NEWEST PAGES EXTENSION

Version 1.9 © 2006-2009 Rob Church

This is free software licensed under the GNU General Public Licence. Please see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html for further details, including the full text and terms of the licence.

Overview

1. Introduction
2. Installing the extension
3. Accessing the special page
4. Including the special page
5. Customising the interface text
6. Customising extension behaviour
7. Notes

1. Introduction

The Newest Pages extension adds an includable special page to MediaWiki version 1.12 and up which produces an ordered list of the newest pages in the wiki, up to a specified limit. The page can be accessed as a regular special page, or included within other pages as a form of dynamic list.

2. Installing the extension

To install the Newest Pages extension, first upload/copy the extension files NewestPages.php and NewestPages.i18n.php into your MediaWiki extensions directory. Then edit your LocalSettings.php file and add the following line:

require_once( 'extensions/NewestPages/NewestPages.php' );

Save the file to complete the installation.

3. Accessing the special page

To access the special page in the regular view mode, go to Special:Newestpages on your wiki, or select it from the list of special pages.

The page has a default limit of 50 items, which can be customised using the supplied limit links, or with the 'limit' parameter in the page URL.

To filter according to namespace, use the namespace selector and click Go, or alter the 'namespace' parameter in the page URL.

You can opt to exclude redirect pages from the results using the "show/hide redirects" links at the top of the page.

4. Including the special page

To include the special page into another page, add the following wiki markup to that page:

{{Special:Newestpages}}

This will be replaced with a list when the containing page is rendered. To customise the limit here, use the following syntax:

{{Special:Newestpages/X}}

where X is the desired limit. To set the namespace to be used, pass this instead, e.g.

{{Special:Newestpages/User}}

would show the newest pages in the user namespace. Use - to select the main namespace. To select a namespace AND set a limit, use syntax similar to the following:

{{Special:Newestpages/User/5}} {{Special:Newestpages/5/User}}

5. Customising the interface text

All interface text used in the Newest Pages extension is customisable via the MediaWiki namespace. See Special:Allmessages for a list of customisable interface messages in the wiki.

6. Customising extension behaviour

The default page limit for the extension can be altered using the $wgNewestPagesLimit variable, e.g.

$wgNewestPagesLimit = 500;

sets the default limit to be 500. This should be set after the call to include the extension file. The default remains at 50 pages, and there is an absolute limit of 5000 pages, to avoid crippling the database server(s).

7. Notes

This extension was written in a much more specific form to serve the needs of a user in the MediaWiki-General IRC channel. Following a second request for a similar page, I decided to clean up the code, give the page a more generalised function, and release it.

Feedback welcomed at <robchur@gmail.com> as usual.