VisualEditor/Feedback

Post your feedback about using the visual editor. Learn how to report problems clearly.

Need more attention? Report directly in Phabricator. The Wikimedia Foundation does not provide support for installing VisualEditor on third-party wikis.

You can read the guide to optimize the visual editor on your site. The guide explains how to set up citation templates.

View open developer tasks – Report a new bug in Phabricator

Previous page history was archived for backup purposes at VisualEditor/Feedback/LQT Archive 1 on 2015-07-30.

The bug occur when I am editing Chinese Wikipedia using VisualEditor. When I try to add link or citation to my page it always redirect me to the page https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/undefined which makes me unable to edit anythings. How can this problem be solved? Thank you.

P.S. I have tried serval times on other Languages' Wikipedia (e.g. English and Japanese) and no problem show up. Seems this bug only occur in Chinese Wikipedia.

P.S.2 The problem only occur on desktop version but not mobile version.

now the problem is fixed

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T103276

When you use the VisualEditor to copy a cell or a row in a table that has an |style="text-align: left;" | attached to it, to overrule the entire table's alignment, the style alignment isn't copied with the cell's content. Then, there is no way in the formatting tools to assign an alignment setting to the cell. Can this please be added? Be ideal if you could format an entire column, but even cell by cell would be useful.

At this time, that type of formatting can only be done in a wikitext editor.

If anyone in the future finds this like I did in October 2023: the only way to add cell formatting such as centering the text is still by editing the source code (wikitext editor). It can not be done in the Visual Editor.

It would be great to have centering available in visual editing

I just updated to MediaWiki 1.35.0 yesterday.

Whenever I try to edit a page using the visual editor a progress bar starts to load and near the middle of the process the progress bar stops to fill itself and I get the message:

"Error contacting the Parsoid/RESTBase server (HTTP 404)"

I'm on shared hosting and I'm not running a RESTBase server, but from what I get it's not mandatory (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor#Switching_between_Wikitext_Editing_and_VisualEditor). I have set $wgVisualEditorAllowLossySwitching=false, by the way.

The wiki also has $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false.

Any ideas?

If you set $wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = true, it might work.

I am in the same situation except that I want a to have $wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false

The documentation of VisualEditor sadly is still lacking. I am having the same problem, but there are no hints on how to fix this.

There is a relative bug report in Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T263928

You can subscribe if you wish.

There is also https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261921, which might also be related. I’m using mediawiki via the bitnami docker image and have opened https://github.com/bitnami/bitnami-docker-mediawiki/issues/84 hoping to get a fix upstream.

I always get a 404 error. Not only in pages with special characters. The relative bug report on Phabricator is available here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T263928

I am having the same issue.

Check and if you wish contribute to: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T263928

Having the same problem. It seems that the option to make it a private wiki (need to login, University Intranet) causes it to get the error and fail:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;

The fix at the moment is to check via IP address, but that isn't going to work for me. Is there anything which I can add to LocalSettings.php which checks for Logged In user?

When mediawiki 1.35 (from debian buster-backports) is behind reverse proxy, visualeditor does not work correctly because it does not use $wgInternalServer but uses $wgServer to make internal rest requests which is wrong (internal traffic should not travel to external). Please fix visualeditor logic to use $wgInternalServer for internal api calls.

I am having the same isue. With a peculiarity. As I upgraded my wiki to 1.35, the old pages can be edited with VisualEditor, no problem, the new ones give me this 404 error (parsoid etc.).

Report it here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T263928

Any news on this?

I still can't save using VisualEditor, always getting that "Error contacting the Parsoid/RESTBase server (HTTP 404)".

My wiki is private and I need to keep it this way. Any workaround?

Having the same issue, using Mediawiki 1.35.1 on redhat. anyone got any solutions.

same.

Same, I've been searching for 20 hours now without a solid fix for this T_T

I had this same problem. I fixed it by redirecting the default apache virtual site to my wiki directory.

Same problem. I'm using private MediaWiki 1.35.1 with Nginx on Ubuntu server.

Same, Ubuntu and Nginx.

I get this error strictly when editing a page whose name contains a slash or other problematic character.

Me too, I use slashes because of the mediawiki's subpages feature. Pages which have a slash give the error. All other pages work fine.

What worked for me was the change in the Apache settings, as suggested by:

Extension:VisualEditor#Allowing VisualEditor on page titles containing slashes

(for a private wiki, with subpages).

I had hopes it would work, but no.

Clarify I have:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;

$wgNamespacesWithSubpages was not set at all, but I added it "$wgNamespacesWithSubpages[NS_MAIN] = true;" but no difference.

Added:

<VirtualHost ....>

AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode

Could it be related that wgNamespacesWithSubpages was not set?

Will have another play to double check. Has anyone else got it working?

Cheers

Well, I moved the wiki to another system and it does work so it looks like "AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode" may solve the problem. Guess my real site has some other coding which is messing it up. I don't think it is in apache.conf files so will have a closer look at any .htaccess files which may be read...

Not seeing anything which could be change the "AllowEncodedSlashes" option. Our web server is behind a load balancer is there any chance that may be it? Is there away of test if AllowEncodedSlashes is working?

Got it working...

I decided to start fro scratch building a new website and after a waste of a day. I spotted the problem. Yes you need "AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode" but you also need the php "extension=curl.so"

Since I like to keep our external web server as secure I possible I disables curl a long time ago, which is fine except VisualEditor seems to require it..

Thanks for all your help...

[Solved in my case] For those who have still problems with the Parsoid:

I have recognized that the Visual Editor may have problems with short urls. If I set the variable "$wgArticlePath" properly, the Visual Editor didn't work. For this reason I have developed a concept to activate short urls for standard users (read-only) and to use full urls for users which may work with the Visual Editor.

