This book of the law ... thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. - Joshua 1:8
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Help:FAQ

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A repository for frequently asked questions about editing in the wiki environment.

Contents

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How do I put a text message (sitenotice) on every page?

Put a text in the MediaWiki:Sitenotice page. It will be displayed on top of every article page.

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How do I change which page is the main page?

By default, MediaWiki looks for a page with the title Main Page and serves this as the default page. This can be changed by altering the contents of MediaWiki:Mainpage to point to a different title. If this does not change the 'Main Page' link included on the sidebar at install time, edit MediaWiki:Sidebar.

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How to hide the title for any page 

body.page-Main_Page h1.firstHeading { display:none; }
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How can I hide the table of contents?

The table of contents (TOC) is automatically shown once there are four or more headings in the article. The are multiple ways to hide it.

For one page

Place the magic word 
__NOTOC__
into the page markup.

For all pages

Edit the CSS files; locate the style for the table of contents and add display: none; to the definition.

Per user

Users can also opt to have the table of contents hidden. This is a user preference, set in Special:Preferences.

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How do I change the interface text?

Interface text is altered using the MediaWiki namespace. For each deviation from the default in the site language there is a page MediaWiki:Englishmessagename, and for each deviation from the default in each other language a page MediaWiki:Englishmessagename/languagecode. (Since release 1.9 there are no pages for messages equal to the default.). On creation of a page the edit box autofills with the default. When creating a page to override the default it is useful to first save the default version, to allow diffs with it. See also Manual:System messages.

  • For a list of system messages, see Special:Allmessages
  • To switch off the MediaWiki namespace, see the $wgUseDatabaseMessages configuration setting
  • To remove the Privacy policy or Disclaimers links at the bottom of each page, set the content of pages MediaWiki:Privacy or MediaWiki:Disclaimers respectively to a single minus sign.
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How do I remove a tab on only one page?

This solution works in MediaWiki version 1.9 and above. In MediaWiki version 1.8 or below, first apply the above patch.

For example, to remove the Discussion (talk) page tab from the Main Page, on the MediaWiki:Monobook.css page add: 

.page-Main_Page #ca-talk { display: none !important; }
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How do I remove the "Create an Account or Login" link at the top right of the screen?

In Monobook.php change this statement: 

foreach($this->data['personal_urls'] as $key => $item) {

to: 

foreach($this->data['personal_urls'] as $key => $item)  if($this->data['loggedin']==1) {
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How to make a redirect (redirect command)

To redirect page A (the redirecting page) to a different page B (the target page), enter the following redirecting command at the top of the redirecting page. 

#REDIRECT [[NAME OF PAGE B]]

For example, to redirect the Cambridge University page (redirecting page) to the University of Cambridge page (target page), edit the Cambridge University page and enter: 

#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge]]

You can also redirect to page sections within an article. See Meta:Help:Redirect#A redirect to an anchor: 

#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge#History]]
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How do I change the footer?

To add or remove items from the footer on your MediaWiki page, you must edit the skin.

For example: if you go in to MonoBook.php (located by default in the skins folder) you will find the following code: 

$footerlinks = array(
   'lastmod', 'viewcount', 'numberofwatchingusers', 'credits', 'copyright',
   'privacy', 'about', 'disclaimer', 'tagline',
  );

In the above you can simply add and remove items from the footer that you wish to appear in your footer. Remember the changes may not appear immediatly because of MediaWiki caches.

