Changes: Help:System messages

Revision as of 16:09, 26 January 2021

System messages, also called MediaWiki messages, provide a means for customizing the interface of a wiki.

Please keep in mind that it is not always wise to tweak these messages. The default value is there because it is considered the most universally understandable terminology.

Step by step

Uncustomizedmessage — If you navigate directly to a system message page for a message that has never been customized, you will see a thin bordered box surrounding text. What's inside the box is the default text.

As the messages are stored in the MediaWiki namespace, only admins of a community have the necessary permissions to be able to make changes to the system messages.

Note: for security reasons, not all MediaWiki messages are freely editable. You can see the editable list here: Help:System messages/whitelist. If you want to edit a message not listed there, you must contact Fandom Staff.

Using Special:AllMessages

Go to Special:AllMessages and select the "all" radio button. Search for the text that you want to replace and click the message that uses it.
If the message has never been edited before, you will see the default message value in the editor. This will help confirm that you are editing the correct message.
Edit the page just like a normal page, putting in the message text.
Pay careful attention to anything with a "$" in the message. This is a 'variable' that will be replaced when the message is actually being used. You may want to ask for help on the Community Central Forums if you don't know what these variables represent.
Save the message and verify that the message has changed.
Clear your browser cache (Ctrl + F5) if you do not immediately see the change.

Using the special language code trick

In many cases you can use a special 'language' code to find out a message name more quickly. This can be done by appending ?uselang=qqx to the URL (see this page as an example). All the messages on that page will then be replaced by the names of the pages in the MediaWiki namespace.

Notable system messages

MediaWiki:Common.css - controls custom community CSS
MediaWiki:Common.js - controls custom community JavaScript
MediaWiki:Mainpage - controls the landing page when a visitor goes directly to the community's main URL in their address bar (such as 'community.fandom.com')
MediaWiki:Licenses - defines the options users see for image copyright status when uploading an image
MediaWiki:Newarticletext - this is the message that you get when you follow a link to a page that doesn't exist yet

Further help and feedback

Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
Check Fandom Community Central for sources of further help and support
Check Contacting Fandom for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 Please keep in mind that it is not always wise to tweak these messages. The default value is there because it is considered the most universally understandable terminology.
+== Step by step ==
-So, for example, while you might want to make the [[Help:Chat|Chat]] welcome message unique for your community, please try and make sure that new members of your community will still understand the meaning behind it.
-==Step by step==
 [[File:Uncustomizedmessage.png|thumb|350px|If you navigate directly to a system message page for a message that has never been customized, you will see a thin bordered box surrounding text. What's inside the box is the default text.]]
 As the messages are stored in the MediaWiki namespace, only admins of a community have the necessary permissions to be able to make changes to the system messages.
@@ Line 49: / Line 47: @@
 [[zh:Help:系統訊息]]
 [[uk:Довідка:Системні повідомлення]]
 [[Category:Help]]
 [[Category:Administration help]]