Help:Contents

This help is for MediaWiki version 1.3x, the version that has run Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects since May 2004. For a comparison with the stable version 1.2.6 see the MediaWiki roadmap. For help with older versions, check the page histories.

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

Introduction

1. Documentation: Introduction

For readers

1. Reading
   1. Searching, Go button
   2. What links here
   3. Random page
   4. Printable version
2. Tracking changes (important for validating pages)
   1. Recent changes
   2. Enhanced recent changes
   3. Related changes
   4. Watching pages
   5. Page history
   6. Diff
   7. User contributions
3. Accounts (even useful for just reading)
   1. Logging in
   2. Preferences
   3. User style -- Your own css/js (1.3)

For editors

1. Editing overview
2. Starting a new page
   1. Page name
3. Images and other uploaded files
   1. Image description page
4. Special characters
   1. Turkish characters
   2. Romanian characters
   3. WikiHiero syntax
5. Formatting
   1. Formula
   2. Table
   3. EasyTimeline syntax
6. Referencing
   1. Link
   2. Piped link
   3. Interwiki linking
   4. Variable
   5. URL
7. Organizing
   1. Sections
   2. Templates
   3. Category
   4. Redirect
   5. Renaming (moving) a page
   6. Namespace
8. Saving effort (not having to write something, or copy and paste)
   1. Automatic conversion of wikitext
   2. Using predefined text blocks in articles (subst)
   3. Editing toolbar
9. Fixing mistakes and vandalism
   1. Reverting a page to an earlier version
10. Communicating
    1. Edit summary
    2. Talk page
    3. Edit conflict
11. Testing

For moderators

1. Help:Administration
2. Documentation: Administrator's Guide
3. Importing Pages ( Special:import )

For system administrators

1. Overview
   1. Documentation: Administrator's Guide
   2. MediaWiki architecture
   3. Database layout
2. Installation
   1. Documentation:Installation
   2. Installation (see also CVS tree installation)
   3. Installation FAQ
   4. on Linux
   5. on Windows
   6. on Mac OS X
   7. on FreeBSD
   8. Timezone adjustments
3. Security
   1. Documentation:Security
   2. Security Checklist
   3. Paranoid Permissions (system)
   4. Permissive Permissions (system)
   5. Setting user rights (inside wiki environment)
4. Configuration
   1. Documentation:Configuration
   2. MediaWiki User's Guide: Configuration
   3. Apache config
   4. Robots.txt -- how to avoid search engines to index the internals of your wiki
   5. Rewrite Rules -- how to get rid of /index.php in URLs
   6. PHP config
   7. MySQL config
5. Customization
   1. Customization
   2. Timezone adjustments
   3. MediaWiki localization -- localization and customization for link texts and messages like 'fromwikipedia'
   4. Configuring interwiki links
   5. Custom skins
   6. More tweaks
   7. Configuration tips and tricks
6. Manage the database
   1. Backup Database
   2. Restore Database
   3. Reduce the size of the database
7. Performance
   1. PHP_caching_and_optimization
   2. File cache
   3. Cache_strategy deployed by Wikimedia
   4. Wikimedia servers: an example of a multi-server configuration
8. Upgrading
   1. Upgrade Mediawiki

For MediaWiki hackers

1. MediaWiki Development
2. Documentation: Developer's Guide
3. How to become a MediaWiki hacker

Appendix

1. ISBN links
2. Common stop words
3. Sites using MediaWiki
4. Browser issues with MediaWiki
5. Page metadata
6. XML export
7. How to move a MediaWiki Database
8. Shortcuts

Contact

1. irc.freenode.net #mediawiki #wikipedia
2. Mailing lists
3. MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion

See also

• Documentation - on installation, configuration, administration, security; may not be up-to-date
• w:Wikipedia:Glossary

Below is for comparison template hc, a selection from the above, subdivided a little differently, and sometimes formulated briefer, for use at the bottom of each page.