbacks.
  • Add zh-mo and zh-my variants for the zh language
  • (bugs 4832, 9481, 12890) Special:Recentchangeslinked now has all options that are in Special:Recentchanges
  • Allow an $error message to be passed to ArticleDelete hook
  • Allow extensions to modify the user creation form by calling addInputItem();
  • Add meta generator tag to HTML output
  • MediawikiPerformAction hook is now passed the Mediawiki object
  • Added blank special page Special:BlankPage for benchmarking, etc.
  • Foreign repo file descriptions and thumbnails are now cached.
  • (bug 11732) Allow localisation of edit button images
  • Allow the search box, toolbox and languages box in the Monobook sidebar to be moved around arbitrarily using special sections in MediaWiki:Sidebar: SEARCH, TOOLBOX and LANGUAGES
  • Add a new hook NormalizeMessageKey to allow extensions to replace messages before the database is potentially queried
  • (bug 9736) Redirects on Special:Fewestrevisions are now marked as such.
  • New date/time formats in Cs localization according to ČSN and PČP.
  • Special:Recentchangeslinked now includes changes to transcluded pages and displayed images; also, the "Show changes to pages linked" checkbox now works on category pages too, showing all links that are not categorizations
  • (bug 4578) Automatically fix redirects broken by a page move

Bug fixes in 1.13[edit]

