Forum:Mediawiki 1.14 Released (Tlosk Feb 2009)

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The 1.14 version was released on Sunday, I'm currently testing the upgrade on a test machine and in the next week I'll be upgrading the wiki. This will be a significant move as we are currently running version 1.10 (May 2007). Some preparation can be done ahead of time, however during the final backup and upgrade the wiki will be placed into a read only mode to avoid database conflicts, I'll give at least a 2 day warning before this happens. Help pages will be changed to reflect the changes once the upgrade is complete. Some special pages will appear different and quite a few new options will be available. --Tlosk 10:13, 23 February 2009 (CST) Here are the 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, and 1.14 changes that will likely be meaningful to our specific wiki: Images: The Image namespace has been subsumed by the File namespace, while [[File:Name.jpg]] will still work, the standard is now [[File:Name.jpg]] to display an inline image. [[Media:Name.jpg]] will still create a text link directly to the image and [[:File:Name.jpg]] will link to the image description page. A new tag allows a single image to link to many pages instead of just a single page as was previously the case with a redirect on the image's description page. Add the parameter link=page name where the image is used. The image will act as a hypertext link to the specified page. The page name must not be enclosed in square brackets, and it is always interpreted as an internal link. For example, [[File:Pyreal Mote Icon.png|link=Atlan Weapons]] would link to Atlan Weapons when the image is clicked. In most cases we will continue using redirects to avoid having to duplicate the link each time the image is used. Setting a caption for an image will display the caption explicitly if the image uses a frame and will display a popup caption if the mouse hovers over the image even if there is no frame. Now this popup can differ from the caption by adding the parameter alt=alt text. For example, [[File:Image.jpg|frame|alt=Asheron|Asheron in his tower on the island off the coast of Eastham.]] would display the full caption, but display "Asheron" if hovered. The <gallery> tag accepts image names without an Image: prefix (just give name and caption). New file cache for the parser that improves page rendering time on pages with several uses of the same image. Image moving is now enabled for sysops by default. (2009-03-18 Disabled due to reports of data corruption/loss in some moves.[1]) Image redirects are now cached (nonlogged in users will view the normal page cache instead of forcing a page rendering). A warning is shown when hash identical files exist. Better proportional view of upright images related to landscape images on a page without nailing the width of upright images to a fixed value. New 'border' and 'frameless' keywords added to the [[File:]] syntax. Removed hardcoded minimum image name length of three characters. Allow HTML attributes on <gallery>. New Syntax: {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Category Name}} - For example {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Creature}} would display as 1,824. Able to make arbitrary rows of sortable tables sticky (stick to top of table, not sort): |- class="unsortable" Added magic word __STATICREDIRECT__ to suppress the redirect fixer. Added magic word __HIDDENCAT__, when placed on a category page causes the category to be hidden on article pages. New PAGESIZE parser function that returns the size of a page. Search: "Did you mean" search feature made more noticeable. Drop-down AJAX search suggestions added. More relevant search snippets are highlighted. Drop-down selection of major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, etc). Special Pages: The new page Special:Log/newusers records new users to the wiki. The new page Special:LinkSearch displays a search for external links. History pages now have a date selector that allows you to display history from a particular month. Mediawiki:pagetitle-view-mainpage message page allows the HTML <title> of the main page to be customized. Special:User contributions now has year and month date selectors. Special:Statistics has many new features. Special:ListUsers displays edit counts. MediaWiki:Uploadfooter now available for just Special:Upload. Category pages now give an accurate total of items in the category instead of only a range to display. Special:FileDuplicateSearch Special:UserRights redesigned. Inclusions, links, and redirects can be separately toggled on or off for Special:WhatLinksHere. Special:SpecialPages now organized into sections. Image links are shown on Special:Whatlinkshere. Search by first letters or digits in Special:Categories added. Special:Recentchangeslinked now has all options that are in Special:Recentchanges. The search box, toolbox and languages box in the Monobook sidebar can now be moved around arbitrarily using special sections in MediaWiki:Sidebar: SEARCH, TOOLBOX and LANGUAGES. Added a predefined list of delete reasons to the deletion form. Add a predefined list of delete reasons to the file deletion form. Special:Upload now lists permitted/prohibited file extensions. Use shared.css for all skins and oldshared.css in place of common.css for pre-Monobook skins. As always, modifications should go in-wiki to MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Special:Uncategorizedtemplates Miscellaneous: Configurable per-namespace and per-page notices for the edit form. Search matches are now bold only, not red as well. When a page doesn't exist, the tab will say "create", not "edit". Users moving a page can now move all subpages automatically as well. The User class now contains a public function called isActiveEditor. Figures out if a user is active based on at least $wgActiveUserEditCount number of edits in the last $wgActiveUserDays days. Duplicate section anchors with differing case are now disambiguated. White space differences not shown in diffs. Add feed links for the site to all pages. Allow bots to specify whether an edit should be marked as a bot edit, via the parameter 'bot'. Allow HTML attributes on <math>. Improved file history presentation. Show edit count in user preferences.

I've successfully upgraded a test server and will be doing a full backup early Saturday morning on the 14th. The wiki will be read-only during this period. This will give us several days to get the bulk of the content up for the new patch before then. After verifying the backup I hope to complete the upgrade of the site Sunday or Monday following. If you find any unexpected behavior or errors, contact me via email. Also the template revisions and swiss tool update will be done by then so once the upgrade is live I'll start aggressively updating existing articles with the new template formats using the new tools that will be available to us. --Tlosk 17:12, 9 March 2009 (CDT)

Further testing revealed a few issues that I'm tracking down now, so it may be a few more days.