Remove "include redirects" option from search
[lhc/web/wiklou.git] / RELEASE-NOTES-1.23
1 Security reminder: MediaWiki does not require PHP's register_globals. If you
2 have it on, turn it '''off''' if you can.
3
4 == MediaWiki 1.23 ==
5
6 THIS IS NOT A RELEASE YET
7
8 MediaWiki 1.23 is an alpha-quality branch and is not recommended for use in
9 production.
10
11 === Configuration changes in 1.23 ===
12 * When $wgJobRunRate is higher that zero, jobs are now executed via an
13 asynchronous HTTP request to a MediaWiki entry point. This may require
14 increasing the number of server worker threads.
15 * $wgDebugLogGroups values may be set to an associative array with a
16 'destination' key specifying the log destination. The array may also contain
17 a 'sample' key with a positive integer value N indicating that the log group
18 should be sampled by dispatching one in every N messages on average. The
19 sampling is random.
20 * In addition to the current exception log format, MediaWiki now serializes
21 exception metadata to JSON and logs it to the 'exception-json' log group.
22 This makes MediaWiki easier to integrate with log aggregation and analysis
23 tools.
24 * $wgSquidServersNoPurge now supports the use of Classless Inter-Domain
25 Routing (CIDR) notation to specify contiguous blocks of IPv4 and/or IPv6
26 addresses that should be trusted to provide X-Forwarded-For headers.
27 * Preferences 'watchcreations', 'watchdefault', 'enotifwatchlistpages' ("Add
28 pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist", "Add pages and files I
29 edit to my watchlist", "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is
30 changed") are now enabled by default. In addition new user accounts' personal
31 and talk pages are now watched by them by default.
32 * $wgLBFactoryConf: Class names have had underscores removed. The configuration
33 should be updated if LBFactory_Simple or LBFactory_Multi is configured.
34 * $wgPasswordSenderName has been removed and is no longer functional. To set a
35 custom mailer name, the system message 'emailsender' should be modified
36 (default: "{{SITENAME}}").
37 * $wgDBAhandler was removed as the only class using it was also removed
38 * The 'max threads' setting was removed from $wgDBservers.
39 * Support for AdminSettings.php has been completely removed. All configuration
40 belongs in LocalSettings.php.
41 * $wgSkipSkin, which has been replaceable by $wgSkipSkins since 2005 (r9249), is
42 now formally deprecated.
43 * Removed deprecated $wgDisabledActions as it is hardly used anywhere.
44 * $wgRateLimitLog has been deprecated and replaced by
45 $wgDebugLogGroup['ratelimit'].
46 * $wgLocalInterwikis is an array containing multiple local interwiki prefixes
47 (interwiki prefixes that point back to the current wiki). This effectively
48 allows more than one value of $wgLocalInterwiki to be specified and
49 understood by the parser. The value of $wgLocalInterwiki is automatically
50 prepended to the start of this array.
51 * $wgQueryPages has been removed. Query Pages should be added to by using the
52 wgQueryPages hook.
53
54 === New features in 1.23 ===
55 * ResourceLoader can utilize the Web Storage API to cache modules client-side.
56 Compared to the browser cache, caching in Web Storage allows ResourceLoader
57 to be more granular about evicting stale modules from the cache while
58 retaining the ability to retrieve multiple modules in a single HTTP request.
59 This capability can be enabled by setting $wgResourceLoaderStorageEnabled to
60 true. This feature is currently considered experimental and should only be
61 enabled with care.
62 * (bug 6092) Add expensive parser functions {{REVISIONID:}}, {{REVISIONUSER:}}
63 and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP:}} (with friends).
64 * Add "wgRelevantUserName" to mw.config containing the current
65 Skin::getRelevantUser value.
66 * (bug 56033) Add content model to the page information.
67 * Added Article::MissingArticleConditions hook to give extensions a chance to
68 hide their (unrelated) log entries.
69 * Added LonelyPagesQuery hook to let extensions modify the query used to
70 generate Special:LonelyPages.
71 * Added $wgOpenSearchDefaultLimit defining the default number of entries to show
72 on action=opensearch API call.
73 * For namespaces with $wgNamespaceProtection (including the MediaWiki
74 namespace), the "protect" tab will be shown only if there are restriction
75 levels available that would restrict editing beyond what
76 $wgNamespaceProtection already applies. The protection form will offer only
77 those protection levels.
