MediaWiki is a collaboration and documentation platform brought to you by a vibrant community.
Current versions:
1.4.7
1.5 beta4
MediaWiki is a free Wiki software package licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is used to run Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects, as well as many other wikis. In case you don't already know, a wiki is a publicly editable website which allows its visitors to collaborate by editing its pages.
What is a Wiki?
To overcome without danger, one triumphs without glory. (Pierre Corneille)
Welcome to visitors who are new to the Wiki concept
and probably went here because they clicked on a Powered by MediaWiki icon.
You are entering a world of respect and trust.
Yes : you can modify this page and you can even (temporarily) publish dummy sentences,
and you can even (temporarily) completely destroy the page.
You don't need to be a hacker to do this.
We suggest you rather exercise yourself within another page (just click here to reach such a page)
to avoid other visitors needing to clean up this main page after you.
If you want to share your knowledge about MediaWiki, you may edit this page.
If you have a question or a suggestion, do not edit this page, but, instead, use the related discussion page.
How does MediaWiki work?
MediaWiki uses PHP to process and display data stored in its MySQL database. Pages use MediaWiki's wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily. When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the filesystem. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid. here you can see an example of a large server farm using MediaWiki.
To install MediaWiki, you will need any operating system (GNU/Linux is suggested), any web server (apache2 is suggested), PHP >= 4.3 (PHP 4.3.11 is suggested) and MySQL >= 3.23 (MySQL 4.0.23 is suggested). You do not need a specific software to manage MySQL but such tool may help you for backups and other tasks (phpMyAdmin 2.6.1 is suggested). MediaWiki ships with an installation utility which will enable you to install it using your Web browser. If you do not operate your own server and have only access to one database, mind that MediaWiki is able to share its database with other applications. You don't need to know SQL, HTML, XHTML or CSS. A basic knowledge of PHP is required if you need to modify the configuration files.
MediaWiki Versions
Wiki sites using the MediaWiki software generally display this icon near the bottom right corner of their pages.
- current stable version is 1.4.7 (July 16, 2005)
- current test version is 1.5beta4 (July 30, 2005)
Current releases and download links are listed below.
Click on the links below to know which versions and extensions are currently used by :
Documentation
- MediaWiki User's Guide and MediaWiki architecture on Meta
- Installation Guide
- The FAQ - please read this before asking questions
- README file.
- The docs directory in the source
- And if everything else fails, have a look into the source. It is reasonably well structured, so chances are good that you'll find an answer (provided you have knowledge in PHP and MySQL, of course)
Download
Download of MediaWiki software is available on SourceForge and its mirrors.
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia
- current stable version is 1.4.7 (July 16, 2005) ([[[:Template:Download]] mediawiki-1.4.7.tar.gz])
- last version is 1.5beta4 (July 30, 2005) ([[[:Template:Download]] mediawiki-1.5beta4.tar.gz])
- read the releases descriptions below
- read the installation guide
Communication
- mediawiki-l is the mailing list to ask for support. Please check the archives first!
- wikitech-l is the mailing list where script development is coordinated.
- Wikimedia's Meta wiki is where documents are managed and proposals are discussed.
- #MediaWiki on irc.freenode.net is the IRC channel for realtime communication
- "MediaZilla" is where wishes and bugs may be reported or browsed.
Skins
Information and links to for how to customize MediaWiki
Wikimedia Sites
Wikimedia sites are generally displaying this icon
near the bottom left corner of their pages.
Avoid a possible confusion between the words:
- MediaWiki (the software, this site)
- WikiMedia (the foundation, the miscellaneous projects listed below)
- WikiPedia (the encyclopedia)
Development and Usage
- MediaWiki feature list
- Browse and report wishes and bugs on MediaZilla (based on Bugzilla)
- Browse old list of feature requests (on SourceForge)
- Browse old list of fixed bugs (those not fixed before the switch to bugzilla were migrated to MediaZilla)
- Development policy
- Sites using MediaWiki (add yours!)
Important Release Notes
Stable releases series 1.4.x
1.4.7 released 2005-07-16: Stable series bugfix release
[[[:Template:Download]] mediawiki-1.4.7.tar.gz]
- MediaWiki 1.4.7 is a bug fix release. Those affected by the following problems in 1.4.6 should upgrade:
- Watchlist breakage on MySQL 3.23.x and with table prefix enabled
- Possible breakage in watchlist, some image resizing modes on PHP 4.1.2
- 1.4.6 included a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability, so anyone running older 1.4 releases is very strongly encouraged to upgrade as well.
- Note to upgraders: current versions of MediaWiki are known to produce a large number of notice-level warnings under the newly released PHP 4.4.0. These appear however to be harmless; if you encounter them add this to your LocalSettings.php to suppress the notices:
error_reporting( E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE );
- PHP 5.1.0beta3 is known to be incompatible at this time.
- Changes since last release: (full release notes)
- (MediaZilla:2755, MediaZilla:2747) MySQL 3.23.x and table prefix compatibility fix: restore old watchlist code
- PHP 4.1.2 compatibility fix: define floatval() equivalent if missing
1.4.6 released 2005-07-07: Stable series security and bugfix release. For details of this and all earlier releases, please see the old main page at wikipedia.sourceforge.net.
Beta preview releases 1.5
1.5beta4 released 2005-07-30: Beta of next major release
[[[:Template:Download]] mediawiki-1.5beta4.tar.gz]
- MediaWiki 1.5 beta 4 is a preview release of the new 1.5 release series, with a number of bug fixes.
- Changes since last release: (full release notes)
1.5beta3 released 2005-07-07: Beta of next major release
[[[:Template:Download]] mediawiki-1.5beta3.tar.gz]
- MediaWiki 1.5 beta 3 is a preview release of the new 1.5 release series, with a security update over beta 2. Third-party users should probably not use this beta release to run a public site unless paying close attention to development and ongoing releases.
- A number of significant changes have been made since the alpha releases, including database changes and a reworking of the user permissions settings. See the file UPGRADE for details of upgrading and changing your prior configuration settings for the new system.
- Changes since last release: (full release notes)