News package

Package is the installable set of MediaWiki pages. The News package provides a set of input forms and templates that make it easy to add and manage News - wiki pages announcing current events.

Content author is @wikivisor

Requirements

Extensions

• SemanticMediaWiki
• PageForms
• ParserFunctions
• SemanticResultFormats (for tagcloud format )
• MagicNoCache
• PageExchange

Configuration settings

• $wgRestrictDisplayTitle = false;
• $wgPFEnableStringFunctions = true;

When news length exceeds the default number of characters (N = 1000), you'll get a warning saying, "Error: String exceeds N character limit." Then you might want to bump the string length limit:

• $wgPFStringLengthLimit = 10000;

Setup

• add the following to the bottom of your LocalSettings.php: $wgPageExchangePackageFiles[] = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WikiTeq/mediawiki-pages-News/master/page-exchange.json';
• navigate to Special:Packages and install the package
• run php maintenance/runJobs.php
• navigate to Property:News type and follow the on-page instructions to create your custom news types.

Usage

Once imported, navigate to Project:All_news. This page is created using the {{All news|all}} template call and displays all ever-created news categorized by the year of publication.

Tags and feeds can further filter news:

The size of the tag link font varies depending on the number of news using this tag. Feeds and tags are independent dimensions that can be used for news classification.

The most common use case is to deliver the "actual" news rather than the full history of the news posts. By "actual", we mean news, the visibility period of which includes the current date. The actual news can be delivered to any page using {{All news|actual}} template call and wrapped to comply with the wiki's overall styling:

News can be created by clicking the Add news button. A form with necessary controls and inputs is provided:

The form is designed to help users to set:

• News display title that will override the technical page name given to the news page (similar to News_20230426090835);
• News feed name (the default set of feeds can be extended or completely re-defined on the Property:News_type page);
• News tags (the existing tags will be suggested as you type, the new tags can be added right in the form input);
• A period when the news is to be considered actual;
• "Repeat every year" flag, which makes the news appear in actual news within the specified period (days/months, regardless of the year);
• "Is sticky" flag, which pins the news at the top of the actual news list;
• "Not ready for publication yet" flag, which hides the work in progress from the list of actual news;

The form provides the textarea for the news text (supports VisualEditor if Extension:VEForAll is installed) and a subform for adding attachments.

Once saved, the form will produce the news page in the main namespace with the technical name like News_20230426090835 and the display title set to the value provided in the form. The news page will contain the news text, attachments, and a list of tags and feeds used for this news.: