Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

MediaWiki FAQ

This is an archived version of this page, as edited by 202.68.163.122 (talk) at 23:20, 26 April 2005 (→Who is behind MediaWiki?). It may differ significantly from the current version.

General

Who is behind MediaWikia?

Many developers from around the world have contributed to the project. MediaWiki itself is the result of an evolutionary process, see MediaWiki history.

Why should I use MediaWiki?

Maybe you shouldn't. Take a look at the MediaWiki feature list and at other sites using MediaWiki. If you are already using MediaWiki, please add your opinion to MediaWiki reviews.

Is "Wikimedia" the same thing as "MediaWiki"?

No. Wikimedia is the name of a group of Wiki-based open-content projects run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation; MediaWiki is the software developed for and used by these projects, but available for anyone to use and improve for their own projects. For further clarification, see Names.

Does Brion ever sleep?

Yes, some instances of Brion sleeping have been reported, usually at odd hours of the day.

Installation

See also:

How do I install MediaWiki? What are the system requirements?

See MediaWiki User's Guide: Installation

Is it possible to install more than one wiki (MediaWiki) on a server? How?

It is possible. You can simply install the software into different folders, and use a different database for each wiki.

However, starting with version 1.4, you only need one database. You can now define a global prefix for the table names.

To install a second (or any further) wiki,

  1. unpack the software into a different folder (i.e. use another path in the resulting URL)
  2. specifiy a (different) table name prefix on the configuration page

All wikis then use the same database, but are completely separated.

Additionally, you may want to make some settings common for all the installations, and have a central place where changes to these can be made. Since the configuration file (LocalSettings.php) is executed as PHP code, this can be done with PHP's inclusion mechanism - for instance, by adding the line include_once("../CommonSettings.php") in each LocalSettings.php, and placing settings which apply to all wikis in ../CommonSettings.php.

Can I upgrade from other types of wiki?

There is some documentation about upgrading in the UPGRADE file distributed with MediaWiki.

To follow on from those, this is how I upgraded from usemod to MediaWiki:

Because MediaWiki does not automatically link to CamelCase style links, you will need to add brackets [[ ]] to all your links. I did this with the following:

First, obtain ImportStage1.txt (or whatever you want to call it) from the importMediaWiki.php script ( use > to pipe the output to a file )

Second, do 

sed '/Importing/!s/\ [A-Z]\w*[a-z]\w*[A-Z]\w*[a-zA-Z]/\ \[\[&\]\] /g' ImportStage1.txt > ImportStage2.txt

This should create proper links in place of your CamelCase links.

This doesn't work so well for SubPage links - someone care to fix?

Then, 

 
sed 's/upload\:\w*\.\w*/http\:\/\/aberwiki\.org\/uploads\/& /g' ImportStage2.txt > ImportStage3.txt

This fixes your upload links. Change the replace text so it fills in your url such as http://www.yourwiki.org/uploads/filename

You are now ready to import ImportStage3.txt into your database with a command such as 

mysql -u<mysqluser> -p<yourpass> <db name> < ImportStage3.txt

Is it possible to define a database prefix?

It is not possible in versions 1.3.x and prior.

In versions 1.4 and later it is possible to configure a database prefix during the install process.

Why is the Help: namespace empty?

We don't currently have a clean, generic, internationalized set of help pages. Would you like to write one? However, you will find some useful pages in the MediaWiki User's Guide. They are of course open content under the GNU FDL.

I've changed $wgLanguageCode to something else, but nothing happens - what gives?

When we display a user interface text and $wgUseDatabaseMessages is enabled, we first check if a page for that interface message exists in the MediaWiki: namespace (table CUR, field cur_namespace=8); if so, we return it and abort. If $wgUseDatabaseMessages is false, or no page exists, we call the getMessage() function of the language object (the Language??.php file for the language in question).

