Release notes/1.4

MediaWiki 1.4.x (Legacy Releases)
No one should install these on new wikis – security updates for older wikis only.
 * MediaWiki Stable Releases 1.4.x

1.4.15

 * Released on 2006-03-26.

MediaWiki 1.4.15 is a security maintenance release. A bug in decoding of certain encoded links could allow injection of raw HTML into page output; this could potentially lead to XSS attacks. Additionally, this release may display more correctly in IE7 betas.
 * See the full release notes.
 * Download [ mediawiki-1.4.15.tar.gz]

1.4.14

 * Released on 2006-01-19.

MediaWiki 1.4.14 is a security and bugfix maintenance release. A bug in edit comment formatting could send PHP into an infinite loop if certain malformed links were included. In most installations, this would cause the script to fail after PHP's 30-second failsafe timeout.
 * See full release notes.

1.4.13
Released on 2006-01-05.

MediaWiki 1.4.13 is a security and bugfix maintenance release.
 * See the full release notes.

1.4.12
Released on 2005-11-02.

MediaWiki 1.4.12 is a bugfix and security maintenance release. Additional Notes:
 * See the full release notes.
 * A change in PHP 4.4.1 broke handling of extension and &lt;pre> sections, causing garbage data to be inserted in output and saved edits. This version works around the change.
 * This release includes further corrections to the inline CSS style sanitation which works around a JavaScript "feature" on Microsoft Internet Explorer. Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows may be vulnerable to XSS injections on prior 1.4 releases; users of standards-compliant browsers are not vulnerable.
 * All publicly accessible wikis are recommended to upgrade to reduce the risk to visitors using Microsoft web browsers.

1.4.11

 * Released on 2005-10-05.

MediaWiki 1.4.11 is a security maintenance release. Additional Notes:
 * See the full release notes.
 * Unsafe handling of CSS by Microsoft Internet Explorer could be exploited to produce cross-site scripting attacks by JavaScript injection to clients running that browser.
 * This release blacklists several additional variants from use in HTML inline style attributes.
 * All publicly accessible wikis are recommended to upgrade to reduce the risk to visitors using Microsoft web browsers.

1.4.10
Released on 2005-09-21. MediaWiki 1.4.10 is a security maintenance release. Additional Notes: All publicly editable wikis are strongly recommended to upgrade immediately.
 * See the full release notes.
 * A bug in edit submission handling could cause corruption of the previous revision in the database if an abnormal URL was used, such as those used by some spambots.
 * Affected releases:
 * -1.4.x <= 1.4.9; fixed in 1.4.10
 * -1.3.x <= 1.3.15; fixed in 1.3.16
 * 1.5 release candidates are not affected by this problem.

1.4 releases can be manually patched by changing this bit in EditPage.php:
 * to:
 * to:
 * to:

1.4.9

 * Released on 2005-08-29.

MediaWiki 1.4.9 is a security maintenance release.
 * See the full release notes.
 * It corrects two cross-site scripting security bugs:
 * tags were handled incorrectly when TeX rendering support is off, as in the default configuration.
 * Extension or  sections in Wiki table syntax could bypass HTML style attribute restrictions for cross-site scripting attacks against Microsoft Internet Explorer

1.4.8

 * Released on 2005-08-23.

MediaWiki 1.4.8 is a bug fix and security maintenance release.
 * A flaw in the interaction between extensions and HTML attribute sanitization was discovered which could allow unauthorized use of offsite resources in style sheets, and possible exploitation of a JavaScript injection feature on Microsoft Internet Explorer.
 * This version expands the returned text and properly checks it before output.
 * Additionally, an update to skins/MonoBook.php ensures that sites using the default MonoBook skin will display correctly in the Internet Explorer 7 beta. (1.3 and 1.5 are not affected by this bug.)

1.4.7

 * Released on 2005-07-16.

MediaWiki 1.4.7 is a stable series bugfix release. Additional Notes: Note to upgraders: current versions of MediaWiki are known to produce a large number of notice-level warnings under the newly released PHP 4.4.0. These appear however to be harmless; if you encounter them add  to your LocalSettings.php to suppress the notices.
 * See the full release notes.
 * Those affected by the following problems in 1.4.6 should upgrade:
 * Watchlist breakage on MySQL 3.23.x and with table prefix enabled
 * Possible breakage in watchlist, some image resizing modes on PHP 4.1.2
 * 1.4.6 included a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability, so anyone running older 1.4 releases is very strongly encouraged to upgrade as well.
 * PHP 5.1.0 beta 3 is known to be incompatible at this time.
 * MySQL 3.23.x and table prefix compatibility fix: restore old watchlist code (2747, 2755)
 * PHP 4.1.2 compatibility fix: define floatval equivalent if missing

1.4.6

 * Released on 2005-07-07.

MediaWiki 1.4.6 is a stable series security and bugfix release. For details of this and all earlier releases, please see the old main page at wikipedia.sourceforge.net.