Hope it helps somebody!

Thanks Asphorm .... ken you explay: "to activate short urls for standard users (read-only) and to use full urls for users which may work with the Visual Editor." ... How, please?

Hi, @Asphorm:. That's exactly why I'm here now - short URL's and VE. Could you pls be as kind as to explain your solution more accurately? Thanx in advance! Pawel Niemczuk (talk) 02:40, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

What if my web host service only runs Apache2 2.4 which has no NoDecode option (see 2.4/mod/core.html#AllowEncodedSlashes).

I had the same error. And I have noticed the error occurs only when the $wgScriptPath variable have a value

I've an issue with a specific page where this error occured.

The reason was that there was a forward slash (/) in the name of the page, the visual editor didn't like that. After changing the name of the page, the page could be edited again.

Witam, po instalacji wiki na serwerze ct8.pl również wyświetla mi komunikat przy próbie edycji danej strony, tj: Error contacting the Parsoid/RESTBase server (HTTP 404), przy tworzeniu nowej strony na wstępie edytor działa.

The error occurs after including a template once. means if the page uses or has used a template (doesn't matter how I included: subst:, template:), I can't switch to the VE anymore.

Not using templates no error

Your issue with templates may be caused by mod_security, in case it detects template syntax as something sneaky.

See errors and symptoms.

Gracias, good advice, i will try

I'm not sure whether this is the same issue, but we've had to exempt Parsoid from access restrictions in LocalSettings.php. In our case, it looks like this:

function client_is_parsoid() {
  return ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] ?? '') === \gethostbyname('parsoid');
}

[...]

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = [...] || client_is_parsoid());

Your criterion for identifying Parsoid may differ, but this is the basic idea.

Hey idk if this is still being monitered or if anyone will reply to this but when ever I try to save my changes on the Creepypasta Wiki, it gives me this 404 error: Error contacting the Parsoid/RESTBase server (HTTP 404), idk if anyone knows how to fix this, but if anyone has any ideas, it would be greatly appreciated!!

That looks like a wiki configuration error rather than a MediaWiki software bug, so you need to report it to the wiki's maintainers or, if you're referring to the wiki at https://creepypasta.fandom.com/, perhaps to the fandom.com maintainers.

Solution: Extension:VisualEditor#Allowing VisualEditor on page titles containing slashes

In my case the issue raise because i using character "/" on the title, after deleted character "/" the issues has been done

Has something changed with the implementation of the VE on the English Wikipedia? I don't see the edit button anymore, and i've enabled it in my preferences. I don't see this problem on any other language editions, and when i directly try to load the editor (using <code>&veaction=edit</code> at the end of an edit link) it works. I'm using the new Vector skin on Firefox. Changing skins or disabling/enabling the feature don't seem to have any effect.

English Wikipedia has chosen to have only a single edit article button, with the default being the source editor. Then once you enter a editor, you can switch between the two editors with the Switch Editor button (pencil icon) in the respective editors (already made changes are preserved). Which editor is launched by default when clicking the edit article is determined by the User -> preferences -> editing -> editor section.

@TheDJ wow, that's really well hidden. Thanks for pointing that out, i would have never found that button.

Also: you can enable getting both buttons from that same preference that you mentioned.

It doesn't show all the items in the "Insert" menu.

This is what it shows me:

Images and media

Sample

Table

Comment

Gallery

Your signature

I don’t know how you enabled all the “Insert” menu items for you.

Please help.

when trying to open the visual editor, shows this:

[ZPyEpYGKpcA@KR0hYEbPKwAAABY] Caught exception of type RuntimeException

Using Vector (Old) 2010

Windows 11 Pro 22H2

Chrome 116.0.5845.180 (Offical build)

Which wiki ?

If you are asking about your own wiki, you might post your request for help at Project:Support desk.

Upgraded a 1.39.4 to 1.40.0

When editing with the VisualEditor, category tags like [[Category:System]] are converted and saved as [[index.php?title=Kategori:System]]. This of course breaks the page categorising. It's possible to re-edit the page, re-categorise it and it works but it will break again on the next edit.

The WikiText editor does not exhibit this behaviour. It correctly handles the category tags.

Restored the 1.39.4 from backup and tried re-installing a few times, but the upgrade to 1.40.0 produces this unwanted behaviour all times.

Here's rest of the software versions.

Produkt	Version
MediaWiki	1.39.4
PHP	8.2.9 (cgi-fcgi)
MariaDB	10.10.2-MariaDB
ICU	71.1
Lua	5.1.5
Pygments	2.16.1

Browser used is Chrome Version 116.0.5845.110 (Officiell version) (arm64) on MacOS.

Since you are running your own wiki, you might ask at the Project:Support desk.

I have searched teahouse.

I have read Help:VisualEditor.

I have read the FAQ.

I can not figure out how to use visual editor in draft space or determine whether it is fully excluded based on what i read here.

Can you?

Loading bar does not go all the way

I ve this error message, what can i do?

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ')'

/load.php?lang=fr&mo…ok&version=sduv7:23

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier 've'

/load.php?lang=fr&mo…k&version=155x6:506

doesnt run where ?

Why I can‘t insert a table on movile wiew

The mobile visual editor currently offers very few tools/buttons. Providing access to more tools is being considered for a future update. Unfortunately, this will not happen soon.

If you create a table in the wikitext mode, you can then edit it in the visual mode.

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/113.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

שלום! אני רוצה להוסיף תמונות לדף שאני מעלה אך גם אחרי מספר גדול של ניסיונות וקריאת המדריכים טרם הצלחתי לעשות זאת. תוכלו לעזור לי בזה?

URL: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%98%D7%99%D7%95%D7%98%D7%94:Birds_Tower?veaction=edit