78 * Added $wgAPIFormatModules, allowing extensions to add additional output
79 formatting modules for the API.
80 * (bug 47812) The MediaWiki:Group-user.{css,js} pages can now be used to add
81 custom CSS or JavaScript enabled only for registered users.
82 * (bug 52005) Special pages RecentChanges, RecentChangesLinked and Watchlist
83 now include a legend describing the symbols used in lists of changes.
84 * Improved the accessibility of the tabs in Special:Preferences.
85 * Added ApiBeforeMain hook, roughly equivalent to the BeforeInitialize hook:
86 it's called after everything is set up but before any major processing
87 happens.
88 * The jquery.client module now performs a component-wise version comparison in
89 its #test method when strings are used in the browser map: version '1.10' is
90 now correctly considered larger than '1.2'. Using numbers in the version map
91 is not affected.
92 * All API modules now support an assert parameter, which can either be
93 'user' or 'bot'. The API will throw an error if the user is not logged
94 in (user) or does not have the 'bot' userright (bot). Based off of the
95 AssertEdit extension by Steve Sanbeg.
96 * WikitextContent will now render redirects with the expected "redirect"
97 header, rather than as an ordered list. Code calling Article::viewRedirect
98 can probably be changed to no longer special-case redirects.
99 * [[Special:Diff]] was added, allowing users to create internal links to
100 revision comparison pages using syntax such as [[Special:Diff/12345]],
101 [[Special:Diff/12345/prev]] or [[Special:Diff/12345/98765]].
102 * New user accounts' personal and talk pages are now watched by them by default.
103 * Added SkinTemplateGetLanguageLink hook to allow changing the html of language
104 links.
105 * Added MessageCache::get hook as a new way to customize messages across
106 multiple sites.
107 * Added jquery.throttle-debounce ResourceLoader module to limit the number of
108 callbacks for frequently occurring events.
109 * Special:ProtectedPages shows now a table. The timestamp, the reason and
110 the protecting user is also shown.
111 * Added experimental support for using Microsoft SQL Server as the database
112 backend.
113 ** Added new Microsoft SQL Server-specific configuration variable
114 $wgDBWindowsAuthentication, which makes the web server authenticate against
115 the database server using Integrated Windows Authentication instead of
116 $wgDBuser/$wgDBpassword.
117 * HTMLForm 'select', 'selectandother', 'selectorother', 'multiselect', and
118 'radio' fields can now use message keys as labels via the 'options-messages'
119 parameter, which overrides the 'options' parameter.
120 * Admins can expire users users passwords manually, or on a schedule using the
121 $wgPasswordExpirationDays configuration setting.
122 * Add new hook SendWatchlistEmailNotification, this will be used to determine
123 whether to send a watchlist email notification.
124 * (bug 42026) Special:Contributions now includes an option to filter page
125 creations, similar to the topOnly option.
126 * Add mediawiki.ui.button styling to all pages so wiki content can use styled
127 buttons.
128 * Special:UserLogin/signup now does AJAX checks for invalid and taken usernames,
129 displaying the error live.
130 * Added BaseTemplateAfterPortlet hook to allow injecting html after portlets in skins.
131 * Support has been added for a JSON based localisation file format. The
132 installer has been updated to use it.
133
134 === Bug fixes in 1.23 ===
135 * (bug 41759) The "updated since last visit" markers (on history pages, recent
136 changes and watchlist) and the talk page message indicator are now correctly
137 updated when the user is viewing old revisions of pages, instead of always
138 acting as if the latest revision was being viewed.
139 * (bug 56443) Special:ConfirmEmail no longer shows a "Mail a confirmation code"
140 when the email address is already confirmed. Also, consistently use
141 "confirmed", rather than "authenticated", when messaging whether or not the
142 user has confirmed an email address.
143 * (bug 56912) Show correct link color on cached result of Special:DeadendPages.
144 * Classes TitleListDependency and TitleDependency have been removed, as they
145 have been found unused in core and extensions for a long time.
146 * (bug 57098) SpecialPasswordReset now obeys returnto parameter
147 * (bug 37812) ResourceLoader will notice when a module's definition changes and
148 recompile it accordingly.
149 * (bug 57201) SpecialRecentChangesFilters hook is now executed for feeds.
150 * (bug 58640) Fixed a compatibility issue with PCRE 8.34 that caused pages
151 to appear blank or with missing text.