1.4.5

 * Released on: 2005-06-03
 * Download at: SourceForge
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.4.4

 * Released on: 2005-05-04
 * Download at: SourceForge
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.4.3

 * Released on: 2005-04-28
 * Download at: SourceForge
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.4.2

 * Released on: 2005-04-22
 * Download at: SourceForge
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.4.1

 * Released on: 2005-04-17
 * Download at: SourceForge
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.4.0

 * Released on: 2005-03-20
 * Download at: Sourceforge
 * Changes: Initial release

= MediaWiki release notes = 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 1.4.15
(released March 26, 2006) MediaWiki 1.4.15 is a security maintenance release. A bug in decoding of certain encoded links could allow injection of raw HTML into page output; this could potentially lead to XSS attacks. Additionally, this release may display more correctly in IE7 betas.

MediaWiki 1.4.14
(released January 19, 2006) MediaWiki 1.4.14 is a security and bugfix maintenance release. A bug in edit comment formatting could send PHP into an infinite loop if certain malformed links were included. In most installations, this would cause the script to fail after PHP's 30-second failsafe timeout. For several other minor fixes, see the complete changelog at the end of this file.

MediaWiki 1.4.13
(released January 5, 2006) MediaWiki 1.4.13 is a security maintenance release.Detection for uploads of Windows Metafile (.wmf) images has been added to help protect against a client-side vulnerability in unpatched Microsoft Windows operating systems. Sites which have enabled uploads and added non-standard file types (such as .ogg, .doc, or .pdf) should upgrade to this release to ensure that malicious .wmf files can't be uploaded with a fake extension; such files could put visitors to the site at risk. For more details on this, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Metafile_vulnerability

MediaWiki 1.4.12
(released 2005-11-02) MediaWiki 1.4.12 is a bugfix and security maintenance release. A change in PHP 4.4.1 broke handling of extension and  sections, causing garbage data to be inserted in output and saved edits. This version works around the change. This release includes further corrections to the inline CSS style sanitation which works around a JavaScript "feature" on Microsoft Internet Explorer. Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows may be vulnerable to XSS injections on prior 1.4 releases; users of standards-compliant browsers are not vulnerable.

MediaWiki 1.4.11
(released 2005-10-05) MediaWiki 1.4.11 is a security maintenance release. Unsafe handling of CSS by Microsoft Internet Explorer could be exploited to produce cross-site scripting attacks by JavaScript injection to clients running that browser. This release blacklists several additional variants from use in HTML inline style attributes. All publicly accessible wikis are recommended to upgrade to reduce the risk to visitors using Microsoft web browsers. Note: the MediaWiki 1.4.x series is not compatible with PHP 5.0.5 or higher. Upgrade to the 1.5.0 release if you require this version of PHP 5.

MediaWiki 1.4.10
(released 2005-09-21) MediaWiki 1.4.10 is a security maintenance release. A bug in edit submission handling could cause corruption of the previous revision in the database if an abnormal URL was used, such as those used by some spambots. Affected releases: 1.5 release candidates are not affected by this problem. All publicly editable wikis are strongly recommended to upgrade immediately. 1.4 releases can be manually patched by changing this bit in EditPage.php: function importFormData( &$request ) { if( $request->wasPosted ) { to: function importFormData( &$request ) { if( $request->getVal( 'action' ) == 'submit' && $request->wasPosted ) {
 * 1.4.x <= 1.4.9; fixed in 1.4.10
 * 1.3.x <= 1.3.15; fixed in 1.3.16

MediaWiki 1.4.9
(released 2005-08-29) MediaWiki 1.4.9 is a security maintenance release. It corrects two cross-site scripting security bugs:
 * tags were handled incorrectly when TeX rendering support is off, as in the default configuration.
 * Extension or  sections in Wiki table syntax could bypass HTML style attribute restrictions for cross-site scripting attacks against Microsoft Internet Explorer Wikis where the optional math support has been *enabled* are not vulnerable to the first, but are vulnerable to the second.

MediaWiki 1.4.8
(released 2005-08-23) MediaWiki 1.4.8 is a bug fix and security maintenance release. A flaw in the interaction between extensions and HTML attribute sanitization was discovered which could allow unauthorized use of offsite resources in style sheets, and possible exploitation of a JavaScript injection feature on Microsoft Internet Explorer. This version expands the returned text and properly checks it before output. Additionally, an update to skins/MonoBook.php ensures that sites using the default MonoBook skin will display correctly in the Internet Explorer 7 beta. (1.3 and 1.5 are not affected by this bug.)

MediaWiki 1.4.7
(released 2005-07-16) MediaWiki 1.4.7 is a bug fix release. Those affected by the following problems in 1.4.6 should upgrade: 1.4.6 included a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability, so anyone running older 1.4 releases is very strongly encouraged to upgrade as well. Note to upgraders: this version of MediaWiki is known to produce a large number of notice-level warnings under the newly released PHP 4.4.0. These appear however to be harmless; if you encounter them add this to your LocalSettings.php to suppress the notices: error_reporting( E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE ); PHP 5.1.0beta3 is known to be incompatible at this time.
 * Watchlist breakage on MySQL 3.23.x and with table prefix enabled
 * Possible breakage in watchlist, some image resizing modes on PHP 4.1.2

