Help:MediaWiki extensions

Various extensions of MediaWiki are particularly useful in combination with Semantic MediaWiki:

Admin Links
Admin Links provides a special page that contains links for tasks that administrators are likely to perform. Anyone can view the page, but administrators get a link to it added to their "user links", usually at the top of each page; so that the Admin Links page can serve as somewhat of a "control panel" for the wiki. Other extensions can add their own links to this page. The Admin Links extension is especially helpful for Semantic MediaWiki-based sites because SMW and some of its related extensions are set up to add their own links, letting the page serve as a control panel for SMW-based tasks as well.

Author: Yaron Koren

First released: May 2009

Links:
 * The "Admin Links" page on one wiki

Approved Revs
Approved Revs is an extension that lets administrators mark a certain revision of a page as "approved". The approved revision is the one displayed when users view the page at its main URL. It was designed to be a simple, lightweight alternative to the FlaggedRevs extension suitable for small- or medium-scale wikis, with just a few administrators.

Author: Yaron Koren

First released: June 2010

Category Magic Words
Category Magic Words allows you to hide the pages and/or the subcategories from category pages, if you want to replace them with some custom code, e.g. a inline query. Other means to achieve the same effect are described here.

Author: Leo Wallentin

First released: October 2011

Links:
 * Category page at säsongsmat.nu

Configure
Configure lets administrators edit the configuration variables that are normally set within LocalSettings.php via the wiki instead. This can make administration easier, especially for those without login access to the server their wiki resides on. Semantic MediaWiki and some of its related extensions are covered by Configure.

Author: IAlex

First released: April 2008

See also: WikiFactory

Data Transfer
Data Transfer provides special pages for viewing the data from, and importing data into, a wiki. Viewing/exporting is done via XML, while importing can be done via either XML or CSV; in either case, the fields are defined by fields within template calls on each page.

Author: Yaron Koren

First released: February 2008

Links:
 * Main "View XML" panel and XML for all project pages at Verwaltungskooperation (German-language)

Header Tabs
Another extension useful with semantic templates is Header Tabs, which allows for a tabbed interface to split up a page (or a form - see Page Forms (formerly Semantic Forms)) into more manageable sections.

Author: Sergey Chernyshev

First released: March 2008

ParserFunctions
Semantic templates are a method for further simplifying the use of semantic annotations. However, since omitted template parameters cannot be annotated, it is useful to have some support for conditionals within the wiki. This is supplied by the ParserFunctions extension.

Author: Tim Starling

First released: April 2006

Links:
 * User manual for ParserFunctions

Page Forms
Page Forms formerly known as Semantic Forms allows for the creation of forms to add and edit wiki pages, using the fields within the page's MediaWiki template calls as the fields of the form. All semantic data is meant to be held within templates, and not directly within wiki pages. Templates assign a semantic property to some or (preferably) all of their fields; the type of each semantic property helps determine what sort of input will show up for that field in the form. Data autocompletion is also enabled, as are a variety of other features. Forms can additionally be used for querying the wiki's data.

Authors: Yaron Koren, Stephan Gambke and others

First Released: May 2007

Links:
 * Example of a form at placeography.org
 * List of sites that use Semantic Forms

PluggableAuth
PluggableAuth provides a framework for authentication and authorization extensions supporting the new MediaWiki 1.27 authentication and session management framework.

Author: Cindy Cicalese

First released: November 2014

Replace Text
Replace Text provides a form for administrators to do a text search-and-replace across all pages on their wiki, including both page contents and page names. For Semantic MediaWiki, this is especially useful when the names or values of properties, or the names or fields of templates, get changed: if such a change requires corresponding changes to many existing wiki pages, this extension allows you to do that in one step.

Author: Yaron Koren

First released: April 2008

Variables
The Variables lets you create and read local variables on a wiki page. This is especially helpful for re-using statements on a page without having to duplicate them everytime. For instance you can store a lengthy ASK query in a variable and re-use this later on with different output formats. Best results may be achieved in combination with extension ParserFunctions.

Authors: Rob Adams and others

First released: August 2006

Widgets
Widgets is another very helpful extension in conjunction with semantic templates. It allows for the creation of custom HTML from passed-in variables, which can be used to display videos, audio, images, RSS feeds, maps, calendars and other external data, custom JavaScript, and any other HTML for which the current set of wiki-text and string and parser functions is not suitable. And it is structured as a parser function, which means that it can take in template variables (some of this functionality is already available in other MediaWiki extensions, but many of them are tag extensions, which means that they can only take in hard-coded values). The Widgets homepage also contains a large set of ready-to-use widgets, which will work simply by being copied and pasted into one's wiki.

Author: Sergey Chernyshev

First released: February 2008

Links:
 * MediaWiki Widgets wiki
 * Widgets mailing list