MediaWiki/archive/customizing

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computing: software: web: MediaWiki: customization

Links

• MediaWiki Customization at mediawiki.org

Articles

• modifying MediaWiki menus
• shortening MediaWiki URLs
• add a new navigation box to MediaWiki
• modifying the MediaWiki searchbox
• MediaWiki user-group security

Extensions of Interest

Available MediaWiki extensions which look like they could be useful:

• portal-type features:
  • My blog: blogging features
  • Tasks extension and Tasks Extension|: rudimentary multi-user project management
  • WikiFeeds adds to the standard feeds: Newest pages, Recent changes by user, Newest pages by user, User watchlist, Recent changes for articles in a category, Newest articles in a category
• data display:
  • syntax highlighting
    • Syntax Highlighting Extension: requires Beautifier Syntax Highlighting Engine
    • GeSHiCodeTag Extension
  • TabbedData extension: useful for directly posting spreadsheets, though formatting may not be as nice as the converter; evaluation needed
• data management:
  • Attribute Extension: adds an "attribute" tab to all pages; stores attribute data in a table
• groups / security:
  • Page by page access: page-based access control
  • GroupWikiBase: page-based access control

Code Notes

(From Woozle 20:59, 15 Jun 2005 (CDT). Eventually to be given their own section, I expect.)

• Everything obviously starts with index.php
• For the purpose of displaying a page (not saving changes or doing anything else), this calls $wgArticle->view(), in Article.php (line 699)
• $wgArticle->view() appears to be able to provide a few other formats besides the regular view (including difference engine and displaying redirections as subtitles), but I'm ignoring that for now
• $wgOut seems to be the object which accumulates text to be output, via various methods:
  • $wgOut->addWikiText(...)
  • $wgOut->addHTML(...)
  • $wgOut->addPrimaryWikiText() # Display content and save to parser cache
  • $wgOut->addWikiText() # Display content, don't attempt to save to parser cache
  • $wgOut->setPageTitle()
  • $wgOut->transformBuffer(); # Put link titles into the link cache
  • $wgOut->addMetaTags(); # Add link titles as META keywords
• ...and then it does these two lines:
  • $this->viewUpdates(); (found at line 1926 -- doesn't do much)
  • wfProfileOut( $fname );
• It's not clear whether the navbar has already been pulled in by the time we hit viewUpdates -- possibly transformBuffer does it? The comment makes it sound like that, but the name "transformBuffer" in that case is not very descriptive. The code in there should probably be examined.