MediaWiki 1.4.6
(released 2005-07-07) MediaWiki 1.4.6 is a bug fix and security update release. Incorrect escaping of a parameter in the page move template could be used to inject JavaScript code by getting a victim to visit a maliciously constructed URL. Users of vulnerable releases are recommended to upgrade to this release. Vulnerable versions: This release also includes fixes for some rare bug annoying HTTP errors, a PHP 4.1.2 breakage bug, and works around some template limitations introduced in 1.4.5. See the changelog at the end of this file for a detailed list of bugs fixed.
 * 1.5 preview series: n <= 1.5beta2 vulnerable, fixed in 1.5beta3
 * 1.4 stable series: 1.4beta6 <= n <= 1.4.5 vulnerable, fixed in 1.4.6
 * 1.3 legacy series: not vulnerable

MediaWiki 1.4.5
(released 2005-06-03) MediaWiki 1.4.5 is a security update and bugfix release. Incorrect handling of page template inclusions made it possible to inject JavaScript code into HTML attributes, which could lead to cross-site scripting attacks on a publicly editable wiki. Vulnerable releases and fix: This release also includes a number of bug fixes (see changelog below) and merges some large-server load balancing patches from Wikipedia. An experimental rate limiter for page edits and moves can be enabled with global, per-IP, per-subnet, or per-user bases. See configuration options in includes/DefaultSettings.php
 * 1.5 prerelease: fixed in 1.5alpha2
 * 1.4 stable series: fixed in 1.4.5
 * 1.3 legacy series: fixed in 1.3.13
 * 1.2 series no longer supported; upgrade to 1.4.5 strongly recommended

MediaWiki 1.4.4
(released 2005-05-04) MediaWiki 1.4.4 is a bugfix release for the 1.4 stable release series. Some bugs in the installer/updater and refreshLinks maintenance script were introduced in the last release and have been corrected.

MediaWiki 1.4.3
(released 2005-04-28) MediaWiki 1.4.3 is a bugfix release for the 1.4 stable release series. Chiefly, this fixes a compatibility problem with PHP 5 and a minor link table corruption bug on initial page save.

MediaWiki 1.4.2
(released 2005-04-20) MediaWiki 1.4.2 is a security and bug fix release for the 1.4 stable release series. A cross-site scripting injection vulnerability was discovered, which affects only MSIE clients and is only open if MediaWiki has been manually configured to run output through HTML Tidy ($wgUseTidy). Several other bugs are fixed in this release, see the changelog below. All new installations are highly recommended to use 1.4.2 instead of1.3.x; 1.3.x users should consider upgrading for bug fixes and new features. Ealier 1.4.x release and beta users should upgrade to this release for relevant bug fixes; see the changelog later in this file. If you have trouble, remember to read this whole file and the online FAQ page before asking for help: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ

READ THIS FIRST: Upgrading
If upgrading from an older release, see the notes in the file UPGRADE. There are a couple of minor database changes from the beta releases, and somewhat larger changes from 1.3.x. Upgrading from a previous 1.4.x stable release installation should generally only require copying the new files over the old ones.

READ THIS FIRST, TOO: MySQL 4.1 AND 5.0
MySQL 5.0 is a beta release, not yet ready for production use. If you are using it, the notes below about 4.1 apply to you too. If you have the choice of MySQL 4.0 or MySQL 4.1 and don't need 4.1 for some other application, you should consider sticking with 4.0 for the moment. 4.1 may require you to do extra fiddling to get things to work due to changes that aren't fully backwards-compatible. MySQL 4.1 has changed the authentication protocol in an incompatible way; many PHP installations still use the older client libraries and CANNOT CONNECT TO THE SERVER WITH A PASSWORD without some changes. See: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html If MySQL is set with utf-8 as the default character set, installation may fail with "key too long" errors. Set the default charset to 'latin1' for installation and it should work. The mysqldump backup generator now applies an automatic conversion to UTF-8, which may irretrivably corrupt your data. Pass the -charset option with the original default charset (eg 'latin1') to skip the conversion.

READ THIS FIRST IF RUNNING ON A WINDOWS SERVER
MediaWiki is tested and deployed primarily under the Apache web server on Linux Unix systems. There are known to be problems running on Microsoft's IIS which are not fully resolved. If you have a choice, try running under Apache on Windows, or on a Unix/Linux box instead. If you're having trouble with blank pages on IIS and can't switch, try the workaround suggested in this bug report: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1763

New features

 * 'Recentchanges Patrol' to mark new edits that haven't yet been viewed.
 * New, searchable deletion/upload/protection logs
 * Image gallery generation (Special:Newimages and tag)
 * SVG rasterization support (requires external support tools)
 * Users can select from the available localizations to override the default user interface language.
 * Traditional/Simplified Chinese conversion support
 * rel="nofollow" support to combat linkspam The current implementation adds this attribute to _all_ external URL links in wiki text (but not internal wiki links or interwiki links). To disable the attribute for _all_ external links, add this line to yourLocalSettings.php: $wgNoFollowLinks = false For background information on nofollow see: http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

Installation and compatibility

 * The default MonoBook theme now works with PHP 5.0
 * Installation on systems with PHP's safe mode or other oddities should work more reliably, as MonoBook no longer needs to create a compiled template file for the wiki to run.
 * A table prefix may be specified, to avoid conflicts with other web applications forced to share a database.
 * More thorough UTF-8 input validation; fixes non-ASCII uploaded filenames from Safari.
 * Command-line database upgrade script.