  • (bug 10677) Add link to the file description page on the shared repository
  • (bug 13084) Increase size of source/destination filename fields in upload form
  • (bug 13115) rebuildrecentchanges should print the current value of $wgRCMaxAge
  • (bug 13140) Show parent categories in category namespace
  • (bug 13149) Correctly format 'fileexists' message on Upload page
  • Make the default filepageexists message accurate
  • (bug 12988) $wgMinimalPasswordLength no longer breaks create user by email
  • (bug 13022) Fix upload from URL on PHP 5.0.x
  • (bug 13132) Unable to unprotect pages protected with earlier versions of MediaWiki
  • (bug 12723) OpenSearch description name now uses more compact language code to avoid passing the length limit as often, is customizable per site via 'opensearch-desc' message.
  • (bug 13135) Special:Userrights now passes IDs through form submission to allow functionality on not-quite-right usernames
  • (bug 12575) Prevent duplicate patrol log entries from being created
  • (bug 13174) __HIDDENCAT__ now applies only to category pages
  • (bug 13031) Add links to user pages in e-mail form
  • (bug 13147) Description for categoriespagetext (used in Special:Categories) reworded
  • (bug 11561) Fix fatal error when calling action=revert to non-image page
  • (bug 12430) Fix call to private method LinkFilter::makeRegex fatal error in maintenance/cleanupSpam.php
  • All skins should have the "mediawiki" class on the body element
  • (bug 13019) Message cache for some extensions not loaded at time of editing
  • (bug 13247) Prettified ISBN links
  • maintenance/refreshLinks.php did not fix page_id 1 with the --new-only option
  • (bug 13110) Don't show "Permission error" page if the edit is already rolled back when using rollback
  • (bug 13012) Use content messages for block options when generating the recentchanges entry
  • (bug 13274) Change links for messages to ucfirst
  • (bug 13273) Un-hardcode some punctuation (add new messages colon-separator, autocomment-prefix)
  • Parse MediaWiki message translations with a correct language setting on preview
  • (bug 13281) Treat X-Forwarded-For, Client-ip and User-Agent headers as case-insensitive names.
  • Adding the fix for lists in RTL wikis to more skins, and fixing the image toc
  • (bug 8157) Remove redirects from Special:Unusedtemplates. Patch by WebBoy.
  • (bug 10721) Duplicate section anchors with differing case now disambiguated for Internet Explorer's sake and standards compliance
  • (bug 13298) Tighter limits on Special:Newpages limits when embedding
  • Email subject in content language instead of sending user's UI language
  • (bug 13251) Allow maintenance rebuild scripts to work with Postgres
  • (bug 2084) Fixed incorrect regex to match redirects
  • (bug 3131) Manually-specified upload destination filename is no longer overwritten by browsing for a file after you wrote it.
  • (bug 7251) Sidebars generated by MediaWiki:Sidebar now have the class 'generated-sidebar'.
  • (bug 13265) Media handler is missing 'image/x-bmp'
  • (bug 13407) MediaWiki:Powersearch is used in two places
  • (bug 13403) Fix cache invalidation of history pages when old revisions change
  • (bug 11563) Deprecated SearchMySQL4 class; merged code to SearchMySQL
  • (bug 12801) Fix link in subtitle message in AJAX search
  • (bug 13428) Fix regression in protection form layout HTML validity
  • (bug 9403) Sanitize newlines from search term input
  • (bug 13429) Separate date and time in message sp-newimages-showfrom
  • (bug 13137) Allow setting 'editprotected' right separately from 'protect', so groups may optionally edit protected pages without having 'protect' perms
  • Disallow deletion of big pages by means of moving a page to its title and using the "delete and move" option.
  • (bug 13466, 13632) White space differences not shown in diffs
  • (bug 1953) Search form now honors namespace selections more reliably
  • (bug 12294) Namespace class renamed to MWNamespace for PHP 5.3 compatibility
  • PHP 5.3 compatibility fix for wfRunHooks() called with no parameters
  • (bug 6447) Trackbacks now work with transactional tables, if enabled
  • (bug 6892, 7147) Trackback error handling, optional fields more robust
  • (bug 6813) Don't break HTML validator when using trackbacks
  • Fix for size checks on SVG images with global 'stroke-width' attribute
  • (bug 11874) Inline CSS with !important no longer borken
  • (bug 1600) Strip extra == section markup == in new-comment field
  • (bug 11325) Wrapped page titles in MonoBook skin spaced more nicely
  • (bug 12077) Fix HTML nesting for TOC
  • (bug 344) Purge cache for talk/article pages when deleting the other tab
  • (bug 13436) Treat image captions correctly when they include option keywords (like ending with "px" or starting with "upright")
  • Trackback display formatting fixed
  • Don't die when single-element arrays are passed to SQL query constructors that have an array index other than 0
  • (bug 13522) Fix fatal error in Parser::extractTagsAndParams
  • (bug 13532) Use proper timestamp call when reverting images
  • (bug 13543) Updated FAQ link in the installer sidebar
  • (bug 13540) Date format in confirmation e-mail now matches message language
  • (bug 13554) PHP Notice in old pre-processor when list item is empty.
  • (bug 13556) Don't show a blank form if no image is attached in Special:Upload
  • (bug 13576) maintenance/rebuildrecentchanges.php fails
