Help:Contents

This is the User's Guide for MediaWiki, the software program that runs Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, in particular about the latest version 1.3, to which, during the period 21-29 May 2004, all Wikimedia sites have been upgraded.

Version 1.3 is a beta version. The latest stable release is version 1.2.6. See MediaWiki roadmap for an overview of the differences. Earlier versions of the pages in this guide (available from the page histories), in particular the last one before 29 May 2004, may be helpful as guide for version 1.2.6.

This guide often refers to the English versions of link labels and messages. For translations, see MediaWiki i18n.

For readers

Reading

• Searching for pages, go button
• "What links here" feature
• Using the random page function

Tracking changes

(important for validating pages)

• The Recent Changes page
• The enhanced Recent Changes page
• Using the Related Changes function
• Using the Watchlist
• Using the page history
• Diff page
• User contributions page

WikiMedia Accounts

(even useful for just reading)

• Logging-in
• Setting preferences
• User styles -- Your own css/js in the monobook skin (1.3)

For editors

Editing and writing pages

• Editing overview
• Starting a new page
  • Page name
• Adding multimedia to pages
  • Image description page
• Editing mathematical formulae
• Special characters
• Creating Turkish characters
• Creating Romanian characters
• WikiHiero syntax
• Edit summary
• Edit conflict

Referencing

• Link
• Piped link
• Interwiki linking
• Variables
• URLs

Organizing

• Sections
• Templates
• Using categories
• Using redirects
• Renaming (moving) pages
• Namespaces

Saving effort

(not having to write something, or copy and paste)

• Automatic conversion of wikitext
• Using predefined text blocks in articles (subst)

Formatting

• Using tables
• EasyTimeline Syntax
• Editing toolbar

Fixing mistakes

• Reverting a page to an earlier version

Collaborating

• Wikimedia principles (netiquette, consensus, npov, copyrights)
• Growing Wikimedia (building the project and the community)
• Governance
• Wikimedia power structure
• Interlingual coordination (various international issues)
• Wikipedia policies
• Conflict resolution

Communicating

• PleaseFix
• Talk pages

For moderators

• Help:Administration
• Importing Pages ( Special:import )

For system administrators

• Architecture and overview
• Database layout

• Installation (see also CVS tree installation)
• on Linux
• on Windows
• on Mac OS X
• on FreeBSD
• Installation FAQ

• Security Checklist
• Paranoid Permissions (system)
• Permissive Permissions (system)
• Setting user rights (inside wiki enviornment)

• Configuration
• Apache config
  • Robots.txt -- how to avoid search engines to index the internals of your wiki
  • Rewrite Rules -- how to get rid of /index.php in URLs
• PHP config
• MySQL config

• Customization
• Timezone adjustments
• MediaWiki i18n -- localization and customization for link texts and messages like 'fromwikipedia'
• Configuring interwiki links
• Custom skins
• More tweaks
• Configuration tips and tricks

• Backup Data
• Backup Database
• Restore Database

• Upgrade Mediawiki

For MediaWiki hackers

IRC

irc.freenode.net #wikitech #mediawiki #wikipedia

Mailing lists

Special:Recentchanges has an excelent list of mailinglists

See also

• How to become a MediaWiki hacker
• MediaWiki Development

Appendix

• ISBN links
• Common stop words
• Sites using MediaWiki
• Browser issues with MediaWiki
• Page metadata
• XML export
• How to move a MediaWiki Database
• Shortcuts

See also

• Mailing lists
• MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion
• Documentation - on installation, configuration, administration, security; may not be up-to-date