Topic on Extension talk:Widgets

Everything I've read says I have to create a page in the widget namespace, but NOTHING says how I'm supposed to do this. I'm new to using MediaWiki, so I don't know how this is supposed to work, there doesn't seem to be any information about the basics.

Let us say your wiki is called WikiWidgets.org. Then you would go to the url http://WikiWidgets.org/Widget:WIDGET_YOU_WANT_TO_CREATE on your wiki to create the page. The part of the url that says "Widget:" is the part that tells MediaWiki to use the widget namespace.

I made this more obvious form the docu. Hope this helps.

Kghbln, thanks that helps.

Do you know if I still have to manually install 'smarty' if I used git to install? It doesn't look like it's there, but the git install instructions don't mention manually installing smarty.

No if you follow the instructions: Extension:Widgets#Installing using Git

well I followed those instructions to the letter, and it doesn't include the smarty folder but it does include calls to it. After installing smarty manually to the Widgets folder, the errors in /var/log/apache2/error.log changed, so it's obvious that the smarty folder is needed.

I don't think this extension is ready for production.

Since you're installing from git, did you run composer update --no-dev inside the widgets folder?

well, I tried it again, and got a different result. looks like it did managed to update something, but I'm still not able to get the Iframe widget to function. At least it's not crashing when I call the widget now.

further testing shows it working with a youtube widget, but since it's the Iframe I need, not sure what I need to do yet.

ok, so I fought with it some more, and it seems to be working.

I can't recommend this extension. The installation and config is not well documented and it is far more difficult than the other extensions that only require the folder to be added and a line inserted into LocalSettings.php

Realistically I understand why so many organizations I've worked with are dropping mediawiki for other products. while extensions are great, the lack of a click and go installation is beyond what most people are willing to do to install.