152 * (bug 56931) Updated the plural rules to CLDR 24. They are in new format
153 which is detailed in UTS 35 Rev 33. The PHP parser and evaluator as well as
154 the JavaScript evaluator were updated to support the new format. Plural rules
155 for some languages have changed, most notably Russian. Affected software
156 messages have been updated and marked for review at translatewiki.net.
157 * (bug 14323) Redirect pages, when viewed with redirect=no, no longer hide the
158 remaining page content.
159 * (bug 23542) imagelinks now stores both the redirect and target (as
160 templatelinks does).
161 * (bug 58167) The web installer no longer throws an exception when PHP is
162 compiled without support for MySQL yet with support for another DBMS.
163 * (bug 56199) Raw option of parser functions must now match complete word,
164 to take effect.
165 * (bug 60543) Special:PrefixIndex forgot stripprefix=1 for "Next page" link
166 * (bug 29762) Undoing an already-undone edit will now display an appropriate
167 message instead of leading the user to make a null edit.
168 * (bug 52659) mediawiki.notification: Notification area remained visible when
169 empty and thus was stealing pointer events from links on the page.
170 * (bug 26811) When a DBUnexpectedError occurs, DB server hostnames are now
171 hidden unless $wgShowExceptionDetails is true, and $wgShowDBErrorBacktrace
172 no longer applies in such cases.
173 * (bug 60960) Avoid doing file_exist() checks on data: URIs, as they cause
174 warnings to be printed on Windows due to large path length.
175
176 === Web API changes in 1.23 ===
177 * (bug 54884) action=parse&prop=categories now indicates hidden and missing
178 categories.
179 * action=query&meta=filerepoinfo now returns additional information for each
180 repo.
181 * action=parse&prop=languageshtml was deprecated in 1.18 and will be removed in
182 MediaWiki 1.24.
183 * action=parse now has disabletoc flag to disable table of contents in output.
184 * (bug 25702) list=allcategories, list=allimages, list=alllinks, list=allpages,
185 list=deletedrevs and list=filearchive did not handle case-sensitivity
186 properly for all parameters.
187 * ApiQueryBase::titlePartToKey allows an extra parameter that indicates the
188 namespace in order to properly capitalize the title part.
189 * (bug 57874) action=feedcontributions no longer has one item more than limit.
190 * All API modules now support an assert parameter. See the new features section
191 for more details.
192 * Added prop=contributors to fetch the list of contributors to the page.
193 * The following API modules will now return entries where fields have been
194 revision-deleted: list=deletedrevs, list=filearchive, list=recentchanges,
195 list=watchlist. "hidden" indicators will be included, in the same style as is
196 already done for prop=revisions.
197 * The following API modules will now return the content of revision-deleted
198 fields, in addition to the "hidden" indicators, if the querying user has the
199 necessary rights: list=logevents, list=usercontribs, prop=imageinfo,
200 prop=revisions.
201 * The above modules, where applicable, will now return entries filtered by
202 revision-deleted fields if the querying user has the necessary rights. For
203 example, prop=revisions with rvuser or rvexcludeuser will no longer skip
204 revisions where the user was revision-deleted if the current user has the
205 deletedhistory right.
206 * The 'hideuser' right, used when blocking, is no longer necessary or
207 sufficient for seeing contributions with revision-deleted in
208 list=usercontribs.
209 * list=watchlist now uses the querying user's rights rather than the wlowner's
210 rights when checking whether wlprop=patrol is allowed.
211 * (bug 32151) ApiWatch now has pageset capabilities (titles/pageids/generators).
212 Title parameter is now deprecated.
213 * (bug 23005) Added action=revisiondelete.
214 * Added siprop=restrictions to API action=query&meta=siteinfo for querying
215 possible page restriction (protection) levels and types.
216 * Added prop 'limitreportdata' and 'limitreporthtml' to action=parse.
217 * (bug 58627) Provide language names on action=parse&prop=langlinks.
218 * Deprecated llurl= in favour of llprop=url for action=query&prop=langlinks.
219 * Added llprop=langname and llprop=autonym for action=query&prop=langlinks.
220 * prop=redirects is added, to return redirects to the pages in the query.
221 * list=allredirects is added, to list all redirects pointing to a namespace.
222 * (bug 42026) Added ucshow={new,!new,top,!top} to list=usercontribs.
223 Also added newonly to action=feedcontributions.
224 * (bug 42026) Deprecated uctoponly in favor of ucshow=top.
