MediaWiki/archive/customizing/URLs

caboccaropas

Navigation

computing: software: web: MediaWiki: customization: shortening MediaWiki URLs

Overview

The most reliable method seems to be the mod_rewrite, which requires access to either httpd.conf or requires particular handling options for .htaccess to be switched on (fortunately, they usually seem to be). Failing that, another method is:

• using error handlers to tidy MediaWiki URLs

Some additional methods are documented here.

Using mod_rewrite

This is probably documented elsewhere, but this is what actually worked on a shared server without root access or a shell.

This assumes MediaWiki is installed in the root of the www pages, e.g. http://thedomain.com/Main_Page is the wiki's main page.

First, the .htaccess file needs to include:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L,QSA] </IfModule>

Second, modify LocalSettings.php:

$wgArticlePath = "/$1";

Then do ?action=purge on any page to test it. Internal links on existing pages will convert to the new URLs any time they are saved or purged.

The above seems to work for everything (including editing) without breaking old-style URLs, and may offer clues as to how to fix the minor problems which make the 404 method (below) unusable.

This method is also documented here, with some minor changes: http://wiki.welldesignedurls.org/Clean_Urls_for_MediaWiki

Wish list:

• proper handling of page named .htaccess (click on that for a demonstration of the problem)
• ability to have the wiki installed in a subdirectory while still making it appear to be in the domain's root folder

Comments

Please feel free to post comments here or on the Talk page if you try any of these procedures.

---

6/23/2007: I used your .htaccess and then set $wgArticlePath = "$wgScriptPath/$1";. This way the forwarding works regardless of what directory the wiki is located in. In my case it was /wiki. --Jordan Mendler (jmendlerspam@spamuclaspam.spamedu)

---