In other words, we try the MediaWiki: namespace first, and the local file second. When you install MediaWiki, the MediaWiki: namespace is initially filled with the data from Language??.php, where ?? is the language set in $wgLanguageCode. If you change the language code afterwards, the MediaWiki: pages are not updated, and the old language is used instead.

Setting $wgUseDatabaseMessages=false should show you the language you want (after clearing your cache (browser or mysql?)), but you will no longer be able to use the MediaWiki namespace. If you want to do that, you should run the script rebuildMessages.php from the maintenance directory instead.

See MediaWiki i18n and MediaWiki namespace for more information.

The install stops with no messages or I get a blank page!

Installation problems are sometimes weird and hard to diagnose. If possible, check PHP's error log (you may have to configure PHP to enable error logging) and report any error messages you have and the complete output from the installation script to mediawiki-l, we'll see if we can hash it out.

If you can track down the problem specifically, please report it directly to http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/

Known issues

  • Version 1.3.3: you'll get a blank page after submitting configuration info on your config/index.php script if you don't make the config directory writeable.
  • Version 1.3.x: bugzilla:736


I want my wiki to appear in a frame as part of my site, but it keeps popping out of the frame

MediaWiki contains protection against abusive use of frame sets. Unfortunately this will trap your intentional frames as well -- to remove this, edit stylesheets/wikibits.js and remove these lines:

( Please note that if the wikibits.js file isn't in stylesheets/wikibits.js is *may* be skins/common/wikibits.js ) 

 // Un-trap us from framesets
 if( window.top != window ) window.top.___location = window.___location;

How do I change messages of the user interface?

The user interface text is put into pages in the special MediaWiki namespace. When logged in as a sysop, you can edit those pages to immediately change the output of the wiki.

Some configuration changes (like changing $wgSitename to set the wiki's name) don't affect the pages which were generated at install time. You can edit them directly, or use the 'rebuildMessages.php' script in the maintenance directory (It must be run from the command line and you must set up an AdminSettings.php file). See MediaWiki localization

Problems installing on SourceForge web space

See Running MediaWiki on Sourceforge.net


Usage

How do I create a new page?

  1. Go to the page you want the new page to be linked from.
  2. Click on the edit tab to edit the page. Add a link to the page you wish to create.
    The way to create a link is to place the new page's title in brackets. [[Page title]]
  3. Save the page. Your link will show up as a red link which, when clicked, will bring you to an edit page for your new page.
  4. Edit and save your new page.

How do I add a table of contents?

A TOC is added automatically as soon as you have more than three headers. To add one with less than four headers, type __FORCETOC__ anywhere on the page or __TOC__ at the position where you want to have the TOC.

The main page is hardcoded in the source code to __NOTOC__.

See Help:Section for more information.

MediaWiki is slow, how can I make it faster?

You might want to try a php cache engine such as turck-mmcache. It will save the parsed php scripts and enhance performance a lot (x10).

Can I print out my entire Mediawiki site?

The short answer to this is no, there is no single function to print the whole site. Each page (using the monobook skin) is formatted for printing, but to print the whole site you need to go to each page and print it separately.

However, if you're building, for example, a documentation and support site you can also build a monolithic page which includes (transcludes) all the pages of your document. Create the page using: 

= Big Headings =
{{:Page title1}}
{{:Page title2}}

and so on...

This will automatically generate an index for your document as well!

Can I use commons.wikimedia.org in my installed version of mediawiki ?

At present the shared image repository must be present on the server's filesystem, so unless your site is on the Wikimedia main cluster the answer is no.

I would like to run a BOT

You might want to use the python wikipediabot.

Configuration

How do I change the look and feel of MediaWiki for my own site?

See MediaWiki look and feel for a detailed explanation..

How do I change the default skin for users that are not logged in ?

Go to languages/Language.php and change the value of "skin" in $wgDefaultUserOptionsEn, e.g. to "skin"=>2 for Cologne Blue.

