Manual talk:MediaWiki feature list/Archive

To enable or disable smart caching (?)
It is mentioned in the feature list that there is an optional smart caching. How do I enable or disable that caching? Is it enabled by default? Thank you.

I wouldn't know how one might be able to disable this feature.


 * We don't have anything called "smart caching". --brion 07:55, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * When I was setting up my MediaWiki powered Wiki, I also saw the option for smart caching, I believe. Just wanted to throw that out there. 68.7.63.29 08:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Other wikimedia projects
Will there come a link system in wikimedia so we can link the other wikimediaprojects so we can see under or above the interwiki links in wikipedia for linking to wiktionary and commons and other projects pages (to promote them a bit) and share these info??

Or schould it be done with external links under the article.q

On-page credits?
I wasn't able to figure out how to enable this feature. I can always sign my edits... but could there be more information provided about this? --ShutterBC 22:06, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Ditto.
 * On DefaultSettings.php you must change $wgMaxCredits to -1 to show all credits --83.43.175.201 00:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Article validation feature
This was supposedly on the test wiki, which is now closed. What happened to it? Brianjd 04:31, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)


 * It was experimental, and not very robust. The code is in there if you really really want to try toying with it. --brion 07:57, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Why is it not in the feature list? Brianjd 03:29, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)


 * Because, it is not actually working out-of-the-box, and will be completely broken in the upcoming MediaWiki 1.5 (which is currently CVS HEAD). --Magnus Manske 11:00, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * See Talk:Article validation feature. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 06:06, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

HTML
How does MediaWiki handle HTML? One of the reasons the Foundation wiki works differently (only approved users can edit) is that it allows full use of HTML. Brianjd 04:33, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki allows only a limited subset of HTML elements and attributes. See Sanitizer.php in the current development code for the horrors of what it actually does.


 * There is an option $wgRawHtml to enable raw-HTML sections, which you would surround with ... . --brion 08:05, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Is it reasonable to provide a way to enable raw-HTML to protected pages? If an extension is recommended (I haven't opened that door yet) what approach would be recommended? LarryEitel 7 July 2005 14:24 (UTC)

Any news on a mod for this?

Mapping Features to Implementation
I'm new to MediaWiki and am having trouble learning how to use it well. Is there a guide which shows how to take advantage of these features in a MediaWiki ?

For example, it is nice to know MediaWiki supports transclusion, but a link to the WikiPedia article on it is not as helpful as a link to a description on how to use that feature in articles. Help:Index does not use the term 'transclusion', so it is harder to figure out how to do something listed in this Features page.

Another example: provide a link that describe what basic HTML is supported by default. Links on each feature (such as for EasyTimeline, or links into content under in the Help: namespace (such as Help:Template) would be really helpful.

--DavidBiesack 18:30, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Disable Discussion and Talk Pages by Default?
Anyway to disable discussion and talk pages for all pages? In includes/SkinTemplate.php comment out the lines from wfProfileIn( "$fname-talk" ); to wfProfileOut( "$fname-talk" );. While this does not disable the actual talk namespace, it hides talk from the user.

This doesn't appear to apply for 1.5, can somebody post instructions?

For any version, open your skin's css file (/skins/yourskinname/main.css) and find the id "ca-talk" and add "display: none;" to the definition. I should add that you can remove any of the top navigation links like this by just finding the appropriate "ca-****" id.

Disable Editing?
Is there a setting to disable 'edit' on all pages, by default?

A: Setting_user_rights_in_MediaWiki

I disable by comment line 557 -> 562 in the includes/SkinTemplate.php file.


 * Line numbers shift around from version to version, so that advice is not as useful. I added a new $wgDisableAnonymousEditLink=true option in my private version's LocalSettings.php file, then wrapped the appropriate section in includes/SkinTemplate.php with a check as follows.  Search for "$fname-edit".  I'm sure there are some other details missing but it seems effective to hide the interface.  (This does not hide the section edit links, but you can disable those separately.)  --mailto:ed@halley.cc

wfProfileIn( "$fname-edit" ); global $wgDisableAnonymousEditLink; if ( $wgUser->mId || !$wgDisableAnonymousEditLink ) { ...     }      wfProfileOut( "$fname-edit" );


 * Article with a similar technique which also shows how to disable section edit links available here.

Disable Display of History?
Tried $wgWhitelistHistory = true;, and history continues to display for anonymous. A way to disable history display, default for all pages ?


 * Please use software that's designed to hide information this way, instead of MediaWiki. --brion 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


 * A lot of people want MediaWiki as a convenient team web builder, where anonymous history queries and anonymous editing isn't always appropriate. I see no reason to turn those people away.  I added a new $wgDisableAnonymousHistory=true option in my private version's LocalSettings.php file, then wrapped the appropriate section in includes/SkinTemplate.php with a check as follows.  Search for "$fname-live".  I'm sure there are some other details missing but it seems effective to hide the interface.  --mailto:ed@halley.cc

wfProfileIn( "$fname-live" ); if ( $this->mTitle->getArticleId ) { global $wgDisableAnonymousHistory; if ( $wgUser->mId || !$wgDisableAnonymousHistory ) { $content_actions['history'] = array(                  ...               ); }          ...