Customizability

 * Default user options can now be overridden in LocalSettings.
 * Skins system more modular: templates and CSS are now in /skins/ New skins can be dropped into this directory and used immediately.
 * More extension hooks have been added.
 * Authentication plugin hook.
 * More internal code documentation, generated with phpdoc: http://www.mediawiki.org/docs/html/

Optimization

 * For many operations, MediaWiki 1.4 should run faster and use less memory than MediaWiki 1.3. Page rendering is up to twice as fast. (Use a PHP accelerator such as Turck MMCache for best results with any PHP application, though!)
 * The parser cache no longer requires memcached, and is enabled by default. This avoids a lot of re-rendering of pages that have been shown recently, greatly speeding longer page views.
 * Support for compiled PHP modules to speed up page diff and Unicode validation/normalization. (Requires ability to compile and load PHP extensions).

What isn't ready yet

 * A new user/groups permissions scheme has been held back to 1.5.
 * An experimental SOAP interface will be made available as an extension
 * PostgreSQL support is largely working, minus search and the installer. You can perform a manual installation.
 * E-mail notification of watched page changes and verification of user-submitted e-mail addresses is not yet included.
 * Log pages are not automatically imported into the new log table at upgrade time. A script to import old text log entries is incomplete, but may be available in later point releases.
 * Some localizations are still incomplete.

Important security updates
A security audit found and fixed a number of problems. Users of MediaWiki 1.3.10 and earlier should upgrade to 1.3.11; users of 1.4 beta releases prior to 1.4rc1 should upgrade immediately.

Cross-site scripting vulnerability
XSS injection points can be used to hijack session and authentication cookies as well as more serious attacks.
 * Media: links output raw text into an attribute value, potentially abusable for JavaScript injection. This has been corrected.
 * Additional checks added to file upload to protect against MSIE and Safari MIME-type autodetection bugs. As of 1.3.10/1.4beta6, per-user customized CSS and JavaScript is disabled by default as a general precaution. Sites which want this ability may set $wgAllowUserCss and $wgAllowUserJs in LocalSettings.php.

Cross-site request forgery
An attacker could use JavaScript-submitted forms to perform various restricted actions by tricking an authenticated user into visiting a malicious web page. A fix for page editing in 1.3.10/1.4beta6 has been expanded in this release to other forms and functions. Authors of bot tools may need to update their code to include the additional fields.

Directory traversal
An unchecked parameter in image deletion could allow an authenticated administrator to delete arbitary files in directories writable by the web server, and confirm existence of files not deletable.

Older issues
Note that 1.4 beta releases prior to beta 5 include an input validation error which could lead to execution of arbitrary PHP code on the server. Users of older betas should upgrade immediately to the current version. Beta 6 also introduces the use of rel="nofollow" attributes on external links in wiki pages to reduce the effectiveness of wiki spam. This will cause participating search engines to ignore external URL links from wiki pages for purposes of page relevancy ranking.

Misc bugs fixed in beta 1

 * (bug 95) Templates no longer limited to 5 inclusions per page
 * New user preference for limiting the image size for images on image description pages
 * (bug 530) Allow user to preview article on first edit
 * (bug 479) RFC 1234 will now make an internal link
 * (bug 511) PhpTal skins shown bogus 'What links here' etc on special pages
 * (bug 770) Adding filter and username exact search match for Special:Listusers
 * (bug 733) Installer die if it can not write LocalSettings.php
 * (bug 705) Various special pages no more show the rss/atom feed links
 * (bug 114) use category backlinks in Special:Recentchangeslinked

Beta 2 fixes

 * (bug 987) Reverted bogus fix for bug 502
 * (bug 992) Fix enhanced recent changes in PHP5
 * (bug 1009) Fix Special:Makesysop when using table prefixes
 * (bug 1010) fix broken Commons image link on Classic & Cologne Blue
 * (bug 985) Fix auto-summary for section edits
 * (bug 995) Close  tag
 * (bug 1004) renamed norsk language links (twice)
 * Login works again when using an old-style default skin
 * Fix for load balancing mode, notify if using old settings format
 * (bug 1014) Missing image size option on old accounts handled gracefully
 * (bug 1027) Fix page moves with table prefix
 * (bug 1018) Some pages fail with stub threshold enabled
 * (bug 1024) Fix link to high-res image version on Image: pages
 * (bug 1016) Fix handling of lines omitting Image: in a tag
 * security fix for image galleries
 * (bug 1039) Avoid error message in certain message cache failure modes
 * Fix string escaping with PostgreSQL
 * (bug 1015) [partial] -- use comment formatter on image gallery text
 * Allow customization of all UI languages
 * use $wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg to make regular UI messages act as content
 * new user option for zh users to disable language conversion
 * Defer message cache initialization, shaving a few ms off file cache hits
 * Fixed Special:Allmessages when using table prefixes
 * (bug 996) Fix $wgWhitelistRead to work again
 * (bug 1028) fix page move over redirect to not fail on the unique index

Beta 3 fixes

 * Hide RC patrol markers when patrol is disabled or not allowed to patrol.
 * Fix language selection for upgraded accounts
 * (bug 1076) navigation links in QueryPage should be translated by wgContLang.
 * (bug 922) bogus DOS line endings in LanguageEl.php
 * Fix index usage in contribs
 * Caching and load limiting options for Recentchanges RSS/Atom feed
 * (bug 1074) Add stock icons for non-image files in gallery/Newimages
 * Add width and height attributes on thumbs in gallery/Newimages
 * Enhance upload extension blacklist to protect against vulnerable Apache configurations