225 * list=search no longer has a "srredirects" parameter. Redirects are now
226 included in all searches.
227
228 === Languages updated in 1.23 ===
229
230 MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated
231 regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as
232 changes to languages because of Bugzilla reports.
233
234 * Support was added for Northern Luri (lrc).
235
236 === Other changes in 1.23 ===
237 * The rc_type field in the recentchanges table has been superseded by a new
238 rc_source field. The rc_source field is a string representation of the
239 change type where rc_type was a numeric constant. This field is not yet
240 queried but will be in a future point release of 1.22.
241 ** Utilize update.php to create and populate this new field. On larger wiki's
242 which do not wish to update recentchanges table in one large update please
243 review the sql and comments in maintenance/archives/patch-rc_source.sql.
244 ** The rc_type field of recentchanges will be deprecated in a future point
245 release.
246 * The global variable $wgArticle has been removed after a lengthy deprecation.
247 * The global functions addButton and insertTags (for mw.toolbar.addButton and
248 mw.toolbar.insertTags) now emits mw.log.warn when accessed.
249 * The ExpandTemplates extension has been moved into MediaWiki core.
250 * (bug 52812) Removed "Disable search suggestions" from Preference.
251 * (bug 52809) Removed "Disable browser page caching" from Preference.
252 * Three new modules intended for use by custom skins were added:
253 'skins.common.elements', 'skins.common.content', and 'skins.common.interface',
254 representing three levels of standard MediaWiki styling. Previously skin
255 creators wishing to use them had to refer to the file names of appropriate
256 files directly, which is now discouraged.
257 * The modules 'skins.vector' and 'skins.monobook' have been renamed to
258 'skins.vector.styles' and 'skins.monobook.styles', respectively,
259 and their definition was changed not to include the common*.css files;
260 the two skins now load the 'skins.common.interface' module instead.
261 * A page_links_updated field has been added to the page table.
262 * SpecialPage::getTitle has been deprecated in favor of
263 SpecialPage::getPageTitle.
264 * BREAKING CHANGE: Two potentially backwards-incompatible changes have been made
265 to the 'SpecialWatchlistQuery' hook's last parameter (array $values) to make
266 the hook more consistent with the 'SpecialRecentChangesQuery' one:
267 ** Several array keys have been renamed: hideMinor → hideminor,
268 hideBots → hidebots, hideAnons → hideanons, hideLiu → hideliu,
269 hidePatrolled → hidepatrolled, hideOwn → hidemyself.
270 ** The parameter value is now a FormOptions object, not a plain array (array
271 access operators should continue to work, as it implements the ArrayAccess
272 interface).
273 * Option to mark hooks as deprecated has been added.
274 * (bug 52811) Preference "Enable section editing via [edit] links" was removed.
275 * (bug 52813) Preference "Show table of contents (for pages with more than
276 3 headings)" was removed.
277 * (bug 52810) Preference "Justify paragraphs" was removed.
278 * OutputPage::showErrorPage raises a notice if arguments are incoherent.
279 * Thumbnails that keep failing to render in thumb.php will be rate-limited
280 againt further render attempts for 1 hour. $wgAttemptFailureEpoch can be
281 altered to reset all rate-limited thumbnails at once.
282 * (bug 56572) Builds of the OOjs and OOjs UI libraries are now available.
283 * mw.loader.go and mw.loader.version have been removed.
284 * (bug 52815) Preference "Enable simplified search bar (Vector skin only)"
285 was removed.
286 * A user_password_expires column has been added to the user table. The User
287 object expects this column to exist. Use update.php to create this new field.
288 * The jquery.delayedBind ResourceLoader module was deprecated in favor of the
289 jquery.throttle-debounce module. It will be removed in MediaWiki 1.24.
290 * mw.user.bucket has been deprecated.
291 * On Special:PrefixIndex, a table#mw-prefixindex-list-table was changed to
292 table.mw-prefixindex-list-table to avoid duplicate ids when the special page
293 is transcluded.
294 * (bug 62198) window.$j has been deprecated.
295 * Preference "Disable link title conversion" was removed.
296 * SpecialRecentChanges no longer includes any functionality for generating feeds
297 - it has been factored out to ApiFeedRecentChanges. Old URLs redirect to new
298 ones.
299 * RecentChange::mExtra['lang'] is no longer set and should no longer be used.
300 Extensions should read from other configuration variables, including
301 $wgLocalInterwikis, to identify the current wiki.
