Mediawiki/QuickReference

Edit sidebar, place after domain

Mediawiki Sidebar

/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar&action=edit

Allow anonymous users to view all pages

change the following in LocalSettings.php

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = true;

backup wiki mysql db

wiki db name, username, & password can be found in the mediawiki config, LocalSettings.php

sudo -s
mysqldump -u <user> -p <db name> --password > wikidatabasebackup.sql
i.e.
mysqldump -u wikiuser -p wikidb --password > /var/www/backup/wikidatabasebackup10_4_12.sql

backup mediawiki file system

this tars everything in the webpage folder

sudo -s
tar zcvhf <tar file> /<wiki local location>
i.e.
tar zcvhf wikidatabackup03_11_14.tgz /var/www/mediawiki/ 

backup XML data

this backs up the content of the wiki, like pages and their revisions

sudo -s
<location of maintenance folder>$ php dumpBackup.php --full > <backupfile.xml>
i.e.
sudo -s
/var/www/mediawiki/maintenance$ php dumpBackup.php --full > XMLbackup03_11_14.xml 

Remove the discussion tab from all pages.

Add the following to the MediaWiki:Common.css page (which is accessible by typing that into the search box on the wiki - i.e. type MediaWiki:Common.css into the search field)

#ca-talk { display:none!important; }

Enable hide/delete history

Add the following to /var/www/mediawiki/Localsettings.php

# Enabling Sysops (admins) to hide revisions and log items from users
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['deletelogentry'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['deleterevision'] = true;

change upload limit

goto /etc/apache2/sites-available/mediawiki
add the following anywhere inside <Virtual Host>

php_value upload_max_filesize 20M
php_value post_max_size 20M

add new file extension to be allowed for upload

goto /var/www/mediawiki/Localsettings.php
find $wgFileExtensions, add new extension to array surrounded by quotes ('txt')

# Allow certain file types to be uploaded, but not blacklisted files like
# exe and certain MIME types like zip
$wgFileExtensions = array('png','gif','jpg','jpeg','doc','xls','pdf','ppt','tiff','bmp','zip','docx');

restart apache2

enable email v1.20+

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgSMTP
starting with v1.20 you can easily enable email by installing pear on your linux/apache config. Start by installing the required package:

~$ sudo yum install php-pear

Once installed, you then have to use pear to install a couple of dependencies, like so:

~$ sudo pear install mail
~$ sudo pear install Net_SMTP

Now let's edit LocalSettings.php. Some of these may already have values, but make sure that they have what is listed below.

$wgEnableEmail = true;
$wgEmailAuthentication = true;
$wgEmergencyContact = '[email protected]';
$wgPasswordSender = 'email address displayed as sender in password resets';

#Email Settings
$wgSMTP = array (
       'IDHost' => 'can be your server fqdn or site name', //this is used to build the Message-ID mail header
       'host'   => 'smtp server host name', //this is the outgoing mail server name (SMTP server)
       'localhost' => 'wiki server fqdn', //if you want the wiki to identify itself with a resolvable hostname instead of localhost
       'port'   => 25, //this is the port used by the SMTP server
       'auth'   => true,  //if authentication is required to relay through the SMTP
       'username' => 'username', //username for smtp server
       'password' => 'password' //password for smtp server
);

Password Reset 24 hour limit

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgPasswordReminderResendTime
By default in v1.9+ you can only reset your password once every 24 hours. Use the following to change that:

#Email Password 24 hour resend limit.
#To override the email password limit of once every 24 hours, the following is added. value is in hours:
$wgPasswordReminderResendTime = 0;

wikiLogo

The default logo ($wgLogo) can be modified. You simply need to copy over a new image and give permissions to the appropriate user (apache or www-data depending on distro), then modify LocalSettings.php to have a new path to the image. For example:

~$ sudo cp ./image.png /var/www/html/mediawiki/images/     //copies the image to the images directory
~$ sudo chown apache:apache /var/www/html/mediawiki/images/image.png   //give ownership to the apache user to read the file
~$ sudo vi /var/www/html/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php

Now add the following to LocalSettings.php.

## The relative URL path to the upload directory
$wgUploadPath = "$wgScriptPath/images";    //define a relative path called $wgUploadPath using the existing relative path for the document root, $wgScriptPath 
## The relative URL path to the logo.  Make sure you change this from the default,
## or else you'll overwrite your logo when you upgrade!
$wgLogo = "$wgUploadPath/expertlogo.png";   //define the image location using a relative path (thus the URL prefix change if needed during upgrade/migration)

collapsible table

 {| class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed wikitable"
 ! The header || remains visible
 |-
 | This  content || is hidden
 |-
 | at first || load time
 |} 

change site logo url

add the following to LocalSettings.php

#change URL of site-logo
/* Change the main page url used in things like the logo to an absolute url */
$wgHooks['SkinTemplateOutputPageBeforeExec'][] = 'lfChangeMainPageURL';
function lfChangeMainPageURL( $sk, &$tpl ) {
	$tpl->data['nav_urls']['mainpage']['href'] = "http://www.your-desired-url.com/"; // Point the main page url to an absolute url
	return true;
}