I've changed settings in LocalSettings.php, such as $wgSitename, but they don't show up in my browser? Why not?

(Note: As always, first ensure that you're not viewing a cached page - perform a "hard refresh", clear the browser cache, or view a page that didn't exist before the change.)

There was a bug in versions of MediaWiki prior to 1.3.6 where variables, such as $wgSitename, were interpolated into user interface messages at install, rather than when the message was requested (Bugzilla:296). The result was that any later changes to these variables would have no effect on these messages, since the software simply saw them as plain text; all UI messages can be reset to their defaults (with the new variable values) by running the maintenance/rebuildMessages.php script. If you upgrade to the latest version of MediaWiki first, these will include dynamic references to the variables (e.g. {{SITENAME}}) and should therefore reflect future configuration changes.

Does MediaWiki automatically capitalize the first letter in one's $wgSitename ?

It does appear to do so.

How can I change what the <title> of each page is? Where do I make changes?

Edit MediaWiki:Pagetitle.

How do I Enable Uploads?

If you get a message: 

Sorry, uploading is disabled.

See Documentation:Administration#Enabling_and_Disabling_Uploads

How do I enable templates?

Templates are enabled in Mediawiki. The template namespace is used to store templates you create. To use a template in a page, put the template name in curly braces {{like this}} on the page where you would like it to appear.

How do I set the timezone for my Mediawiki?

See Brion Vibber's message about this at http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-April/000357.html

How do I make my base URLs shorter?

See eliminating index.php from the url for details. You may need access to server files like httpd.conf .

More complex customization

How do I change the logo ?

In your LocalSettings.php add: 

$wgLogo = '/path/to/your/logo.png';

Default is {$wgUploadPath}/wiki.png


How do I change the icon in browser's address-line ?

  • won't work:
    • i thougth, i just had to create a favicon.ico-file with my graphik
    • then i put this file into folder: skins/common/images/
    • then i emptied my cache completely, but the icon won't appear..... ;-(
    • could it be, that i have to enable something like show icon in adressline ?! because, the orignial MediaWiki icon isn't shown, too !!
  • MacGyver-Style... force it
    • copy your favicon.ico-file in the root-directory of mediawiki (where index.php and LocalSettings.php are placed)
      • this is working under mediawiki 1.4
  • since mediawiki 1.4beta6
    • the exact ___location of the favicon.ico-file is defined in /includes/Skin.php
      • is this relative to the MediaWiki installation? the server root? ???
        • Looking at an Apache server log, it appears to be relative to the server root. So you probably want to but the favicon.ico file in the root of your MediaWiki installation and change the line in /includes/Skin.php to read ... 'href' => '/yourwiki/favicon.ico'

Is it somehow possible to use a FILE URI-Qualifier for local intranets e.g. [file://localhost/C: C-Drive] ?

Yes, just add the "file" protocol to the list of URL handlers. Right now you have to directly edit includes/Parser.php: 

	/* private */ function replaceExternalLinks( $text ) {
		$fname = 'Parser::replaceExternalLinks';
		wfProfileIn( $fname );
		$text = $this->subReplaceExternalLinks( $text, 'http', true );
		$text = $this->subReplaceExternalLinks( $text, 'https', true );
		$text = $this->subReplaceExternalLinks( $text, 'ftp', false );
		$text = $this->subReplaceExternalLinks( $text, 'irc', false );
		$text = $this->subReplaceExternalLinks( $text, 'gopher', false );
		$text = $this->subReplaceExternalLinks( $text, 'news', false );
		$text = $this->subReplaceExternalLinks( $text, 'mailto', false );
		$text = $this->subReplaceExternalLinks( $text, 'file', false );
		wfProfileOut( $fname );
		return $text;
	}

From version 1.4 on, in Parser.php change the line 

define( 'URL_PROTOCOLS', 'http|https|ftp|irc|gopher|news|mailto' );

to 

define( 'URL_PROTOCOLS', 'http|https|ftp|irc|gopher|news|mailto|file' );