Beta 4 fixes
Mediawiki:zhconversiontable
 * (bug 1090) Fix sitesupport links in CB/classic skins
 * Gracefully ignore non-legal titles in a
 * Fix message page caching behavior when $wgCapitalLinks is turned off after installation and the wiki is subsequently upgraded
 * Database error messages include the database server name/address
 * Paging support for large categories
 * Fix image page scaling when thumbnail generation is disabled
 * Select the content language in prefs when bogus interface language is set
 * Fix interwiki links in edit comments
 * Fix crash on banned user visit
 * Avoid PHP warning messages when thumbnail not generated
 * (bug 1157) List unblocks correctly in Special:Log
 * Fix fatal errors in LanguageLi.php
 * Undo overly bright, difficult to read colors in Cologne Blue
 * (bug 1162) fix five-tilde date inserter
 * Add raw signatures option for those who simply must have cute sigs
 * (bug 1164) Let wikitext be used in Loginprompt and Loginend messages
 * Add the dreaded  to the HTML whitelist
 * (bug 1170) Fix Russian linktrail
 * (bug 1168) Missing text on the bureaucrat log
 * (bug 1180) Fix Makesysop on shared-user-table sites
 * (bug 1178) Fix previous diff link when using 'oldid=0'
 * (bug 1173) Stop blocked accounts from reverting/deleting images
 * Keep generated stylesheets cache-separated for each user
 * (bug 1175) Fix "preview on first edit" mode
 * Fix revert bug caused by bug 1175 fix
 * Fix CSS classes on minor, new, unpatrolled markers in enhanced RC
 * Set MySQL 4 boolean search back to 'and' mode by default
 * (bug 1193) Fix move-only page protection mode
 * Fix zhtable Makefile to include the traditional manual table
 * Add memcache timeout for the zh conversion tables
 * Allow user customization of the zh conversion tables through
 * Add zh-min-man (back) to language names list
 * Ported $wgCopyrightIcon setting from REL1_3A
 * (bug 1218) Show the original image on image pages if the thumbnail would be bigger than the original image
 * (bug 1213) i18n of Special:Log labels
 * (bug 1013) Fix jbo, minnan in language names list
 * Added magic word MAG_NOTITLECONVERT to indicate that the title of the page do not need to be converted. Useful in zh:
 * (bug 1224) Use proper date messages for date reformatter
 * (bug 1241) Don't show 'cont.' for first entry of the category list
 * (bug 1240) Special:Preferences was broken in Slovenian locale when $wgUseDynamicDates is enabled
 * Added magic word MAG_NOCONTENTCONVERT to supress the conversion of the content of an article. Useful in zh:
 * write-lock for updating the zh conversion tables in memcache
 * recursively parse subpages of MediaWiki:Zhconversiontable
 * (bug 1144) Fix export for fy language
 * make removal of an entry from zhconversiontable work
 * (bug 752) Don't insert newline in link title for url with %0a
 * Fix missing search box contents in MonoBook skin
 * Add option to forward search directly to an external URL (eg google)
 * Correctly highlight the fallback language variant when the selected variant is disabled. Used in zh: only for now.

Beta 5 fixes
wgUserSysopBans is true.
 * (bug 1124) Fix ImageGallery XHTML compliance
 * (bug 1186) news: in the middle of a word
 * (bug 1283) Use underlining and borders to highlight additions/deletions in diff-view
 * Use user's local timezone in Special:Log display
 * Show filename for images in gallery by default (restore beta 3 behaviour)
 * (bug 1201) Double-escaping in brokenlinks, imagelinks, categorylinks, searchindex
 * When using squid reverse proxy, cache the redirect to the Main_Page
 * (bug 1302) Fix Norwegian language file
 * (bug 1205) Fix broken article saving in PHP 5.1
 * (bug 1206) Implement CURRENTWEEK and CURRENTDOW magic keyword (will give number of the week and number of the day).
 * (bug 1204) Blocks do not expire automatically
 * (bug 1184) expiry time of indefinite blocks shown as the current time
 * (bug 1317) Fix external links in image captions
 * (bug 1084) Fix logo not rendering centrally in IE
 * (bug 288) Fix tabs wrapping in IE6
 * (bug 119) Fix full-width tabs with RTL text in IE
 * (bug 1323) Fix logo rendering off-screen in IE with RTL language
 * Show "block" link in Special:Recentchanges for logged in users, too, if
 * (bug 1326) Use content language for '1movedto2' in edit history
 * zh: Fix warning when HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE is not set
 * zh: Fix double conversion for zh-sg and zh-hk
 * (bug 1132) Fix concatenation of link lists in refreshLinks
 * (bug 1101) Fix memory leak in refreshLinks
 * (bug 1339) Fix order of @imports in Cologne Blue CSS
 * Don't try to create links without namespaces ([[Category:]] link bug)
 * Memcached data compression fixes
 * Several valid XHTML fixes
 * (bug 624) Fix IE freezing rendering whilst waiting for CSS with MonoBook
 * (bug 211) Fix tabbed preferences with XHTML MIME type
 * Fix for script execution vulnerability.

