Manual:$wgUploadPath

From mediawiki.org
Server URLs and file paths: $wgUploadPath
The path segment of the upload directory.
Introduced in version:pre 1.1.0
Removed in version:still in use
Allowed values:(path)
Default value:"{$wgScriptPath }/images" (1.8+)
"{$wgScriptPath }/upload" (pre-1.1 - 1.7)
(Note: The default value of this variable depends on other variables, such as the values set in Setup.php , after LocalSettings.php is executed)

Details[edit]

The relative path to the upload directory. This is used to construct the URLs for viewing uploaded files.

In most cases this is just the path component, such as "/w/images". If uploaded files are served from a different domain, this can be a fully-qualified URL with hostname, such as "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en".

If the variable contains a local path (without "http://") then it must start with a slash, otherwise it will result in a bad URL. (For example if you set it to "foldername" it will result in files being loaded from "http://www.example.comfoldername" - note the missing slash after ".com")

$wgEnableUploads is false by default. Also remember to set directory permissions.

To enable permission checks on image files, $wgUploadPath can be pointed to the img_auth.php script ($wgUploadPath = "$wgScriptPath/img_auth.php";) - see Manual:Image authorization for instructions.

There are other variables which are defined relative to this one. If you redefine this in your LocalSettings.php then all dependent variables including $wgUploadDirectory will need redefining also. If both these settings are not coherent the files will be uploaded to a different folder ($wgUploadDirectory) than from where MediaWiki will try to retrieve them for viewing ($wgUploadPath)!
If using $wgUseInstantCommons or $wgForeignFileRepos with file caching enabled, cached foreign files will be served from $wgUploadPath

See also[edit]