  • Attention:
    Comment by Brion and --Nyxos 12
    31, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC):
It could be that your browser does not support using file: links from an http: source. This may be disabled by default due to general security issues with file:// URLs and malicious scripting vulnerabilities.
List of browsers supporting or not supporting the file:/// link from pages delivered from a remote server, which is common to wiki pages:
Browser after applying the patch as above:
do file:/// links work ?
Internet Explorer 6.0 (Windows XP SP1 or SP2) no
Netscape 7.0 (Windows XP SP1 or SP2) no
Opera Version 7.54 Final (Linux) no
Mozilla 1.7 (Linux) no
Konqueror (Linux) yes
All the file:// URLs work when pasted into the URL bar in IE6, Netscape and Firefox, but clicking has no effect in either browser when the source file is served via HTTP from a server.
When the file is saved to disk and loaded, all links work in both browsers.
Listed as Bug #614 on Bugzilla.
A note: According to the Instiki FAQ loading of local file links from http links can be enabled on Mozilla and Firefox by putting user_pref("security.checkloaduri", false); into the file usr.js.
It should also be possible to set this with the "about:config" interface (just type about:config in the address bar, typing security.ch into the filter input line then narrows down the displayed options to this one). I'm not sure which version of Mozilla introduced this (I just learned about this interface today).
However note that this setting is global, i.e. it will affect all sites you browse; while I don't know exactly what the security risk of this is, the fact that the setting is in the security section (and the note "If you don’t give a wit about the security of your local files" on the Instiki FAQ) strongly implies this is a security risk. --132.199.100.181 08:08, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

How do I add my own dynamic content to MediaWiki?

To do this you will want to create a special page, which is just a php script. First go to the includes directory and notice all the files that start with "Special", these are all the special pages in your MediaWiki installation. Create a page called SpecialMypage.php, where "Mypage" is the name of your page.

Open the file SpecialPage.php. There will be a bunch of lines that look like this: 

"Statistics" => new SpecialPage( "Statistics" ),

at the beginning of the file. Add a line like that in the correct section with your page's name on it: 

"Mypage" => new SpecialPage( "Mypage" ),

Now navigate to "MediaWiki:Mypage". Edit the page and add the name of your page there. So the text should probably be only "Mypage", or whatever you want the name of your page to show up as for wiki users.

Now edit SpecialMypage.php. Create a function that is named "wfSpecial" and then the name of your page. 

<?php	 
	function wfSpecialMypage()	 
	{	 
       global $wgUser, $wgOut; 
	$wgOut->addHTML( "html goes here" );	 
	$wgOut->addWikiText( "WikiText goes here" );	 
	}	 
 ?>

You can pretty much write any valid php code you want here. You can use $wgOut->addHTML to add html output to the page and $wgOut->addWikiText to add wikitext to the page. Your special page should now work. You can navigate to it by going to "Special:Mypage" or via the special pages page.

Alternatively, you can write your own MediaWiki extension.

How can I insert one of my php functions underneath the Search Box?

Dan Kohn has a neat tutorial

How do I completely lock my Database?

You could edit the permissions on your database to disable UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE operations. MediaWiki would probably spew errors, but your database would not get tampered with.

You'll need to edit /wiki/includes/Parser.php and replace the following line: 

$r .= "</ul><h3>{$articles_start_char[$index]}</h3>\n<ul>";

With: 

$r .= "</ul><h3 id=\"{$articles_start_char[$index]}\">{$articles_start_char[$index]}</h3>\n<ul>";

Then you'll need to edit the Category page and include: 

==Alphabetical list==
[[#A|A]] [[#B|B]] [[#C|C]] [[#D|D]] [[#E|E]] [[#F|F]] [[#G|G]] 
[[#H|H]] [[#I|I]] [[#J|J]] [[#K|K]] [[#L|L]] [[#M|M]] [[#N|N]] 
[[#O|O]] [[#P|P]] [[#Q|Q]] [[#R|R]] [[#S|S]] [[#T|T]] [[#U|U]] 
[[#V|V]] [[#W|W]] [[#X|X]] [[#Y|Y]] [[#Z|Z]]

Which will give you this;

Alphabetical list

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

How can I add a variable {{CURRENTWEEK}} for a "Featured article of the week" or similar?

