Manual:Interface

Documentation of MediaWiki's user interface and how to customize it.

User interface labels
Text labels of MediaWiki's user interface elements can be customized on specific per element pages in a particular wiki's own MediaWiki: namespace.

To edit an interface label:
 * 1) Log into your wiki with sysadmin user powers
 * 2) Go to your wiki's Special:Allmessages page (actually named System Messages in Special pages)
 * 3) Use your browser's Find feature to find instances of the current user interface label you want to change.
 * 4) Click on the link in the left column correspondingly to go to a page that sets that label.

Example: to change "discussion" tab label to "talk", go to your wiki's Special:Allmessages page, Find "discussion" (if the search box on the page proves helpless, use your browser's Find feature). There may be more than one instance of this word, "discussion", on that page so look at them all and use your head choosing which you want. Then click on the link in the left column of the corresponding table row to go to the MediaWiki: namespace page that controls that text, in this case MediaWiki:Talk (not its Talk page link of course). Edit that page to change that user interface element's label, say from "Discussion" to "Talk".

Note: the default MediaWiki style sheet makes these user interface elements display all lowercase. So the style sheets are where to change capitalization if that is what you want.