  • (bug 13441) Allow Special:Recentchanges to show bots only
  • (bug 13431) Show true message source in Special:Allmessages&ot=php / xml
  • (bug 13463) Login successful page doesn't use user's preferred interface language
  • (bug 13630) Fixed warnings for pass by reference at call time in Special:Revisiondelete when generating the log entry.
  • (bug 12064) BeforePageDisplay hook is now called for all skins
  • (bug 13624) Fix regression with manual thumb= parameter on images
  • (bug 11039) Add missing labels on protection form
  • (bug 13458) Preview/edit toolbar spacing now works consistently
  • (bug 13433) Fix action=render on Image: pages
  • (bug 13678) Fix CSS validation for Monobook
  • (bug 13684) Links in Special:ListGroupRights should be in content language
  • (bug 13690) Fix PHP notice on accessing some URLs
  • Hide (undo) link if user isn't able to edit page
  • Invalidate cache of pages that includes images via redirects on upload
  • (bug 13705) Don't show rollback link in page history on incorrect revisions
  • (bug 13708) Don't set "Search results" title when loading Special:Search without query
  • (bug 13736) Don't show MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext on non-existant IP addresses
  • (bug 13728) Don't trim initial whitespace during section edits
  • (bug 13727) Don't delete log entries from recentchanges on page deletion
  • (bug 13752) Redirects to sections now work again
  • (bug 13725) Upload form watch checkbox state set correctly with wpDestFile
  • (bug 13756) Don't show the form and navigation links of Special:Newpages if the page is included
  • When hiding things on WhatLinksHere, generated URLs should hide them too
  • Properly escape search terms with regex chars so they appear highlighted in search results
  • (bug 13768) pt_title field encoding fixed
  • Do not display empty columns on Special:UserRights if all groups are changeable or all unchangeable
  • Fix fatal error on calling PAGESINCATEGORY with invalid category name
  • (bug 13793) Special:Whatlinkshere filters wrong - after paginating instead of before
  • (bug 13796) Show links to parent pages even if some of them are missing
  • (bug 13816) Filter by main namespace doesn't work on WhatLinksHere
  • (bug 13822) Fatal error on some pages when calculating subpage subtitle
  • (bug 13824) AJAX search suggestion now works with non-SkinTemplate skins
  • Added 'application/x-dia-diagram' MediaWiki's known MIME types
  • (bug 13866) skins/common/shared.css - invalid attribute fixing
  • Hide edit section links on Special:Undelete
  • (bug 13860) Fix "Justify paragraphs" option for Modern skin
  • (bug 13168) accessibility links in Modern skin link to wrong anchor id
  • (bug 13185) No line break after 'subpages' class in Modern skin
  • (bug 13583) No "poweredby" in Modern skin
  • (bug 13880) "Printable" link in Modern skin now formats as print mode
  • (bug 13885) Bump default $wgSVGMaxSize from 1024 to 2048 pixels
  • (bug 13891) Show categories box even if all categories are hidden and user has "show hidden categories" option on
  • (bug 13915) Undefined variable $wltsfield in includes/SpecialWatchlist.php
  • (bug 13913) Special:Whatlinkshere now has correct HTML markup
  • (bug 13905) Blacklist Mac IE from HttpOnly cookies; it eats them sometimes
  • (bug 13922) Fix bad HTML on empty Special:Prefixindex and Special:Allpages
  • (bug 13924) Fix bad HTML on power search form
  • (bug 13820) Fix updater for rev_parent_id population
  • (bug 13925) Fix bad HTML on search results list
  • (bug 13934) Fixing the link to GNU General Public License Version 2
  • Show correct accesskey prefix for Firefox 3 beta (Alt-Shift-, not Alt-)
  • (bug 13949) Special:PrefixIndex/AllPages paging links contain invalid XML
  • (bug 13770) Use Preprocessor_Hash by default to avoid missing DOM module errors
  • (bug 13982) Disable ccmeonemails preference when user-to-user mails disabled
  • (bug 13615) Update case mappings and normalization to Unicode 5.1.0 Note that case mappings will only be used if mbstring extension is not present.
  • (bug 14044) Don't increment page view counters on views from bot users
  • (bug 14042) Calling Database::limitResult() misplaced the comment in the log file
  • (bug 14047) Fix regression in installer which hid DB-specific options. Also makes SQLite path configurable in the installer.
  • (bug 13546) Follow image redirects on image page
  • (bug 12644) Template list on edit page now sorted on preview
  • (bug 14058) Support pipe trick for namespaces and interwikis with "-"
  • Message name filter on Special:Allmessages now case-insensitive
  • (bug 13943) Fix image redirect behaviour on image pages
  • (bug 14093) Do 'sysop' => 'protect' magic in Title::isValidMoveOperation
  • (bug 14063) Power search form missing <label> for redirects check
  • (bug 14111) Similar filename warning links now lead to correct page
  • (bug 14082) Fix for complex text input vs AJAX suggestions on some browsers
  • (bug 13693) Categories sometimes claim to have a negative number of members
  • (bug 1701) Korean Hangul syllables now broken down properly in Category lists even if the wiki's overall content language is not Korean
  • (bug 12773) addOnloadHook() now calls functions immediately when scripts are loaded after the primary page completion, instead of dropping them
  • (bug 14199) Fix deletion form for image redirect pages
  • (bug 14220) Disabling $wgCheckFileExtensions now works without also disabling $wgStrictFileExtensions