NOTE: this is not needed in 1.4

Variables such as {{CURRENTMONTH}} and {{CURRENTDAY}} are called Magic Words, and you will want to add a new one to your system. For MediaWiki 1.4beta3, you'll need to edit three files, adding just a small bit of text. Be Bold. At the same time, don't work on your live version, but on a working back up.

In /wiki/includes/MagicWords.php near the top of the file you'll find a list of define statements, like this: 

define('MAG_REDIRECT', 0);

Notice that the number in the parenthesis is incrementing. Go to the bottom of this list and add a new definition, with XX being the next number for your set up: 

define('MAG_CURRENTWEEK', XX);

Just below definition list you'll find an array which probably looks rather like 

$wgVariableIDs = array(
    MAG_CURRENTMONTH,
    MAG_CURRENTMONTHNAME,
    MAG_CURRENTDAY,
    MAG_CURRENTDAYNAME,
    MAG_CURRENTYEAR,
    MAG_CURRENTTIME,
    MAG_NUMBEROFARTICLES,
    MAG_CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN,
    MAG_SITENAME,
    MAG_SERVER,
    MAG_PAGENAME,
    MAG_PAGENAMEE,
    MAG_NAMESPACE
);

Add a comma after the last MAG_word, a line return, and the new magic word: 

    MAG_CURRENTWEEK

Save and close /wiki/includes/MacicWords.php.

Now you will need to edit /wiki/includes/Parser.php. You will need to find the getVariableValue function. In this function you want to add a new case to the select list. Choose a position in the select and insert: 

case MAG_CURRENTWEEK:
    return $varCache[$index] = $wgContLang->formatNum( date('W') );

A short explanation of what this does is in order. This will put the week of the year into the variable. This value will be from 1 to 54. Yes, there are only 52 weeks, plus one or two days, in a year. However, according to the ISO 8601 standard for week numbering, yearly weeks begin on Monday, so if the first day of the year is Sunday, that will be week number 1, and the next day will be week 2, and you will have 53 weeks by the end, and if it just happens to be a Leap Year the year will end on a Monday - making week 54.

Save and close /wiki/includes/Parser.php.

The final file you will need to edit is /wiki/languages/Language.php. Note the different directory. You will need to locate the $wgMagicWordsEn array, and insert a new line: 

    MAG_CURRENTWEEK          => array( 1,    'CURRENTWEEK'            ),

If you are adding the new line to the end of the list, remember to make sure there is a comma at the end of the line above your new line, and that there is not a comma at the end of your new line.

Save and close /wiki/languages/Language.php.

Be sure to test your changes before adding them to the live version.


How do I change the contents of the navigation toolbar?

(aka sidebar, quickbar for those doing keyword searches; see also Customization:Quickbar)

General notes

Every link in the navigation box is specified in two parts - the text, and the target. Each of these is stored in an interface message; that is, a page in the MediaWiki namespace (in most situations, editting the LanguageXX.php files will have no effect on a running wiki).

  • if the content of the "target" message is a full URL (i.e. begins http://, etc), the result will be an external link equivalent to [<target> <text>]
  • otherwise, the target will be interpretted as the name of a wiki page, and the link will be the equivalent of an internal link like [[<target>|<text>]]

You do not need to edit any PHP files to change the text or target of existing links, you need only find and edit the appropriate MediaWiki:<whatever> pages.