302 * Sections in the parser test framework have been renamed and the old
303 section names are deprecated. Please use "!!wikitext" and "!!html"
304 (or "!!html/php") instead of "!!input" and "!!result". This allows
305 us to extend parser tests to accommodate additional input/output
306 pairs, such as "!!html/parsoid" (for the output of the Parsoid
307 parser, where it differs from the PHP parser).
308 * Special:Search no longer has an "include redirects" option on the advanced
309 tab. Redirects are now included in all searches.
310
311 ==== Removed classes ====
312 * FakeMemCachedClient (deprecated in 1.18)
313 * RdfMetaData (unused)
314 * TitleDependency (unused)
315 * TitleListDependency (unused)
316 * WikiError (deprecated in 1.17)
317 * WikiXmlError (deprecated in 1.17)
318 * WikiErrorMsg (deprecated in 1.17)
319
320 ==== Renamed classes ====
321 * CdbReader_DBA to CdbReaderDBA
322 * CdbReader_PHP to CdbReaderPHP
323 * CdbWriter_DBA to CdbWriterDBA
324 * CdbWriter_PHP to CdbWriterPHP
325 * DiffOp_Add to DiffOpAdd
326 * DiffOp_Change to DiffOpChange
327 * DiffOp_Copy to DiffOpCopy
328 * DiffOp_Delete to DiffOpDelete
329 * HWLDF_WordAccumulator to HWLDFWordAccumulator
330 * LBFactory_Fake to LBFactoryFake
331 * LBFactory_Multi to LBFactoryMulti
332 * LBFactory_Simple to LBFactorySimple
333 * LBFactory_Single to LBFactorySingle
334 * LCStore_Accel to LCStoreAccel
335 * LCStore_CDB to LCStoreCDB
336 * LCStore_DB to LCStoreDB
337 * LCStore_Null to LCStoreNull
338 * LoadBalancer_Single to LoadBalancerSingle
339 * LoadMonitor_MySQL to LoadMonitorMySQL
340 * LoadMonitor_Null to LoadMonitorNull
341 * LocalisationCache_BulkLoad to LocalisationCacheBulkLoad
342 * csvStatsOutput to CsvStatsOutput
343 * extensionLanguages to ExtensionLanguages
344 * languages to Languages
345 * statsOutput to StatsOutput
346 * textStatsOutput to TextStatsOutput
347 * wikiStatsOutput to WikiStatsOutput
348
349 ==== Removed methods ====
350 * ApiBase::getValidNamespaces() (deprecated in 1.17)
351 * ApiMain::setCachePrivate() (deprecated in 1.17)
352 * ApiMain::setVaryCookie (deprecated in 1.17)
353 * Article::doRedirect() (deprecated in 1.18)
354 * Article::doUnwatch() (deprecated in 1.18)
355 * Article::doWatch() (deprecated in 1.18)
356 * Article::forUpdate() (deprecated in 1.18)
357 * Article::markpatrolled() (deprecated in 1.18)
358 * Article::unwatch() (deprecated in 1.18)
359 * Article::watch() (deprecated in 1.18)
360 * Block::clear() (deprecated in 1.18)
361 * Block::decodeExpiry() (deprecated in 1.18)
362 * Block::encodeExpiry() (deprecated in 1.18)
363 * Block::forUpdate() (deprecated in 1.18)
364 * Block::infinity() (deprecated in 1.18)
365 * Block::load() (deprecated in 1.18)
366 * Block::newFromDB() (deprecated in 1.18)
367 * Block::normaliseRange() (deprecated in 1.18)
368 * Block::parseExpiryInput() (deprecated in 1.18)
369 * CategoryViewer::addSubcategory() (deprecated in 1.17)
370 * EditPage::spamPage() (deprecated since 1.17)
371 * Exif::getFormattedData() (deprecated in 1.18)
372 * Exif::makeFormattedData() (deprecated in 1.18)
373 * in_string (deprecated in 1.21)
374 * Language::convertLinkToAllVariants() (deprecated in 1.17)
375 * LanguageConverter::convertLinkToAllVariants() (deprecated in 1.17)
376 * Linker::makeBrokenLink() (deprecated in 1.16)
377 * Linker::makeBrokenLinkObj() (deprecated in 1.16)
378 * Linker::makeColouredLinkObj() (deprecated in 1.16)
379 * Linker::makeSizeLinkObj() (deprecated in 1.17)
380 * MediaWiki::articleFromTitle() (deprecated in 1.18)
381 * ParserOptions::getkin() (deprecated 1.18)
382 * ProfilerSimple::getCpuTime (deprecated in 1.20)
383 * Revision::revText() (deprecated in 1.17)
384 * SkinTemplate::jstext() (deprecated in 1.21)
385 * SpecialPage::__call() (deprecated in 1.17)
386 * SpecialPage::executePath() (deprecated in 1.18)
387 * SpecialPage::exists() (deprecated in 1.18)
388 * SpecialPage::file() (deprecated in 1.18)
389 * SpecialPage::func() (deprecated in 1.18)
390 * SpecialPage::getGroup() (deprecated in 1.18)