  • (bug 14241) Pages can no longer be protected to levels you are not in
  • (bug 14296) Fix local name of ang: (Anglo-Saxon)
  • (bug 4871) Hardcoded superscript in time zone preferences moved to message
  • (bug 6957) E-mail confirmation links now using English special page name for better compatibility and keeping the links shorter. Avoids problem with corrupt links in Gmail on IE 6.
  • (bug 14273) Fix for HTTP Accept header parsing with spaces as from Konqueror
  • (bug 14312) Update LanguageKaa.php for handling transform issues with i to İ and I to ı
  • (bug 13826) MediaWiki:Defaultns accepts Wikicode
  • (bug 14324) Creating an account is again possible with $wgEmailConfirmToEdit set to true
  • (bug 13034) Interwiki pages can now be reached using Go search button
  • (bug 14362) Change interwiki names of Erzya and Moksha Wikipedias
  • (bug 14370) When a grouppage-x message does not exist the entry on the ListGroupRights special page now links to the project namespace page for it, not the main namespace page.
  • (bug 11659) Urldecode image names in galleries
  • (bug 14258, 14368) Fix for subpage renames in replication environments
  • (bug 14367) Failed block no longer adds phantom watchlist entry
  • (bug 14385) "Move subpages" option no longer tries to move to invalid titles
  • (bug 14386) Fix subpage namespace oddity when moving a talk page
  • (bug 11771) Signup form now not shown if in read-only mode.
  • (bug 12859) $wgRateLimitsExcludedGroups has been deprecated in favor of $wgGroupPermissions []['noratelimit'].
  • (Bug 13828) Split parameter $1 of MediaWiki:Missingarticle into $1 (=title) and $2 (=revision numbers)
  • (bug 14401) Fix Safari access key tooltips for Windows and >3.1 Mac versions
  • (bug 14432) Fix notice regression in Special:Newpages feed mode
  • (bug 11951) EditPage::getEditToolbar() is now static.
  • (bug 14392) Fix regression breaking table prefix in installer
  • (bug 11084) $wgDBprefix replacement for updater SQL will now work for extension tables using uppercase letters or digits in their names.
  • (bug 12311) Fix regression with lists at start of undeletion preview
  • (bug 14496) Fix regression with parseinline on Special:Upload.
  • We no longer just give up on a missing upload base directory; it's now created automatically if we have sufficient permissions!
  • (bug 14479) MediaWiki:upload-maxfilesize should have a div id wrapper
  • (bug 14497) Throw visible errors in installer scripts when SQL files fail due to database permission or other error
  • (bug 14500) Site feed (Recentchanges) no longer shows up on the actual recent changes page.
  • (bug 14511) MediaWiki:Delete-legend is no longer double escaped
  • Generate correct section anchors for numeric headers
  • (bug 14520) Don't load nonexistent CSS files for Chick/Myskin/Simple skins
  • (bug 14551) Cancel upload no longer automatically suppresses warnings
  • (bug 13878) Deprecate Article::getDB() in favor of direct wfGetDB() calls
  • (bug 4977) Fix for possible squid purging errors when using HTTP purges and multiple servers
  • (bug 14572) Redirects listed on file links on image pages no longer redirect.
  • (bug 14537) Change interwiki name for Old Church Slavonic (cu)
  • (bug 14583) Fix regression in recent changes "limit to certain categories."
  • (bug 14515) HTML nesting cleanup on edit form
  • (bug 14647) Removed unused 'townBox' CSS classes
  • (bug 14687) OutputPage::addStyle() now adds type="text/css" like it should.
  • OpenSearch cleanup; Firefox now sends you to the search page for empty searches instead of the domain root (which may not even be a wiki).
  • (bug 3481) Pages moved shortly after creation are shown at their new title on Special:Newpages.
  • (bug 12716) Trying to unprotect a title that isn't protected no longer generates a log entry.
  • (bug 14088) Excessively long block expiry times are rejected as invalid, keeps the log page from being distorted.
  • (bug 14708) Emulate INSERT...IGNORE with standard SQL for Postgres backend.
  • (bug 14646) Fix some double-escaping of HTML in feed output
  • (bug 14709) Fix login success message formatting when using cookie check
  • (bug 14710) Remove "donate" link from default sidebar
  • (bug 14745) Image moving works on sites that transform thumbnails via 404
  • (bug 2186) Document.write() in wikibits caused failures when using application/xhtml+xml. The calls to this have been removed.
  • (bug 14764) Fix regression in from Article::lastModified(), failed to work on non-mySQL schemas.
  • (bug 14763) Child classes of Database (DatabasePostgres and DatabaseOracle) had stict standards issues with setFakeSlaveLag() and setFakeMaster().
  • (bug 451) Improve the phrase mappings of the Chinese converter arrays.
  • (bug 12487) Rights log is not fully internationalized
  • (bug 10837) Language variants no longer override other languages than base
  • (bug 14778) 'limit' parameter now applies to history feeds as well as history pages
  • (bug 14845) Bug in prefs javascript: Calling an array item without checking its existance.
  • Accesskeys for minor edit/watch checkboxes on edit now work in Firefox 3
  • (bug 12384) Comments in maintenance/*php
  • (bug 12441) ./maintenance/generateSitemap.php fix -fspath requiring a trailing slash.
  • (bug 12568) configuration script now produce valid XHTML.
  • The accesskey to edit a page is now disabled when editing the page, to prevent conflicts with Safari shortcuts.