In version 1.4 or later

The list of pages is defined in an array called $wgNavigationLinks; copy the entire array from includes/DefaultSettings.php to LocalSettings.php if you wish to edit it (never edit DefaultSettings.php itself). The default array looks like this: 

$wgNavigationLinks = array (
	array( 'text'=>'mainpage',	'href'=>'mainpage' ),
	array( 'text'=>'portal',	'href'=>'portal-url' ),
	array( 'text'=>'currentevents', 'href'=>'currentevents-url' ),
	array( 'text'=>'recentchanges', 'href'=>'recentchanges-url' ),
	array( 'text'=>'randompage',	'href'=>'randompage-url' ),
	array( 'text'=>'help', 		'href'=>'helppage' ),
	array( 'text'=>'sitesupport',	'href'=>'sitesupport-url' ),
);

Each line of this array represents a link in the navigation box; remember that these are pointers into the database, not the actual text used.

  • To edit a link: you do not need to copy and edit the $wgNavigationLinks array; simply find the appropriate pages, such as MediaWiki:portal and MediaWiki:portal-url, and edit them while logged in with "sysop" privileges. The page Special:Allmessages can be useful for finding these and other editable interface elements.
  • To remove a link: copy the array as described above, and simply delete the appropriate line.
  • To add a new link:
    1. add a line of the form array( 'text'=>'something', 'href'=>'something-url' ),; "something" and "something-url" can be whatever you like, and should be something you will remember and recognise later.
    2. edit (create) the pages MediaWiki:something and MediaWiki:something-url in your wiki (substituting the names you chose); the first should contain whatever you want the link's text to be (e.g. "Contact us"), and the second either the name of a wiki page (e.g. "Project:Get in touch") or the full URL of an external document (e.g. "http://example.com/feedbackform.php")

Remember: if your changes don't show up, remember to clear/by-pass your browser cache.

In version 1.3 or earlier

In versions earlier than 1.4, there is no simple way to add a new link to the navigation bar. However, the existing links in version 1.3 behave in the same way as described - they are composed from two pages in the MediaWiki namespace.

  • To edit a link: find the appropriate "message" (page in your wiki), for instance by looking at your Special:Allmessages page, and make your changes. For instance, the "Community Portal" link has the text of MediaWiki:Portal, and the target found in MediaWiki:Portal-url; similarly, MediaWiki:Sitesupport and MediaWiki:Sitesupport-url, and others. The target can be either internal (just the name of a wiki page) or external (a full URL, beginning http:// etc).
  • To remove (hide) a link: set the text of the link to "-" (a single hyphen, without the quotes); e.g. if MediaWiki:portal contained only "-", no "Community portal" link would appear.

Remember: if your changes don't show up, remember to clear/by-pass your browser cache.

Can I set up my wiki to let me create a page if it is not found?

Yes, you can do this, however it is a very bad practice because the page which is created will be an orphan, with no other links in the site leading to it. It is much better to create a link to the new page from a related page. Many users will not do this if they have another option.

However, if you really feel your installation would be better with a link to create a not-found page, you will need to edit the page [[MediaWiki:Nogomatch]] on your installation. Mediawiki namespace articles are protected by default; you will need to have admin privileges to edit the article.

This is one optional text which allows users to immediately create an article which was not found (from MediaWiki:Nogomatch on Wikipedia): 

<span style="font-size: 135%; font-weight: bold; margin-left: .6em">No page with that title exists</span>

<span style="display: block; margin: 1.5em 2em">
You can <b><a href="$1" class="new">create an article with this title</a></b> or <a
href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested articles">put up a request for it</a>.

<span style="display:block; font-size: 89%; margin-left:.2em">Please search Wikipedia before 
creating an article to avoid duplicating an existing one, which may have a different name or 
spelling.</span>
</span>

User administration

How do I change a user's password?

Assuming that $wgPasswordSalt is set to true (the default), you can use the following SQL query: 

update user set user_password=md5(concat(user_id, '-', 
md5('somepass'))) where user_name='whatever';

Where obviously "somepass" is changed the password you want to set and "whatever" is changed to the user name as it is listed in the table "user".

