Project:Support desk/Sections/OtherProg

__NEWSECTIONLINK__ = HTML and CSS Formatting Support =

Variables not expanded to value

 * MediaWiki: 1.11.1 and 1.11.0
 * PHP: 5.2.3-1ubuntu6 (apache2handler)
 * MySQL: 5.0.45-Debian_1ubuntu3-log
 * URL: private

I have a problem with MediaWiki standard variables like SITENAME which to not get expanded to their value on certain occasions. For instance, SITENAME in the footer doesn't get expanded and the wiki displays "About " literaly. The weird thing is that the same variable gets expanded correctly on the window title / page name. I have absolutely no idea what is going on and have tried debuging the Parser a bit but without any success. I have the GeSHi - Generic Syntax Highlighter extension installed but disconnecting it doesn't change anything.

—195.154.168.90 15:44, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Only certain MediaWiki messages allow for wiki code to be placed into them. Most do not, which is why you are experiencing that issue. --Skizzerz talk - contribs [[Image:Tournesol.png|20px]] MediaWiki Support Team  21:07, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Well in fact, appart from the page titles, variables like don't work in any of the wiki pages that I edit so I'm a bit puzzled. Is there something to enable in LocalSettings.php? 195.154.168.90 15:25, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

We got exactly the same mistake, 'resolved' by creating a new account, one of the administrator/Bureaucrate account was causing that trouble ... Why ? We don't know. We also use the GeSHi extension. Maybee is-it comming from there ... --84.101.142.60 09:22, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Problem not resolved ... 1 hour after ower change, the variables are bugging again ... --84.101.142.60 09:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * This could be a side issue but which extension for GeSHi were you using? If it was Extension:GeSHiCodeTag, there are some issues with Tags conflicting with HTML tags, for example the  tag, as that is a language specified in GeSHi. You could check out what tags surround the non rendering  in the source code. You may need to purge server side caching aswell with the query string key/value pair &action=purge in a long url request to see changes taking effect--Zven 01:15, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
 * No changes, I guess it is a charset problem, because when it bug, chars are saving in ISO and they have to be in UTF ... (Rhombus with Question mark) --84.101.142.229 08:45, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * is it possible the problem to come from mysql 5 ? cause when i see other wiki like wikipedia they are still on mysql 4!


 * It seems the problems is coming from apache / php and mbstring functions, we have a website in UTF8 and mediawiki on the same server, and when a client connect to the site, it makes the wiki go wrong because it doesnt like mbstring functions. We set mbstring.func_overload in each .htaccess with the value 6 for the site and 0 for the wiki, but sometime it seem that the value stay to 6 when we connect to the wiki. In fact, we don't have any solution --86.71.108.138 10:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)