Beta 6 fixes
(on by default) They can be re-enabled via $wgAllowUserJs and $wgAllowUserCss.
 * (bug 1335) implement 'tooltip-watch' in Language.php
 * Fix linktrail for nn: language
 * (bug 1214) Fix prev/next links in Special:Log
 * (bug 1354) Fix linktrail for fo: language
 * (bug 512) Reload generated CSS on preference change
 * (bug 63) Fix displaying as if logged in after logout
 * Set default MediaWiki:Sitenotice to '-', avoiding extra database hits
 * Skip message cache initialization on raw page view (quick hack)
 * Fix notice errors in wfDebugDieBacktrace in XML callbacks
 * Suppress notice error on bogus timestamp input (returns epoch as before)
 * Remove unnecessary initialization and double-caching of parser variables
 * Call-tree output mode for profiling
 * (bug 730) configurable $wgRCMaxAge; don't try to update purged RC entries
 * Add $wgNoFollowLinks option to add rel="nofollow" on external links
 * (bug 1130) Show actual title when moving page instead of encoded one.
 * (bug 925) Fix headings containing
 * (bug 1131) Fix headings containing interwiki links
 * (bug 1380) Update Nynorsk language file
 * (bug 1232) Fix sorting of cached Special:Wantedpages in miser mode
 * (bug 1217) Image within an image caption broke rendering
 * (bug 1384) Make patrol signs have the same width for page moves as for edits
 * (bug 1364) fix "clean up whitespace" in Title:SecureAndSplit
 * (bug 1389) i18n for proxyblocker message
 * Add fur/Furlan/Friulian to language names list
 * Add TitleMoveComplete hook on page renames
 * Allow simple comments for each translation rules in MW:Zhconversiontable
 * (bug 1402) Make link color of tab subject page link on talk page indicate whether article exists
 * (bug 1368) Fix SQL error on stopword/short word search w/ MySQL 3.x
 * Translated Hebrew namespace names
 * (bug 1429) Stop double-escaping of block comments; fix formatting
 * (bug 829) Fix URL-escaping on block success
 * (bug 1228) Fix double-escaping on &amp; sequences in [enclosed] URLs
 * (bug 1435) Fixed many CSS errors
 * (bug 1457) Fix XHTML validation on category column list
 * (bug 1458) Don't save if edit form submission is incomplete
 * Logged-in edits and preview of user CSS/JS are now locked to a session token.
 * Per-user CSS and JavaScript subpage customizations now disabled by default.
 * Removed .ogg from the default uploads whitelist as an extra precaution. If your web server is configured to serve Ogg files with the correct Content-Type header, you can re-add it in LocalSettings.php: $wgFileExtensions[] = 'ogg';

RC1 fixes
Set $wgShowSQLErrors = true for debugging. to help prevent duplicate articles. on Latin-1 wikis. characters.
 * Fix notice error on nonexistent template in wikitext system message
 * (bug 1469) add missing  tags on Special:Log
 * (bug 1470) remove extra  tags from Danish log messages
 * Fix notice on purge w/ squid mode off
 * (bug 1477) hide details of SQL error messages by default
 * (bug 1430) Don't check for template data when editing page that doesn't exist
 * Recentchanges table purging fixed when using table prefix
 * (bug 1431) Avoid redundant objectcache garbage collection
 * (bug 1474) Switch to better-cached index for statistics page count
 * Run Unicode normalization on all input fields
 * Fix translation for allpagesformtext2 in LanguageZh_cn and LanguageZh_tw
 * Block image revert without valid login
 * (bug 1446) stub Bambara (bm) language file using French messages
 * (bug 1432) Update Estonian localization
 * (bug 1471) unclosed tag in Danish messages
 * convertLinks script fixes
 * Corrections to template loop detection
 * XHTML encoding fix for usernames containing & in Special:Emailuser
 * (for zh) Search for variant links even when conversion is turned off,
 * Disallow ISO 8859-1 C1 characters and "no-break space" in user names
 * Correct the name of the main page it LanguageIt
 * Allow Special:Makesysop to work for usernames containing SQL special
 * Fix annoying blue line in Safari on scaled-down images on description page
 * Increase upload sanity checks
 * Fix XSS bug in Media: links
 * Add cross-site form submission protection to various actions
 * Fix fatal error on some dubious page titles
 * Stub threshold displays correctly again

