wiki.techinc.nl/RELEASE-NOTES

= MediaWiki release notes =

== Version 1.1.0, 2003-12-08 ==

This is the new production release. Any following 1.1.x releases are expected
to contain only bug fixes; developments of new features will go towards a 1.2.0
release.

New features in 1.1:
* New wiki table syntax:
  http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_tables
* User-editable interface messages:
  http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
* XML-wrapped page source export with optional history:
  http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_import_and_export
  (There is not yet an import function!)
* "Magic words"

Fixes and tweaks:
* linkscc table caches link data for rendering; faster rebuildlinks.php
* Numerous bugs in Cologne Blue skin fixed
* Login gives warning about missing cookies
* Block log, protection log added; deletion log now includes undeletions
* Deletion & upload logs now escape comment text properly
* Problems with <nowiki> segments in section titles etc mitigated
* Contributions offset and minor edit bugs fixed
* Whatlinkshere now sorted alphabetically
* Various small bugs fixed.

Internal changes:
* wfQuery has had a second parameter inserted, DB_READ or DB_WRITE. This value
  is not actually used so far.
* Partial code for categories and Smarty template-based skins is in the tree
  but disabled.
* Parts of Article.php have been moved to EditPage.php and ImagePage.php.

New translations:
* fi - Finnish
* ia - Interlingua
* no - Norwegian
* sk - Slovak
* ta - Tamil

=== Database changes ===

"linkscc" table added. If upgrading manually (rather than with update.php),
run maintenance/archives/patch-linkscc.sql to create the table.

Older releases were dated snapshots from the old 'stable' branch:

== mediawiki-20031118 ==

* Image deletion fixed.
* Deletion of image old revisions now restricted to sysops
  (this is an irreversible action and not well logged)
* Fixed maintenance scripts broken by last release's security fix
* Many errors in rebuildlinks script fixed.

== mediawiki-20031117 ==

* SECURITY FIX: stricter checking of include path
* Fixed user contributions next/prev bug
* Login cookies now have the database name prefixed to allow wikis
  to coexist in the same domain. This will invalidate any old saved
  password cookies.
* Update cache timestamp when talk pages are created
* Saving the login form in Mozilla no longer blanks password in prefs.
* Check existence of source page before performing a move.
* Detect invalid titles in Special:Allpages
* Q-encode headers on outgoing inter-user e-mail
* Updates to some translations.
* Added table of contents border/bg to Cologne Blue, Nostalgia skins
* Protected pages no longer appear unprotected when visited via redirect
* Swapped old Wikipedia logo for the MediaWiki sunflower logo
* install.php, update.php print warning on old PHP versions,
  added compatibility functions that might or might not help

No database changes since 20031107; upgrading should be clean.


== mediawiki-20031107 ==

* Fixed various bugs!
* Some speed improvements from tweaks to the table indexes
* Limited support for memcached (see below)
* New translations (see below)
* Interwiki link data now kept in database for flexibility
* Friendlier read-only source view if asked to edit a page when
  the db is locked or the page is protected.
* Normal IP blocks auto-expire after 24 hours
* Optional support for blocking usernames
* Uploads disabled by default (see below)


=== Security note ===

Uploads are now disabled by default. If you've set up a secure configuration
you can reenable uploads by putting:

  $wgDisableUploads = false;

into LocalSettings.php.

Earlier versions of MediaWiki included a bug that potentially allows logged-
in users to delete arbitrary files in directories writable by the web server
user by manually feeding false form data; this is now fixed.

As a reminder, disable PHP script execution in the upload directory!
You may also wish to serve HTML pages as plaintext to prevent cookie-
stealing JavaScript attacks. Example Apache config fragment:

  <Directory "/Library/MediaWiki/web/upload">
     # Ignore .htaccess files
     AllowOverride None
     
     # Serve HTML as plaintext
     AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml
     
     # Don't run arbitrary PHP code.
     php_admin_flag engine off
     
     # If you've other scripting languages, disable them too.
  </Directory>


=== Database updates ===

If you're using update.php, the necessary database changes should
be made automatically.

To manually upgrade your database from the 2003-08-29 release, run the
following SQL scripts from the maintenance subdirectory:

  archives/patch-ipblocks.sql
  archives/patch-interwiki.sql
  archives/patch-indexes.sql
  interwiki.sql

To copy in the Wikipedia language-prefix interwikis as well, add:

  wikipedia-interwiki.sql


=== Translations ===

New interface localization files are included for:
  fy Frisian
  ro Romanian
  sl Slovene
  sq Albanian
  sr Serbian


=== Memcached ===

Memcached is a distributed cache system. See http://www.danga.com/memcached/
MediaWiki can optionally use memcached to store some data between calls
to reduce load on the database. Currently this is limited to user and
talk page notification data, interwiki prefix/URL matches, and the
UTF-8 conversion tables.

MediaWiki includes version 1.0.10 of the (GPL'd) PHP memcached client by
Ryan Gilfether; if memcached is disabled it acts as a dummy object with
minimal overhead.

To use memcached you'll need PHP installed with sockets support (this is not
in the default configure options). See docs/memcached for some more details.

Additionally, you can store login session data in memcached instead of the
local filesystem, which can help to enable load-balancing by letting login
sessions transparently work on multiple front-end web servers. (The primary
other issue is with uploads, which requires some care in handling.)

To enable this, set $wgSessionsInMemcached = true; and set $wgCookieDomain
appropriately if exposing multiple hostnames. This system is new and may be
volatile; login sessions will fail dramatically if memcached is unavailable
when this option is turned on.


=== Online documentation ===

Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
License:

  http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide


=== Mailing list ===

A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
wikitech-l list:

  http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l


=== UseModWiki import script ===

A stripped-down UseModWiki import script is available in the maintenance
subdirectory. It is incomplete and requires a lot of manual clean-up, but
does function for the brave and pure of heart.


=== Test suite removed ===

The unmaintained Java-based test suite has been removed from the tarball
release. If you really want it you can check it out from CVS.


== mediawiki-20030829 ==

First release under MediaWiki name.