More bundled extensions

Clicking on this image should trigger the MultimediaViewer extension (unless you disable it in your preferences)

The set of extensions that are bundled with the MediaWiki tarball has increased. The new additions are:

• CategoryTree
• CodeEditor provides a more friendly editor when editing CSS and JavaScript on-wiki.
• MultimediaViewer provides a lightbox viewer for images and galleries.
• OATHAuth provides two-factor authentication for wiki accounts.
• Replace Text provides a form to let administrators do string replacements on the entire wiki, for both page contents and page titles.

The Nuke extension was not included in the tarball for MediaWiki 1.31.0 by mistake. If you want to use this extension, please download the extension separately. This is fixed in 1.31.1 and up.

Skins

Tidy replaced with HTML 5 parsing algorithm

See the frequently asked questions for more details

The HTML 4 based Tidy library has been replaced by a pure-PHP HTML 5 parser named RemexHtml to clean up improper wikitext in a modern and standards compliant way. If your content relied on some of the tidy fix-ups that are not being continued, they will need to be fixed.

You can use the Linter extension in conjunction with Parsoid to identify pages with problems that cause differences in rendering with the RemexHtml parser. The ParserMigration extension shows editors a side-by-side comparison of rendering with tidy and RemexHtml.

Interwiki usernames

MediaWiki now supports "interwiki" usernames in a format like "iw>Example" in revisions, log entries, and so on. This allows for properly recording imports and events from foreign wikis (as generated by Wikibase, for example) without confusion with a local account that exists now or may be created in the future.

• (task T9240) Imports will now record unknown (and, optionally, known) usernames in a format like "iw>Example".
• (task T20209) Linker (used on history pages, log pages, and so on) will display usernames formed like "iw>Example" as interwiki links, as if by wikitext like [[iw:User:Example|iw>Example]].

Further UI standardization

• As a first pass in standardizing dialog boxes across the MediaWiki product, Html class now provides helper methods for messageBox, successBox, errorBox and warningBox generation.

Other feature changes

• Add default edit rate limit of 90 edits/minute for all users. This can be changed by setting $wgRateLimits .
• (task T143790) $wgEmailConfirmToEdit only affects edit actions.
• (task T76554) User sub-pages named ….json are now protected in the same way that ….js and ….css pages are, so that configuration options can safely be placed there.
• (task T181651) The info page for File pages now displays the file's base-16 SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information.
• (task T189785) The pingback feature will now send a monthly heartbeat ping to identify active wikis.
• (task T19099) Tabs which link to pages that don't exist (like those to uncreated discussion pages) now have a tooltip to indicate state, not just colour.

Languages updated in 1.31

MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.

• (task T180052) Mirandese (mwl) now supports gendered NS_USER/NS_USER_TALK.
• (task T182305) New language support: Nyungar (nys).
• (task T186359) New language support: Siberian Tatar [cебертатар] (sty).
• (task T186635) New language support: Guianan Creole (gcr).
• (task T186647) New language support: Kumyk [къумукъ] (kum).
• (task T187750) New language support: Spanish formal address (es-formal).
• (task T187824) New language support: Hungarian formal address (hu-formal).
• (task T189127) New language support: Gorontalo (gor).

PHP7 or HHVM is now required

MediaWiki 1.31 requires PHP 7.0.0 or later. Although HHVM 3.18.5 or later is supported, it is generally advised to use PHP 7.0.0 or later for long term support.

Database changes

1.31 has several database changes since 1.30, and will not work without schema updates. PostgreSQL users now need version 9.2 or later.

Configuration changes

• $wgEnableAPI and $wgEnableWriteAPI are now deprecated and will be removed in a future version. The API is now considered to be stable, secure and essential.
• $wgUsejQueryThree was removed, as it is now the default. This was documented as a temporary variable during the migration period, deprecated since 1.29.
• $wgLogoHD has been updated to support SVG images and uses $wgLogo where possible for fallback images such as PNG.
• (task T44246) $wgFilterLogTypes will no longer ignore 'patrol' when user does not have the right to mark things patrolled.
• Wikis that contain imported revisions or CentralAuth global blocks should run maintenance/cleanupUsersWithNoId.php .
• The configuration settings $wgResourceLoaderMinifierStatementsOnOwnLine and $wgResourceLoaderMinifierMaxLineLength , deprecated since 1.27, were removed.
• (task T180921) $wgReferrerPolicy now supports having fallbacks for browsers that are not using the latest version of the Referrer Policy specification.
• $wgFragmentMode is now set to [ 'legacy', 'html5' ] by default. This is a first step of migration to human-readable section IDs that will later result in 'html5' being the default mode.
• CACHE_ACCEL now only supports APC(u) or WinCache. XCache support was removed as upstream is inactive and has no plans to move to PHP 7.
• The old CategorizedRecentChanges feature, including its related configuration option $wgAllowCategorizedRecentChanges , has been removed.
• (task T188472) The 'comma' value for $wgArticleCountMethod is no longer supported for performance reasons, and installations with this setting will now work as if it was configured with 'any'.
• (task T185753) MediaWiki now defaults to using RemexHtml to tidy up user input, rather than being off by default. If you wish to disable HTML tidying entirely, set $wgTidyConfig to null; if you wish to use the old, deprecated Tidy external binary, both set $wgTidyConfig to null and $wgUseTidy to true.
• $wgLogAutopatrol now defaults to false instead of true.
• $wgValidateAllHtml was removed and will be ignored.
• $wgScriptExtension , deprecated and ignored since 1.25, was removed. See the 1.25 release notes for more information.
• {{wg|UseAjax}} is now marked as deprecated, just like the deprecated AJAX framework that it enables. Some extensions mistakenly used this to check whether any AJAX functionality at all should be enabled, further making this problematic to retain.
• $wgDBmysql5 is now deprecated, and will be removed in a future version. It has been marked as experimental ever since it was introduced.
• $wgDBmwschema now affects all database types. Old MediaWiki versions were setting this to 'mediawiki' during the installer, which may cause errors during the upgrade when your database is not PostgreSQL or MSSQL. In that case, remove this setting from LocalSettings.php.