Web Admin: MediaWiki
We use the MediaWiki software for this support site. Whilst editing a page is pretty straight forward, there are a couple of points to consider - especially if you leave it for a while and come back to it having forgotten everything you learnt beforehand!
Create a page remembering to use the naming convention covered on the main page, having done that, there are a number of actions to complete to bring it inline with the others.
Previous / Next Article
Add in at the bottom of the page the table with the previous and next images for navigation. You can copy the table from any other page.
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You will need to edit the URL for the pervious and next images in the table so that they do indeed go to the previous and next article.
And you will need to edit the previous and next article links either side of the location where you want to put this page. That makes 3 pages in total to edit, the newly created page and a small edit either side of it.
Categories
Every page has at least one Category; that of the membership group: Member, Coord, Committee or Web Admin plus any other categories that you see fit. Copy the format for adding the category box from any other page. Click the Categories link itself to see a list of them all.
Sidebar
Having created your new page, you will want to add it to the sidebar navigation on the left-hand side of the page. To edit the Sidebar, go Special Pages | Data and Tools | System Messages | and then in the Filter by prefix: enter "Sidebar".
From the results (there will be one) Click "sidebar" in the left-hand column and you have reached the Sidebar page ready for you to edit. A quicker method of course is to go straight to it with this URL and then edit the source from there.
The format is ** Webpage | Text for sidebar. To give any indentation where the page is a sub-page from a higher section, you can use three no-breaking spaces.
Templates
Templates are standard wiki pages whose content is designed to be transcluded (embedded) inside other pages. Templates follow a convention that the name is prefixed with "Template:
", assigning it to that namespace; besides this, you can create them like any other wiki page. We use a couple of templates in our Wiki. To view them, go Special Pages | List of Pages | All Pages | and then in the Namespace field, select "Template" from the dropdown box.

You can see that there are two in use. "Contact IT Admin" - because we use this quite a lot and Previous Next which is on every page for the previous / next article.
The Template is inserted within double curly braces {{template name}}. A word of warning reference searches. A search only searches pages in their raw (wiki) format and not the final rendered version that appears on the page. So a search will only find the template name and not the content of the template.
Images
Any images used should be restricted to a width of 800 pixels and the image type should have a frame around it (from the Image | Advanced tab).
CSS
It is possible to create our own CSS overrides from the MediaWiki defaults. For example the table headers are in u3a yellow. Edit the MediaWiki:Common.css page
Admin
We have restricted use of the MediaWiki to be 'Read only' for the members ie they cannot contribute to an article as might be normal with other Wiki's, they can however, read all the articles and learn enough to do all the things they need to do as a member, coordinator, committee member or even another site admin. Consequently, there are only two accounts associated with this site: 'U3A Support' - assigned to Jenny and 'Wyatt Twerp' - assigned to Geoff. System messages are sent to Geoff's account; him being the main user. In addition to the core product of this software, there are numerous add on extensions available to use. Configuration of any such extensions are done in a 'LocalSettings.php' file at the root of the support domain. We are only using one at the moment 'Visual Editor' giving the editor a WYSIWYG view for editing, rather than the default 'html' type editor (you can easily switch between the two whilst editing a page). The ImageMap extension which is installed but unused would have been great, but it appears to be non compatible with our server.
SMTP mail has been enabled so that the system can properly send authenticated emails (rather than the default php mail sender which results in a lot of mail ending up in a junk or spam folder). The SMTP account uses Geoff's email address - the same one associated with the user Wyatt Twerp.
Upgrading
System messages informing of an upgrade are sent to IT Support. You can check our current software version from the Special Pages, available from the tools section at the bottom of the left hand sidebar - or from this URL. In the MediaWiki support pages themselves is a good article describing the upgrade process - follow it! In a nutshell I:
- Backed up the database
- Backed up the images folder
- Downloaded the latest version - 1.42, in zip format (from the Upgrade page itself)
- Unpacked the zip file to my local machine
- Read the UPGRADE file for the new version. It's at the root level of the unpacked files.
- FTP'd the unzipped files to a clean directory in the Support site. I called the directory the number of the upgrade ie 142 and created it at the root level of the support site.
- Copied the LocalSettings.php file from the current installation to the new folder just created - the 142 folder.
- Copied the u3a logo file that appears in the top left hand corner of each page from /resources/assets to the same location in the new folder structure. The file is called U3ALogo.png.
- Copied the 211018_Constitution.pdf file from the current installation to the 142 folder
- Copied the folders and files from the images folder to the same folder in the new structure.
- Ran the update script. You can do this from a web browser, navigate to /142/mw-config/index.php and follow the prompts. If all is good, carry on.
- Moved everything at the root level of Support - apart from the 142 folder, to a clean, temporary archive folder, I called this 141.
- Moved everything from the 142 folder to the root level of the Support site.
- Checked that we are now showing version 1.42 from the Special Pages | Version page.
- Tested and checked that I can navigate and edit a page.
- Deleted the 141 folder when I was satisfied that everything was working OK.
This list assumes an upgrade from version 1.41 to 1.42.
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