Editing Encyclopedia:MediaWiki (archive)

{{historical}}

'''MediaWiki''' is the server software that runs Wikipedia and its sister wiki sites. See [[MediaWiki]] or [[mw:MediaWiki|MediaWiki]]. For details of the Mediawiki [[Wikipedia:Namespace|namespace]] see [[Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace|MediaWiki namespace]] or (for messages contained) see [[Special:Allmessages]].''

You can download the latest copy of the [[m:MediaWiki]] package from Sourceforge at the [http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia/ MediaWiki Project page].

==Configuration status==
Test.
You can see what version of the MediaWiki software the English Wikipedia is running by visiting [[Special:Version]].

===June 24, 2004===

The following [[MediaWiki]] features are currently disabled in the English Wikipedia (and other large Wikimedia wikis) for performance reasons:
* Individual page access counters (for the foreseeable future)
* Most wanted, popular pages (temporary). As a temporary replacement the following static lists have been produced from a database dump: [[Wikipedia:Most Referenced Articles|Most referenced pages]], [[Wikipedia:Most Wanted Articles|Most wanted pages]]

Recently, search, orphaned, short, and long pages were reenabled.

== History ==
Wikipedia and its sister [[Wikimedia]] projects run on the same [[GNU General Public License|GPL]]-ed free software, called '''MediaWiki''' or '''Software Phase III''' (see [[m:MediaWiki]]). It was switched from [[UseModWiki]] software ("Phase I") to new software, written especially for Wikipedia using the [[PHP]] programming language, on [[January 25]], [[2002]] ("Phase II"); in July 2002 it was replaced by what is now called MediaWiki.

[[user:Magnus Manske|Magnus Manske]] was the original author of the software, which is written in PHP and uses an underlying [[MySQL]] [[relational database]]. The software is released under the [[GNU General Public License]]. Other programmers are ''strongly'' urged to get involved.

MediaWiki was made for wikipedia and later for its sister sites and then released as the open-source MediaWiki

===Change from Phase II to Phase III===

On Saturday, July 20, 2002, Wikipedia moved to a new high-capacity server and new, hopefully more efficient, [[Wikipedia:PHP_script|software]] base.
The new software was designed to look and behave as similarly to the previous phase II software as possible, but a few new features and changes should be noted:

* Search function now indexes 2- and 3-letter words
* New side-by-side diffs of article changes
* "Floating" sidebar option for some modern web browsers
* A few minor changes to wikitext syntax (see [[wikipedia:How to edit a page]])
* Since anonymous users, while not having user pages, still have user contributions pages, their IP numbers in lists such as [[Special:Recentchanges|Recentchanges]] and article histories link to their contributions
* Support for maths formulae using [[Wikipedia:TeX markup]]
* Better support for auto-posting "bots"
* A new static page caching system has greatly reduced system load
* The database server and the page server now run on separate machines

The Phase III software is robust, and under active development. Many more features have been, and are expected to be, added to the Phase III software, together with bug fixes and improvements in stability. You are encouraged to submit [[Wikipedia:Bug reports|bug reports]].

==See also==
Information and discussion about this software can be found on the following pages:
*[[Wikipedia:Announcements#Software status]]
*[[Wikipedia:Mailing lists|Wikitech-L]] mailing list (technical discussions regarding the development)
*[[m:MediaWiki]]
*[http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia/ Sourceforge: MediaWiki Project page]
*[[Wikipedia:Bugzilla|Bugzilla]], [http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ MediaWiki Bug reports and feature requests]
*[[m:Help:Contents|MediaWiki User's Guide]]
*[[Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)]] (occasional discussions of features and bugs)
*[[mw:Sites using MediaWiki|Sites using MediaWiki]]
*[[Wikipedia:PHP script FAQ|PHP script FAQ]]
*[[mw:How to become a Wikipedia hacker]] (partial installation advice)

More status pages:
* [[meta:Wikimedia servers]]
* [[meta:Wikimedia hardware status]]
* [https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Server_admin_log Server admin log]

Related topics:
*[[Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace]]

[[Category:Wikipedia archives]]