You can also customize the individual items by modifying certain pages or parameters:

  • lastmod - edit MediaWiki:Lastmodifiedat (verison 1.8 and after) or MediaWiki:Lastmodified (version 1.7 and before). If $wgMaxCredits is enabled, then edit MediaWiki:Lastmodifiedatby (verison 1.8 and after) or MediaWiki:lastmodifiedby (version 1.7 and before). (6518)
  • viewcount - edit MediaWiki:Viewcount
  • numberofwatchingusers - edit MediaWiki:Number of watching users pageview. This only appears if you also add $wgPageShowWatchingUsers = true; to LocalSettings.php.
  • copyright - edit MediaWiki:Copyright. The parameter $1 on that page is replaced with a link to the details of copyright for your wiki. In LocalSettings.php $wgRightsText for the link text and set either $wgRightsPage or $wgRightsUrl with the location of a wiki page or external URL.
  • privacy - this is a link only. Edit MediaWiki:Privacy for the link text and MediaWiki:Privacypage for the wiki page to which to link.
  • about - this is a link only. Edit MediaWiki:Aboutsite for the link text and MediaWiki:Aboutpage for the wiki page to which to link.
  • disclaimer - this is a link only. Edit MediaWiki:Disclaimers for the link text and MediaWiki:Disclaimerpage for the wiki page to which to link.
  • tagline - not currently used in the footer
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How can I edit / remove the Powered by MediaWiki image in the footer?

You can hide the Powered by MediaWiki image by adding the following to your wiki's MediaWiki:Common.css: 

#f-poweredbyico { display: none; }

If you want to remove it completely, you could alter /skins/MonoBook.php, which contains the following code that makes the Powered by MediaWiki image appear in the footer: 

<?php
                if($this->data['poweredbyico']) { ?>
                                <div id="f-poweredbyico"><?php $this->html('poweredbyico') ?></div>

If you would like to remove this image completely, or edit the image, you must locate and edit poweredbyico. It is located in skins/common/images/ and the image is called poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png.

If you're happy with the logo (or not) and simply want to change the destination link, the code is in getPoweredBy() function of includes\Skin.php. Just change the line $img = '<a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/"><img src="'.$url.'" alt="Powered by MediaWiki" /></a>'; to whatever.

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How can I change what the <title> of each page is? Where do I make changes?

Most of the text that you want to change, can be found in the namespace of MediaWiki.

In order to change titles, texts, announcements and the such, go to Special:Allmessages, where you will see the text associated with the pages you wish to change. You need to log in as an administrator (like the one you made when you installed) to edit the protected entries in the MediaWiki namespace.

If you want to change the title in your browser, you need to edit MediaWiki:Pagetitle. Go there and edit it just like you would any other page in your wiki.

In recent versions of MediaWiki, MediaWiki:Pagetitle is $1 - OpenWordBase by default. If OpenWordBase is producing the wrong text for you, you need to set $wgSitename in your LocalSettings.php.

If $wgSitename is correct in LocalSettings.php but OpenWordBase is still wrong, it may be that you're using a user-contributed language file which incorrectly sets $wgSitename to a transliteration of "Wikipedia". Edit the language file to correct this. For example, the Hebrew language file is at languages/LanguageHe.php in your wiki directory.

Don't forget to clear your browser cache after you fix it.

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How do I make external links open in a new window?

See Opening external links in a new window.

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How can I suppress MediaWiki from formatting urls, tags, etc? 

svn co http://somwhere.in.the.net/myproject/
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How do I add more buttons on the edit page?

For adding more toolbar buttons above the edit field, you can use JavaScript code to register them in mwCustomEditButtons in your MediaWiki:Common.js. For example, a button for large text: 

var button = {
        "imageFile": "images/5/56/Button_big.png",  //image to be shown on the button (may be a full URL too), 22x22 pixels
        "speedTip": "big text",    //text shown in a tooltip when hovering the mouse over the button
        "tagOpen": "<big>",        //the text to use to mark the beginning of the block
        "tagClose": "</big>",      //the text to use to mark the end of the block (if any)
        "sampleText": "big text"   //the sample text to place inside the block
};
mwCustomEditButtons.push(button);
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Are there any editing tutorials available?

There are several editing tutorials available, mostly on Wikimedia sister projects, such as Wikipedia. There are also markup references, etc. available on Meta.

  • Editing help content on Meta
  • The How to edit a page guide on the English Wikipedia
  • You may also refer to Matt Mullenweg's WikiFormatting Guide. Note: Matt's guide is actually written for the Trac wiki, therefore not all editing features will be the same as MediaWiki.
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