MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a Wiki software package licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is a feature-rich wiki implementation written primarily for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects, but also used by many other wikis.

It is written in PHP with the texvc math renderer in OCaml and uses an underlying MySQL relational database management system. Its logo symbolizes how its markup language uses double brackets ("[[","]]") to link articles together. MediaWiki is capable of interfacing with other, optional programs to improve performance and capabilities. Support for memcached, the Squid cache system, and TeX math rendering are all available in the current version. An extension and hook system allows users to add their own features and program interfaces.

History

MediaWiki was originally written for Wikipedia by the German University of Cologne student and developer Magnus Manske. The site previously used Perl-based UseModWiki (nicknamed "Phase I" by the Wikipedia community), then switched to PHP with a new version ("Phase II") on January 25, 2002. The day is known within the Wikipedia community as "Magnus Manske Day."

In mid-2002, the software was further rewritten and improved ("Phase III") by Lee Daniel Crocker, and has been incrementally developed from this code base since. Starting in mid-2003, the previously unnamed program was named "MediaWiki" and regular public releases began to be made with non-Wikipedia users in mind.

The wiki engine was released under the name MediaWiki for the first time on August 29, 2003. The release name of that particular release was MediaWiki-stable 20030829.

The name was chosen by Wikipedian Daniel Mayer as a play on 'Wikimedia', Wikipedia's parent organization, which was being formally established around this time. The name is, however, occasionally criticised for its similarity to "Wikimedia", which leads to confusion among people new (and old!) to the project.

Version 1.4

MediaWiki 1.4 was released on March 20, 2005. Brion Vibber became the lead developer. For version 1.4, the code was cleaned up so that certain tasks could be performed in half the time. One new feature was the user's ability to change the interface language, making other language projects more accessible.

Mediawiki 1.4 used gzip to compress stored text, which resulted in compression to about 15% of the original disk storage used. Further storage saving was achieved by adding support for "block-compressed revisions", which combined multiple revisions before compressing.

Version 1.5

MediaWiki 1.5 was released on October 5, 2005. It continued the architectural changes started in version 1.4. Its most notable change was a substantially redesigned database schema, which finally completely decoupled text storage from article revision tracking. This increased the speed of various operations like page moves and generating page history listings, as well as allowing unchanging bulk data to be stored outside the database. This version also introduced support for SVG vector images.

Version 1.6

MediaWiki 1.6 is the current stable version, released April 5, 2006. See release notes on the official homepage.

Features

• File Uploads - MediaWiki supports the uploading of files; images can be used in pages to add multimedia capabilities to the wiki
• Interwiki Links - MediaWiki allows linking to pages on other wikis using simplified link prefixes, and can associate pages with other editions (e.g. foreign language versions) of the same page
• Namespaces - Pages can be divided into namespaces, akin to desk drawers, which facilitate the separation of main content, discussion and meta-content.
• Wikimail - a Wikimedia gateway to allow email to be posted directly into the wiki-project, such as Wikipedia or Wiktionary.

See also

• GetWiki: a fork.
• List of content management systems
• Comparison of MediaWiki with other wikis

External links

• MediaWiki official homepage
• Download and project page on SourceForge
• MediaWiki on the Meta-Wiki, Wikimedia's meta website.
  • User's guide
  • Sites using MediaWiki
• MediaWiki Tutorial with screenshots: how to install and configure Mediawiki, how to change skins; how to add extensions
• A Project engaged to use PostgreSQL as the backend database
• A support forum for MediaWiki users and webmasters