1.4.0 final fixes
exist" and "wrong password" when using AuthPlugin   'bn', 'bo', 'dv', 'dz', 'ht', 'ii', 'li', 'lo', 'ng', 'or', 'pa', 'si',    'ti', 've'   instead of trying to install with corrupt table files
 * (bug 65) Fix broken interwiki link encoding on Latin-1 wikis; force to UTF-8
 * (bug 563) Fix UTF-8 interwiki URL redirects via Latin-1 wikis
 * (bug 1536) Fix page info
 * Support os (Ossetic) as language code, using Russian localization base
 * (bug 1610) Support non (Old Norse) as language code, using Icelandic localization base
 * (bug 1618) Properly list custom namespaces in Special:Allpages
 * (bug 1622) Remove trailing' >' when using category browser
 * (bug 1570) Fix php 4.2.x error on conflict merging
 * (bug 1585) Fix page title on post-login redirection page
 * Run UTF-8 validation on old text in Recentchanges RSS diffs
 * (bug 1642) fix a mime type typo in img_auth.php
 * Automated interwiki redirects only for local interwikis
 * Respect read-only mode on block removals
 * Trim old illegal characters from syndication feeds
 * Reduce message cache outage recovery delay from 1 day to 5 minutes
 * (bug 1403) Update Finnish localization
 * (bug 1478) Punjabi localization
 * (bug 1667) Update script 5 second countdown.
 * (bug 1057) Fix logging table encoding (error on MySQL 4.1)
 * (bug 1680) Fix linktrail for fo
 * (bug 1653) Removing hardcoded messages in Special:Allmessages
 * (bug 1594) Render a hyphen in a formula as &minus; in HTML
 * (bug 1495) Fall back to default language MediaWiki: for custom messages
 * (bug 1617) Show different error messages for "user does not
 * (bug 1532), (bug 1544) Changed language names for
 * Fix editing on non-Esperanto wiki with user language pref set to Esperanto
 * Make conversion table for zh-sg default to zh-cn, and zh-hk default to zh-tw
 * Fix PHP notice in MonoBook when counters disabled
 * (bug 1696) Update namespaces, dates in uk localization
 * (bug 551) Installer warns about magic_quotes_runtime and magic_quotes_sybase
 * Installer no longer tries to move non-default MediaWiki: pages into Template:
 * User-to-user email disabled by default ($wgEnableUserEmail)

1.4.1 fixes
search index and categories) variants (for zh)  Special:Unusedimages  readable by the web server
 * (bug 1720) fix genitive month names for uk
 * (bug 1704) fixed untranslateable string in Special:Log
 * (bug 1638) Added Belrusian language file
 * (bug 1736) typo in SpecialValidate.php
 * (bug 73) Upload doesn't run edit updates on description page (links,
 * (bug 646) fails to recognize \ll and \gg
 * (bug 926) \div element from TeX not supported in element
 * (bug 1147) add \checkmark to whitelist in texutil.ml
 * (bug 937) \limits function from LaTeX not supported in element
 * Support for manually converting article title to different Chinese
 * (bug 1488, bug 1744) Fix encoding for preferences, dates in Latin-1 mode
 * (bug 1042) Fix UTF-8 case conversion for PHP <4.3 with mbstring extension
 * Fix code typo that broke article credits display
 * Installation fixes for running under IIS
 * (bug 1556) login page tab order. "remember" checkbox now come after password.
 * SQL debug log fixlets
 * (bug 1815) Fix namespace in old revision display with mismatched title
 * (bug 1788) Fix link duplication when edit/upload comment includes newlines
 * Change default on $wgSysopUserBans and $wgSysopRangeBans to true
 * Fix link conversion for URL request
 * (bug 1851) Updated download URL for the SCIM packages used by zhtable
 * (bug 1853) Try stripping quotes from term for 'go' title match
 * Fix missing function in Latin1 mode
 * (bug 1860) Anchors of interwiki links did not get normalized
 * (bug 1847) accept lowercase x in ISBN, do not accept invalid A-W,Y,Z
 * Fix link conversion for URL request, hopefully without breaking the wiki
 * (bug 1849) New option allows to consider categorized images as used on
 * Localized category namespace for ka (Georgian)
 * (bug 1107) Work around includes problem in installer when parent dir is not
 * (bug 1927) Incorrect escaping on wikitext message in Blockip

1.4.2 fixes

 * Fix math options in Finnish localization
 * Use in-process Tidy extension if available when $wgUseTidy is on
 * (bug 1933) Fix PATH_INFO usage under IIS with PHP ISAPI module
 * (bug 1188)  in  includes fixed
 * (bug 1936) in  includes fixed
 * Fix a potential MSIE JavaScript injection vector in Tidy mode

1.4.3 fixes
for expensive queries in Special:Statistics.
 * (bug 1636) Refs like &#0355; were misinterpreted as octal in some places
 * (bug 1163) Special:Undelete showed oldest revision instead of newest
 * (bug 1938) Fix escaping of illegal character references in link text
 * (bug 1997) Fix for error on display of renamed items in Recentchanges on PHP5
 * (bug 1949) Profiling typo in rare error case
 * (bug 1963) Fix deletion log link when $wgCapitalLinks is off
 * (bug 1970) Don't show move tab for immobile pages
 * (bug 1770) Page creation recorded links from the 'newarticletext' message
 * Optional change to the site_stats table. When applied, this removes the need

1.4.4 fixes

 * (bug 725) Let dir="ltr" attribute work again in MonoBook on RTL languages
 * (bug 2024) Skip JavaScript error for custom skins where .js message not set
 * (bug 2025) Updated Indonesian localization
 * (bug 2039) Updated Lithuanian localization
 * Don't die on PHP <4.3.0 when calling mysql_ping
 * Fix refreshLinks cleanup step on MySQL 3.x
 * Fix breakage on rerunning the site_stats update
 * Localized namespaces for csb

