Release notes/1.1

MediaWiki 1.1
No one should install these on new wikis – security updates for older wikis only.
 * MediaWiki Stable Releases 1.1.x

1.1.0

 * Released on: 2003-12-08
 * Download at:
 * Changes: (old location)

= MediaWiki release notes =

Version 1.1.0, 2003-12-08
This is the new production release. Any following 1.1.x releases are expected to contain only bug fixes; developments of new features will go towards a 1.2.0 release. New features in 1.1:
 * New wiki table syntax: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_tables
 * User-editable interface messages: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
 * XML-wrapped page source export with optional history: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_import_and_export (There is not yet an import function!)
 * "Magic words" Fixes and tweaks:
 * linkscc table caches link data for rendering; faster rebuildlinks.php
 * Numerous bugs in Cologne Blue skin fixed
 * Login gives warning about missing cookies
 * Block log, protection log added; deletion log now includes undeletions
 * Deletion & upload logs now escape comment text properly
 * Problems with  segments in section titles etc mitigated
 * Contributions offset and minor edit bugs fixed
 * Whatlinkshere now sorted alphabetically
 * Various exciting new profiling options.
 * Debug log is off by default.
 * Various small bugs fixed. Internal changes:
 * wfQuery has had a second parameter inserted, DB_READ or DB_WRITE. This value is not actually used so far.
 * Partial code for categories and Smarty template-based skins is in the tree but disabled.
 * Parts of Article.php have been moved to EditPage.php and ImagePage.php. New translations:
 * fi - Finnish
 * ia - Interlingua
 * no - Norwegian
 * sk - Slovak
 * ta - Tamil

Database changes
"linkscc" table added. If upgrading manually (rather than with update.php), run maintenance/archives/patch-linkscc.sql to create the table. Older releases were dated snapshots from the old 'stable' branch:

mediawiki-20031118

 * Image deletion fixed.
 * Deletion of image old revisions now restricted to sysops (this is an irreversible action and not well logged)
 * Fixed maintenance scripts broken by last release's security fix
 * Many errors in rebuildlinks script fixed.

mediawiki-20031117

 * SECURITY FIX: stricter checking of include path
 * Fixed user contributions next/prev bug
 * Login cookies now have the database name prefixed to allow wikis to coexist in the same domain. This will invalidate any old saved password cookies.
 * Update cache timestamp when talk pages are created
 * Saving the login form in Mozilla no longer blanks password in prefs.
 * Check existence of source page before performing a move.
 * Detect invalid titles in Special:Allpages
 * Q-encode headers on outgoing inter-user e-mail
 * Updates to some translations.
 * Added table of contents border/bg to Cologne Blue, Nostalgia skins
 * Protected pages no longer appear unprotected when visited via redirect
 * Swapped old Wikipedia logo for the MediaWiki sunflower logo
 * install.php, update.php print warning on old PHP versions, added compatibility functions that might or might not help No database changes since 20031107; upgrading should be clean.

mediawiki-20031107

 * Fixed various bugs!
 * Some speed improvements from tweaks to the table indexes
 * Limited support for memcached (see below)
 * New translations (see below)
 * Interwiki link data now kept in database for flexibility
 * Friendlier read-only source view if asked to edit a page when the db is locked or the page is protected.
 * Normal IP blocks auto-expire after 24 hours
 * Optional support for blocking usernames
 * Uploads disabled by default (see below)

Security note
Uploads are now disabled by default. If you've set up a secure configuration you can reenable uploads by putting: $wgDisableUploads = false; into LocalSettings.php. Earlier versions of MediaWiki included a bug that potentially allows logged- in users to delete arbitrary files in directories writable by the web server user by manually feeding false form data; this is now fixed. As a reminder, disable PHP script execution in the upload directory! You may also wish to serve HTML pages as plaintext to prevent cookie- stealing JavaScript attacks. Example Apache config fragment:  # Ignore .htaccess files AllowOverride None # Serve HTML as plaintext AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml # Don't run arbitrary PHP code. php_admin_flag engine off # If you've other scripting languages, disable them too. 

Database updates
If you're using update.php, the necessary database changes should be made automatically. To manually upgrade your database from the 2003-08-29 release, run the following SQL scripts from the maintenance subdirectory: archives/patch-ipblocks.sql archives/patch-interwiki.sql archives/patch-indexes.sql interwiki.sql To copy in the Wikipedia language-prefix interwikis as well, add: wikipedia-interwiki.sql

Translations
New interface localization files are included for: fy Frisian ro Romanian sl Slovene sq Albanian sr Serbian

Memcached
Memcached is a distributed cache system. See http://www.danga.com/memcached/ MediaWiki can optionally use memcached to store some data between calls to reduce load on the database. Currently this is limited to user and talk page notification data, interwiki prefix/URL matches, and the UTF-8 conversion tables. MediaWiki includes version 1.0.10 of the (GPL'd) PHP memcached client by Ryan Gilfether; if memcached is disabled it acts as a dummy object with minimal overhead. To use memcached you'll need PHP installed with sockets support (this is not in the default configure options). See docs/memcached for some more details. Additionally, you can store login session data in memcached instead of the local filesystem, which can help to enable load-balancing by letting login sessions transparently work on multiple front-end web servers. (The primary other issue is with uploads, which requires some care in handling.) To enable this, set $wgSessionsInMemcached = true; and set $wgCookieDomain appropriately if exposing multiple hostnames. This system is new and may be volatile; login sessions will fail dramatically if memcached is unavailable when this option is turned on.

Online documentation
Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide

Mailing list
A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia wikitech-l list: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

UseModWiki import script
A stripped-down UseModWiki import script is available in the maintenance subdirectory. It is incomplete and requires a lot of manual clean-up, but does function for the brave and pure of heart.

Test suite removed
The unmaintained Java-based test suite has been removed from the tarball release. If you really want it you can check it out from CVS.

mediawiki-20030829
First release under MediaWiki name.