API changes in 1.13[edit]

  • Fixing main page display in meta=siteinfo
  • (bug 13128) Added patrolled flag to list=recentchanges
  • Implemented {bl,ei,iu}redirect (lists links through redirects as well)
  • (bug 13154) Introduced subpages flag to meta=siteinfo&siprop=namespaces
  • (bug 13157) Added ucuserprefix parameter to list=usercontibs
  • (bug 12394) Added rctitles parameter to list=recentchanges, making rcid retrieval easier
  • (bug 13218) Fix inclusion of " character in hyperlinks
  • Added watch and unwatch parameters to action=delete and action=move
  • Added action=edit
  • (bug 11401) Added xmldoublequote to xml formatter
  • Added rvsection parameter to prop=revisions to allow fetching the content of a certain section only
  • Introduced list=allimages
  • (bug 13371) Build page set from image hashes
  • Mark non-existent messages in meta=allmessages as missing
  • (bug 13390) One invalid title no longer kills an entire API query
  • (bug 13419) Fix gblredirect so it actually works
  • (bug 13418) Disable eiredirect because it's useless
  • (bug 13395) list=allcategories should use category table
  • (bug 13442) Missing pages in prop=langlinks and prop=extlinks are now handled properly.
  • (bug 13444) Add description to list=watchlist
  • (bug 13482) Disabled search types handled properly
  • Added inprop=talkid,subjectid to prop=info
  • Added help text message that specifies whether a module is POST-only
  • Added createonly parameter to action=edit
  • Replaced $wgAPIUCUserPrefixMinLength by the more generic $wgAPIMaxDBRows
  • (bug 11719) Remove trailing blanks in YAML output.
  • (bug 13541) Added siprop=specialpagealiases to meta=siteinfo
  • Added fallback8bitEncoding and readonly fields to meta=siteinfo&siprop=general output
  • (bug 13544) Added prop=revid to action=parse
  • (bug 13603) Added siprop=usergroups to meta=siteinfo
  • Cleaned up redirect resolution
  • Added possibility to obtain all external links through list=exturlusage
  • (bug 13606) Added archivename to iiprop
  • (bug 11633) Explicitly convert redirect titles to strings due to PHP's very weak typing on array keys.
  • (bug 12136) Extend allowed characters in JSON callback to ][.'"_A-Za-z0-9
  • (bug 11673) Return error 'unknown_action' in specified format
  • (bug 13618) Added rcprop=redirect and rcshow=redirect to list=recentchanges
  • (bug 13544) Added oldid parameter to action=parse to allow for parsing of old revisions
  • (bug 13718) Return the proper continue parameter for cmsort=timestamp
  • action=login now returns the correct waiting time in the details property
  • (bug 13792) Broken titles are now silently skipped in search results.
  • (bug 13819) exturlusage paging skipped an item
  • Fixed handling of usernames containing spaces in list=block
  • (bug 13836) Fixed fatal errors resulting from combining iiprop=metadata with format=xml
  • (bug 13735) Added prop=categoryinfo module
  • (bug 13945) Retrieve cascading protection sources via inprop=protection
  • (bug 13965) Hardcoded 51 limit on titles is too limiting
  • (bug 13993) apfrom doesn't work with apdir=descending
  • (bug 14018) Introduced alcontinue to list=alllinks to improve paging
  • (bug 14013) Added rcshow=patrolled to list=recentchanges
  • (bug 14028) Added language attribute to interwiki map in meta=siteinfo
  • (bug 14022) Added usprop=registration and auprop=blockinfo
  • (bug 14021) Removed titles= support from list=backlinks (has been obsolete for ages)
  • (bug 13829) Expose parse tree via action=expandtemplates
  • (bug 13606) Allow deletion of images
  • Added iiprop=mime and aiprop=metadata
  • Handled unrecognized values for parameters more gracefully
  • Handled requesting disallowed tokens more gracefully
  • (bug 14140) URL-encoded page titles are now decoded in edit summaries
  • (bug 14243) Only accept post requests in action=edit; patch by HardDisk
  • action=block now returns an ISO8601 timestamp, like all other modules do
  • Added md5 parameter to action=edit
  • (bug 14335) Logging in to unified account using API not possible
  • Added action=emailuser to send an email to a user
  • (bug 14471) Use HTMLTidy and generate limit report in action=parse
  • (bug 14459) Added prependtext and appendtext parameters to action=edit
  • (bug 14526) Unescaped SQL in list=backlinks
  • Added 'hidden' flag to list=allcategories and prop=categoryinfo output
  • Added nocreate parameter to action=edit
  • (bug 14402) Added maxage and smaxage parameters to api.php
  • Added bkip parameter to list=blocks
  • (bug 14651) apprefix and similar parameters are now canonicalized
  • Added clprop=timestamp to prop=categories
  • (bug 14678) API errors now respects $wgShowExceptionDetails and $wgShowSQLErrors
  • (bug 14723) Added time zone and writing direction to meta=siteinfo
  • Added APIQueryInfoTokens and APIQueryRevisionsTokens hooks so extensions can add their own tokens
  • Added block and unblock tokens to prop=info as well
  • Added paging (limit and continue parameters) to prop={links,templatelinks,langlinks,extlinks,categories,images}
  • Added flag "top" to list=usercontribs if the user is the last contributor to the page
  • list=exturlusage in "list all links" mode can now filter by protocol

