Jani Patokallio

Hacking MediaWiki

http://www.mediawiki.org/

MediaWiki/Wikimedia Wiki structure Wiki customisation

Outline

Open-source (GPL) wiki engine software (uses LAMP)

MediaWiki

Wikimedia

MediaWiki

US foundation that runs a
bunch of Wiki sites
(Wikipedia etc.)

Pages

Page A

Page B

Tied together by...

Links: AB

Wiki structure

Special:WhatLinksHere (BA)Special:RecentChangesLinked (BC)Special:MostLinked
Special:WantedPages

Links

Help:Links

Links are fundamentally one-way (A to B), but Mediawiki gives a couple of tools for working out

Links Subpages

Wiki structure

Automated breadcrumbs up
A / B / C intoA B C

Subpages

Help:Subpages

Links Subpages Namespaces

Wiki structure

Front page + talk page Main, Project, Help, add more... Template Category Special* Image, Media* MediaWiki*(* = pseudo namespace)

Namespaces

Help:Namespaces

Special:RecentChangesSpecial:SpecialPages

Special pages

Help:Special pages

Categories

Help:Categories

Group together pages

Links Subpages Namespaces Categories Templates

Wiki structure

Page transclusion: {{foo}}, , {{subst:foo}}Parameters

Templates

Help:Templates

Special:ExpandTemplates

Special:ExpandTemplates

Look like {{CAPS TEMPLATES}}Especially used in templates - context. Time, revision related Stats!{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}{{NUMBEROFEDITS}}{{NUMBEROFUSERS}}{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Foo}}

Magic words

Help:Magic words

Special:ListGroupRights

Anonymous/IP editor User Admin (Sysop) Bureaucrat Bot

User access levels

Manual:User rights

In the box configuration

MediaWiki: namespace

CSS

Outside the box programming

Gadgets

Extensions

Bots (API)

Wiki customisation

System [interface] messages

Edit MediaWiki: pages to overrridedefaults (sysops only)Search on Special:Allmessages to find the right message/page

MediaWiki namespace

Manual:System message

Users can customize their own view!

MediaWiki:Common.cssMediaWiki:Common.js

Monobook skin: (same for others)MediaWiki:Monobook.cssMediaWiki:Monobook.js

Look & feel

Massively simplify user JS/CSS sharing:no more copying user subpages

MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition-> New Preferences tab

JS/CSS Gadgets

Extension:Gadgets

MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition

MediaWiki:Gadget-section-browsing-gadgetsMediaWiki:Gadget-Navigation popupsList of file namesMediaWiki:Gadget-foo.js/css

Special:Preferences -> Gadgets

Make your edit box less scary:

Gadget rec: wikEd

http://enwp.org/WP:WIKED

The way to add random PHP code to
extend MediaWiki's functionality

~1500 already available Quality varies widely Stick to those already live
on Wikimedia projects...

Extensions

Manual:Extensions

Adds Editor, Reviewer user classes Page revisions must be approved
before they go live to public Comments and quality flags for
pages Being rolled out on
Wikipedia now

FlaggedRevs

Extension:FlaggedRevs

When categories aren't enough... Semantic tags in content
[[name::Melbourne]] [[place::city]]
[[pop::3609734]] SQL-type queries across content
{{#ask: [[place::city]]
[[pop::>1000000]]| ?name }}

Semantic Mediawiki

semanticmediawiki.org

A bot is really just a script/program
that connects to MediaWiki

Can do anything than a human can

Automatic running bot

Special flag can hide bot edits

Older bots used screen scraping

pymediawiki framework

Bots

Help:Bots

HTTP-based interface for (almost) all
MediaWiki operations

Flexible, tested and doesn't break
every time the Wiki skin changes

Wide range of language libraries

Ruby support pretty
poor though...

MediaWiki API

mediawiki.org/wiki/API

Query (XML) Parse (= render as HTML) Edit, delete, move Bulk import, export (again XML)

API operations

mediawiki.org/wiki/API

http://mediawiki.org is half-decent now Still lots of info on http://meta.wikimedia.org/ IRC is popular: irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki MLs: mediawiki-l Forum: http://mwusers.com/ (unofficial)

Support

Questions?

Jani Patokallio

Original slides by Brianna Laugher These slides are dual-licensed GFDL1.2+, CC-BY-SA-3.0.
Screenshots are GFDL/GPL, WMF logo is all rights reserved, MediaWiki logo is public domain.

Thank you!