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, Go button
• What links here
• Random page

Tracking changes

(important for validating pages)

• Recent changes
• Enhanced recent changes
• Related changes
• Watching pages
• Page history
• Diff
• User contributions

Accounts

(even useful for just reading)

• Logging in
• 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
• Images and other uploaded files
  • Image description page
• Special characters
  • Turkish characters
  • Romanian characters
  • WikiHiero syntax
• Formatting
  • Formula
  • Table
  • EasyTimeline syntax
• Edit summary
• Edit conflict

Referencing

• Link
• Piped link
• Interwiki linking
• Variable
• Help:URL

Organizing

• Sections
• Templates
• category
• redirect
• Renaming (moving) a page
• Namespace

Saving effort

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

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

Fixing mistakes and vandalism

• 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 page

For moderators

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

For system administrators

Overview

• MediaWiki architecture
• Database layout

Installation

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

Security

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

Configuration

• MediaWiki User's Guide: 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

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

Backing up Data

• Backup Database
• Restore Database

Upgrading

• Upgrade Mediawiki

For MediaWiki hackers

IRC

irc.freenode.net #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