1.4.5 fixes
to preserve the correct flow of text on RTL wikis. accepting invalid syntax like #REDIRECT [[foo] in redirects being passed to all special pages Special:Page/0 syntax.
 * Fix for reading incorrectly re-gzipped HistoryBlob entries
 * Generalize project namespace for Latin localization, update namespaces
 * (bug 2075) Corrected namespace definitions in Tamil localization
 * (bug 1692) Fix margin on unwatch tab
 * Avoid overwriting shared image metadata cache with bogus encoding conversions
 * Fix reporting of minor edits in Special:Export output
 * (bug 2150) Fix tab indexes on edit form
 * Run ArticleSave hooks on image upload.
 * (bug 2239) Fix non-ASCII chars in linktrail for Latin-1 mode
 * (bug 1454) Backport edit/move rate limiter from CVS HEAD (experimental)
 * (bug 1929) Fix documentation comment for $wgWhitelistRead
 * (bug 1975) The name for Limburgish (li) changed from "Lèmburgs" to "Limburgs"
 * (bug 2019) Wrapped the output of Special:Version in in order
 * (bug 2084) Fixed a regular expression in includes/Title.php that was
 * (bug 2087) Fixed a bug in special page handling which which stopped "0" from
 * (bug 2094) Multiple use of a template produced wrong results in some cases
 * Fixed a bug in Special:Allpages, Special:Contributions, Special:Whatlinkshere Special:Recentchangeslinked and Special:Emailuser, they all mishandled being passed "0" with the Special:Page/0 syntax (unrelated to bug 2087), this either required a workaround in the form of passing "0" as a GET value or blocked the user from passing that value at all.
 * Fixed a bug in Special:Newimages that made it impossible to search for '0'
 * (bug 2217) Negative ISO years were incorrectly converted to BC notation.
 * (bug 2267) Don't generate thumbnail at the same size as the source image.
 * Disable fulltext image name search in Special:Imagelist during MiserMode.
 * Fix sorting of profiling output in debug log: largest last for easy tailing
 * (bug 2281) Fix regression with page moves taking the wrong talk pages
 * Regression fix: watchlist day cutoff
 * (bug 2173) Fatal error when removing an article with an empty title from the watchlist
 * (bug 2034) Armor HTML attributes against template inclusion and links munging

1.4.6 changes

 * New covering index was added on cur for query speedups.
 * (bug 2228) Updated the Slovak translation
 * (bug 1976) fix shared user database with a table prefix set
 * (bug 2309) Allow templates and template parameters in HTML attribute zone with proper validation checks. (regression from fix for 2304)
 * (bug 2355) Use content language in image blacklist check
 * (bug 2368) Avoid fatally breaking PHP 4.1.2 in a debug line
 * (bug 2384) Fix typo in regex for IP address checking
 * Enhance cleanupDupes.php to save the pruned revisions to old for safety, and to try to pick the same one that would be read by the wiki
 * (bug 2292) Catch 'null' return values for images that can not be thumbnailed.
 * (bug 2277) Added Friulian language file
 * (bug 2459) Correct escaping in Special:Log prev/next links
 * (bug 750) Keep line endings consistent in LocalSettings.php
 * (bug 1120) Updated the Czech translation
 * (bug 2172) Solved a parsing error that would happen when there was a  tag on a page that included a gallery through a template (backported from HEAD)
 * (bug 2457) The "Special page" href now links to the current special page rather than to ""
 * Latin: auto-grammar for -tio, -tionis endings in meta talk namespace
 * Fixed a typo in the Romanian language file (NS_MESIA => NS_MEDIA)
 * (bug 2531) Changed the interwiki name for sh (Serbocroatian) to Srpskohrvatski/Српскохрватски (was Српскохрватски (Srbskohrvatski))
 * Workaround for mysterious problem with bogus epoch If-Last-Modified reqs
 * Remove forced covering index usage to allow stable release upgrade.
 * Fix escaping in page move template.
 * (bug 1109) Suppress compressed output on 304 responses

1.4.7 changes

 * (bug 2755, bug 2747) MySQL 3.23.x and table prefix compatibility fix: restore old watchlist code
 * PHP 4.1.2 compatibility fix: define floatval equivalent if missing

1.4.8 changes

 * Fix spelling of $wgForwardSearchUrl in DefaultSettings.php
 * MSIE7 compatibility fix: correct browser version detect for IE CSS fixes
 * (bug 3220) Fix escaping of block URLs in Recentchanges
 * (bug 3244) Fix remote image loading hack, JavaScript injection on MSIE

1.4.9 changes

 * Security fix for
 * Security fix for tables

1.4.10 changes

 * (bug 3153) Fix for compressOld.php -t gzip
 * Fix for corruption on page save

1.4.12 changes

 * Fix version number
 * Fix Parser::unstrip on PHP 4.4.1
 * Sanitizer CSS comment processing order fix

1.4.13 changes

 * Deny all uploads of Windows Metafiles (WMFs), in response to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Metafile_vulnerability

1.4.14 changes

 * Backported Skin::formatComment fix from 1.6

1.4.15 changes

 * (bug 4824) IE7 beta 2 broke compatibility with PNG logo workarounds, and seems to work ok with other bits. No longer including the IE workarounds JavaScript for IE 7 and above.
 * Fix fragment HTML injection

Caveats
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 1.3.x and older releases, see HISTORY.

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/Help:Contents

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 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/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
There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net