391 * SpecialPage::getPage() (deprecated in 1.18)
392 * SpecialPage::getPageByAlias() (deprecated in 1.18)
393 * SpecialPage::getLocalNameFor() (deprecated in 1.18)
394 * SpecialPage::getRegularPages() (deprecated in 1.18)
395 * SpecialPage::getRestrictedPages() (deprecated in 1.18)
396 * SpecialPage::getTitleForAlias() (deprecated in 1.18)
397 * SpecialPage::getUsablePages() (deprecated in 1.18)
398 * SpecialPage::includable() (deprecated in 1.18)
399 * SpecialPage::init()
400 * SpecialPage::initAliasList() (deprecated in 1.18)
401 * SpecialPage::initList() (deprecated in 1.18)
402 * SpecialPage::name() (deprecated in 1.18)
403 * SpecialPage::removePage() (deprecated in 1.18)
404 * SpecialPage::resolveAlias() (deprecated in 1.18)
405 * SpecialPage::resolveAliasWithSubpage() (deprecated in 1.18)
406 * SpecialPage::restriction() (deprecated in 1.18)
407 * SpecialPage::setGroup() (deprecated in 1.18)
408 * SpecialRecentChanges::feedSetup()
409 * SpecialRevisionDelete::extractBitField() (deprecated in 1.22)
410 * User::getPageRenderingHash() (deprecated in 1.17)
411 * WebRequest::getFileSize() (deprecated in 1.17)
412 * WebRequest::isPathInfoBad() (deprecated in 1.17)
413 * wfGenerateToken (deprecated in 1.20)
414 * wfStreamFile (deprecated in 1.19)
415 * wfUILang (deprecated in 1.18)
416 * WikiPage::createUpdates() (deprecated in 1.18)
417 * WikiPage::quickEdit() (deprecated in 1.18)
418 * WikiPage::useParserCache() (deprecated in 1.18)
419 * WikiPage::viewUpdates() (deprecated in 1.18)
420
421 ==== Removed globals ====
422 * $wgBetterDirectionality (deprecated in 1.18)
423
424 == Compatibility ==
425
426 MediaWiki 1.23 requires PHP 5.3.2 or later.
427
428 MySQL is the recommended DBMS. PostgreSQL or SQLite can also be used, but
429 support for them is somewhat less mature. There is experimental support for
430 Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.
431
432 The supported versions are:
433
434 * MySQL 5.0.2 or later
435 * PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
436 * SQLite 3.3.7 or later
437 * Oracle 9.0.1 or later
438 * Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (9.00.1399)
439
440 == Upgrading ==
441
442 1.23 has several database changes since 1.22, and will not work without schema
443 updates. Note that due to changes to some very large tables like the revision
444 table, the schema update may take quite long (minutes on a medium sized site,
445 many hours on a large site).
446
447 If upgrading from before 1.11, and you are using a wiki as a commons
448 repository, make sure that it is updated as well. Otherwise, errors may arise
449 due to database schema changes.
450
451 If upgrading from before 1.7, you may want to run refreshLinks.php to ensure
452 new database fields are filled with data.
453
454 If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.4.x or earlier, you should upgrade to
455 1.5 first. The upgrade script maintenance/upgrade1_5.php has been removed
456 with MediaWiki 1.21.
457
458 Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!
459
460 See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions.
461
462 For notes on 1.21.x and older releases, see HISTORY.
463
464 == Online documentation ==
465
466 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is available on
467 MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License (except
468 for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in the public domain):
469
470 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation
471
472 == Mailing list ==
473
474 A mailing list is available for MediaWiki user support and discussion:
475
476 https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
477
478 A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available:
479
480 https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce
481
482 It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're
483 going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.
484
485 == IRC help ==
486
487 There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net.