(Note: The SQL query needs to be one line, but the linewrapping goes out of it's boundry if I put it as one line on the wiki.)

User forgot her password, has no e-mail address

Let the user step through a "mail me a temporary password" cycle with a working e-mail address of her discretion, which you temporarily enter into her user account record.

You need to have

(a) access to the Wiki database (table user) and
(b) a working e-mail system

Check requirement (b) by mailing yourself a temporary password via the login screen button. Make sure, that you have set up correctly your own e-mail address.

  1. As WikiSysop you enter temporarily user's e-mail address into user account in db table user.
  2. Tell the user to click "Mail me a temporary password" on the wiki login screen
  3. She will receive a temporary password soon
  4. She can now login with the password and
  5. She now must set up a new password for her account

The trick also overcomes any problem with salted or unsalted passwords.

How do I allow only logged-in users to edit?

See Setting user rights in MediaWiki for questions relating to user rights. In this case, you want to set 

$wgWhitelistEdit = true;

in LocalSettings.php.

How do I reassign edits from one user to another?

cd <path to mediawiki>/maintenance
php ./attribute.php OldUserNameOrIP NewUserName
mysql <./attribute.sql

How do I make a user a Sysop?

Goto: Special:Makesysop


How do I remove Sysop-Rights from a user ?

see Setting_user_rights_in_MediaWiki


How do I allow any user to edit but the edited pages only updated on wiki after being approved by moderators?

Add the appropriate functionality to the code ;p. There is no way of doing this with the current software, although if written well, it could prove a useful alternative to page protection. this should be added


How do I edit the Log in page to add a question so that only people with the correct answer are allowed to create a new account?

Add the functionality to the code, as shown above. There is no other way with the current software.


How do I unblock an IP address if the block is set to not time out?

How I deleted a user of my list of users?

You can't delete a user. You may change his password so (s)he can't login.

If you want to hide the user on Special:Listusers, I don't think you can. --Astronouth7303 21:18, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How I make the change of the name of the administrator? the explanation of this problem is this:

I am the administrator of wikidi, by error when registering to me for the first time, put the user name who sugireron to me: Sysop, but now I want it to change by my real name.

Now is this: Sysop (Sysop, bureaucrat)

But I want change by: Noemi JF (Sysop, bureaucrat)

Answer: I could not find a way to do this in the browser, so I used the mysql command line interface. The following commands were needed to change all references:

update user set user_name = 'Noemi JF' where user_name = 'Sysop'; update recentchanges set rc_user_text = 'Noemi JF' where rc_user_text = 'Sysop'; update old set old_user_text = 'Noemi JF' where old_user_text = 'Sysop'; update cur set cur_user_text = 'Noemi JF' where cur_user_text = 'Sysop';

Only the first is really necessary, the other 3 make sure that all references anywhere get changed as well. But these will gradually disappear as the wiki gets updated so it's not a problem if you only change the first one. Worked like a charm for me.

You're asking the wrong question. Instead of renaming one account, simply create a new one. You can use Special:Makesysop to assign admin privileges to another account. --brion 17:11, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How I eliminate a user of my list of users of my wiki?

See How I deleted a user of my list of users? above.

How do I assign a username to an IP address?

(Question asked by Blueeyor on 20:06, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC))

You can't have a specific IP become a specific user. You can check the "remember me" box.

If you want all the edits of one IP to be attributed to an user, see How do I reassign edits from one user to another? above.

How do I change an edit history from an IP address to a userID?

(Question asked by Blueeyor on 20:06, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC))

See How do I reassign edits from one user to another? above.

How do I make a page only viewable by a WikiSysop or Bureaucrat or a particular user?

(Question asked by Wiseleyb 26 Apr 2005)

See Page access restriction with MediaWiki

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