 * With the method above, you simply hide the "history" tab. You can still get the history using URL : http://yourwiki/index.php?title=articleName&action=history.
 * If you want to completely disable the access to history for anon users, I did this (actually it's a copy/paste from EditPage.php):
 * in includes/PageHistory.php :

function history { global $wgOut, $wgRequest, $wgTitle, $wgUser; if ( $wgUser->isAnon ) { wfDebug( "$fname: user must log in\n" ); $this->userNotLoggedInPage; wfProfileOut( $fname ); return; } 		/* 		 * Allow client caching. */ 		if( $wgOut->checkLastModified( $this->mArticle->getTimestamp ) ) /* Client cache fresh and headers sent, nothing more to do. */ 			return;


 * and I added the new function (also a paste from EditPage.php):

function userNotLoggedInPage { global $wgOut; $wgOut->setPageTitle( wfMsg( 'whitelistedittitle' ) ); $wgOut->setRobotpolicy( 'noindex,nofollow' ); $wgOut->setArticleRelated( false ); $wgOut->addWikiText( wfMsg( 'whitelistedittext' ) ); $wgOut->returnToMain( false ); }


 * then, in includes/DifferenceEngine.php, I did the same thing at the very beginning of the function showDiffPage (in the class DifferenceEngine - be careful, several classes in this file)
 * (this is to avoid anon using "recent changes->(diff) links").
 * Anon can still get access to old revision using URL : http://yourwiki/index.php?title=articlename&oldid=#xxxx (xxxx = number), I'll try to fix this. Mediawiki:Celsius
 * Fixed in includes/Article.php :

function getOldIDFromRequest { global $wgRequest, $wgUser; if ( $wgUser->isAnon ) return null; $this->mRedirectUrl = false; I don't know wheter this is a correct way to do it, but it works. Mediawiki:Celsius

The history is still available through Articlename&oldid=XXXX&action=raw Here one could completely disable the raw action. Just add the following line in LocalSettings.php: $wgDisabledActions = array('raw');

To disable Special:Export for not logged-in users change in includes/SpecialPage.php the line 'Export'                   => array( 'SpecialPage', 'Export' ), to 'Export'                   => array( 'SpecialPage', 'Export', 'edit' ),

Still there are some things to fix: The history leaks through news feeds. But that are only the most recently changes.


 * As of MW 1.13 it is possible to disable the feeds from within LocalSettings.php with:

$wgFeed = false;
 * So the history will not leak at this point. --Rebbyte 07:49, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * If you don't care about loosing the history, " " in the maintenance directory might be helpful --138.246.7.148 14:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

What Settings Can Be Toggled On/Off?
It does not seem there can be much easy customization to default setting for MediaWiki. Also, I am unable to find documentation showing what can be toggled in localsettings.php.

A: The LocalSettings.php file has this useful advice at the top of the file:

# See includes/DefaultSettings.php for all configurable settings # and their default values, but don't forget to make changes in _this_ # file, not there.

Don't change your includes/DefaultSettings.php file, just change your ./LocalSettings.php file. But the former has a lot of comments describing just about everything you can adjust.

Where is Admin Interface?
There are preference options when I log in as an administrator, but I can not find an administrative interface. Is there one?

A: When you are logged in as WikiSysop or some other user that is in the sysop group, you can edit pages that normal users cannot edit. However, there is no specific page that you are given a link to specifically because you are logged in as admin. Most of the pages you can change are in the MediaWiki namespace or the Special namespace. Try looking up online what you want to change, and see where it is.

What I did was whenever I found something useful, I put it in the toolbox on the left side under "administration". This does mean that everybody can see where the administrative pages are, but those are publicly available on the internet anyway, and security by obscurity is not the way to go.

If you want to take a look, here's my website. However, it is running from my own home computer, so it might not always be up.

74.105.215.166 19:33, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

User IP Address
Is there an option to disable display of user's IP address? A privacy concern for me.


 * Logging in.--Patrick 22:24, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * As an administrator of a MediaWiki system, is there an option to never display IP addresses, anywhere of anyone??

To remove the IP address and related Talk links from the top of MediaWiki pages, add this line to LocalSettings.php :

$wgShowIPinHeader = false;

This does not remove the IP Addresses from the recent changes. Is there an option for that too?


 * See mw:Manual:$wgPutIPinRC. But you probably want to disable anonymous contributions on your wiki; for that add  to your LocalSettings.php. --.anaconda 18:07, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

wikipedia application
I heard talk a while back about kde and wikipedia collaborating. From what I read this was to result in some type of viewer along with lots of the kde apps getting data from wikipedia. I haven't seen much else besides this. I'm not sure if this is the place to put this, but my question is if there are any project to make a wikipedia viewer/editor. Using the browser is nice, but a stand alone application would be great (or even a fancy XUL application like the MAB). I'm just curious if there are any project like that in the works out there. Thanks!

-Horndude77

User Accounts and SubDomains
I would really like to set up my wiki so that whenever a user creates an account a subdomain of my main domain is created with the users account name. Are there any built in functions to allow this? If not, how can it be done? Thanks much - Jake (aka gecko) gecko@digiraver.com
 * It's not built-in to the software, and unlikely ever to be, since it would require changing the DNS configuration of your server. This is outside of MediaWiki's scope, and also dependent on the particular software you use (BIND, djpdns, whatever Microsoft uses, etc.) --83.147.171.12 11:42, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Of course you can get this going, by (1) configuring an A entry in your DNS for .yourwiki.xy pointing to your servers IP and (2) using apache rewrite rules, which would redirect *.yourwiki.xy to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:* rewrite rules can be tricky, but you can get it. --Epic

Require login?
(How to do it in MediaWiki 1.5 upwards)

Set the following lines in LocalSettings.php:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false; $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;
 * 1) This line stops all unregistered users from editing
 * 1) This line disables self-registration
 * 2) Sysops or logged-in users can create accounts for others through Special:Userlogin

Orphaned images
This is listed as a feature on the article page. Does MediaWiki include this? If so, how do you access it? I've never come across it. --83.147.171.12 11:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Special:Unusedfiles. Rob Church (talk) 20:28, 16 June 2006 (UTC)