Working with Mediawiki

James Howard

Working with Mediawiki

James P. Howard, IIMarch 2008

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Some Conventions

WIKI_URL The base URL for your wiki installation

Wiki and Mediawiki are used interchangeably

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Mediawiki & Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a collection of information repositories Encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference texts, and

images Scales well: eighteen languages with more than

100,000 encyclopedia articles Mediawiki powers Wikipedia

Open access, with limited access restrictions Full revision history for text, with comparison

generator

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Environment

Mediawiki was developed in PHP Default start page is WIKI_URL/Main_Page Each user has wikispace with URLs beginning

with WIKI_URL/User:USERNAME/ Each page has an associated “talk page” (also

called “discussion page” for discussing that page) Clicking “edit this page” will take user directly

into page editor “history” will show user the history of that page

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Basic Text Formatting

''Italic text'' '''Bold text''' '''''Bold italic text''''' ==Header Level 1==

===Header Level 2=== ====Header Level 3====

...and so forth, table of contents autogenerated from headers

Provide a blank line between paragraphs

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Links

[[Internal Link]] – creates a link to the wiki page “Internal Link” even if that page is non-existent [[Internal Link|This is an internal link]] – creates a

link to “Internal Link” but with the alternative text If page is non-existent, a red link will take user to

editor for that page [http://www.jameshoward.us James Howard] –

creates a link to the non-wiki page given #REDIRECT [[Other Page]] will create a redirect

page, transparent to end user

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Unnumbered Lists

* Create unnumbered lists

* With asterisks

* Presents as bulleted lists

** Sublists are created by nesting asterisks

*** There is no limit to nested asterisks

**** This is four levels down

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Numbered Lists

# Create numbered lists

# With hash marks

# Presents as numbered lists

## Sublists are created by nesting hash marks

### There is no limit to nested hash marks

#### This is four levels down

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Categories

[[Category:Some category]] – will add a page to the given category

Categories are infinitely nestable and may contain an unlimited number of pages

Pages can be in an unlimited number of categories Category pages are lead text that is editable just

like a wiki page

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Working with Images

Images can be uploaded at special URL WIKI_URL/Special:Upload

Can be included in a page with [[Image:Some image.png]]

Can be captioned with [[Image:Some image.png|caption text]]

Can be resized with [[Image:Some image.png|200px100px|caption]]

Full revision history of images included

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Other Special Files

Other can file types (PDF, OpenOffice.org, &c.) uploaded at WIKI_URL/Special:Upload

Download links [[Media:Some Doc.pdf]] Follows standard internal linking form, otherwise Some restrictions on file types: no HTML, PHP Full revision history of files included Maximum file size is 16M

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Templates

Templates create preformatted text Used with {{Some Template}}

May include variables and run-time settings May be static Uses include creating preformatted boxes for

displaying page-specific data See examples on Wikipedia, e.g.,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

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Treats & Tips

Mediawiki understands TeX formula formatting <math>\sqrt{2}</math> →

Interwiki links for linking to pages in other wikis [[Wikipedia:James Howard]] → prefacing a page

name with “Wikipedia:” will create link to the English Wikipedia page

Mediawiki supports footnotes <ref>Some note</ref> Place notes anywhere with <references />

2

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Extensibility

Mediawiki is highly extensible beyond templates Plugins create new features and commands

Shortcuts for integrated outside video into pages Authentication frameworks RSS and Atom feeds for blog integration

Extensions are written in PHP Cannot be installed by the end user

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Suggested Reading Mark S. Choate, Professional Wikis (Indianapolis, IN: Wrox,

2007).

Anja Ebersbach et al., Wiki: Web Collaboration, 2nd completely rev. and enl. ed. (Berlin: Springer, 2008).

Mizanur Rahman, MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide: Install, manage, and customize your MediaWiki installation (Birmingham, UK: Packt Publishing, 2007).

Dan Woods and Peter Thoeny, Wikis For Dummies (Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, 2007).

James Howardhttp://jameshoward.us