Languages updated in 1.13[edit]

MediaWiki supports over 300 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed.

  • Egyptian Spoken Arabic (arz) (new)
  • Southern Balochi (bcc) (new)
  • Middle Dutch (dum) (removed)
  • British English (en-gb) (new)
  • Fiji Hindi (Latin) (hif-latn) (new)
  • Old Norse (non) (removed)
  • Tarifit (rif) (new)
  • Serbian cyrillic iyekvian (sr-jc) (removed)
  • Serbian latin iyekavian (sr-jl) (removed)
  • Silesian (szl) (new)
  • Tajiki (Cyrllic script) (tg-cyrl) (new)
  • Tajiki (Latin script) (tg-latn) (new)
  • Chinese (Macau) (zh-mo) (new)
  • Chinese (Malaysia) (zh-my) (new)

Compatibility[edit]

MediaWiki 1.13 requires PHP 5 (5.1 recommended). PHP 4 is no longer supported.

PHP 5.0.x fails on 64-bit systems due to serious bugs with array processing: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=34879 Upgrade affected systems to PHP 5.1 or higher.

MySQL 3.23.x is no longer supported; some older hosts may need to upgrade. At this time we still recommend 4.0, but 4.1/5.0 will work fine in most cases.


Upgrading[edit]

1.13 has several database changes since 1.12, and will not work without schema updates.

If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure new database fields are filled with data.

If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons repository, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise due to database schema changes.

If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, some major database changes are made, and there is a slightly higher chance that things could break. Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!

See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.


Caveats[edit]

Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)

For notes on 1.12.x and older releases, see HISTORY.


Online documentation[edit]

Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being built up on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in the public domain) :

Documentation


Mailing list[edit]

A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia wikitech-l list:

mail:mediawiki-l

A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:

mail:mediawiki-announce

It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.


IRC help[edit]

There's usually someone online in the IRC channel #mediawiki connect.