User:JWSchmidt/Blog/16 February 2007

MediaWiki interface  For a long time I have been thinking that it might be wise to change the "edit" button to "edit this page" as is used at Wikipedia (see MediaWiki talk:Edit). It was also suggested that the "user page" button be changed to "about me".

The changes to my user page, which allowed me to replace "user page" with "about JWSchmidt" were made on the MediaWiki:Nstab-user page, by writing the following: about.

is a Magic word. This solution doesn't work for subpages.

''Note: Other pages in the MediaWiki namespace that used to allow similar changes to other parts of the interface are apparently not used anymore. In fact, there are may such pages in the MediaWiki namespace that were deleted early in January 2007.''

In an effort to find out how to modify elements of the interface such as the "user talk page" button of the user namespace, I went to the System Administrator's Handbook. Which states:
 * "How do I change the content page, discussion, etc. tags at the top of the page?
 * The file includes/SkinTemplate.php contains a function that builds the list called buildContentActionUrls. It decides what tabs to include for a given page and what code to run when the user clicks on a tab."

I suspect that you need to be a developer to edit "includes/SkinTemplate.php". MediaWiki documentation is being moved to its own website. I could not find what "SkinTemplate.php" is or how to modify it.


 * Yes, you do need FTP privileges to edit SkinTemplate.php. Skintemplate.php is located in the "includes" folder which in most wiki's is in the "wiki" folder. Hope this helps you, because your page didn't help me :( I still don't know how to change those tabs...68.93.142.153 12:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)