Manual:$wgExtensionCredits

Extensions: $wgExtensionCredits
Global list of extension credits
Introduced in version:	1.5.0 (r10074)
Removed in version:	Still in use
Allowed values:	See details
Default value:	[]
Other settings: Alphabetical | By function

Details

An array of extension types and inside that their names, versions, authors, URLs, descriptions and pointers to localized description messages. Note that the version, url, description and descriptionmsg keys can be omitted.

This credit information gets added to the wiki's Special:Version page, allowing users to see which extensions are installed, and to find more information about them.

This is not a configuration setting mentioned in LocalSettings.php . Typically, extension developers will write code that updates the array in this global variable. See Developing extensions and (starting with MediaWiki 1.25) Extension registration .

Starting with MediaWiki 1.25, skins and extensions should no longer use $wgExtensionCredits. Instead, the same information is now stored inside a extension.json or a skin.json file. See Manual:ConvertExtensionToRegistration.php for a way to convert an extension/skin to this new approach!

Usage

Extension developers can append to the array with the following code:

$wgExtensionCredits[$type][] = array(
	'path' => __FILE__,     // File name for the extension itself, required for getting the revision number from SVN - string, added in 1.15.0. Since 1.23 also used to create the link to the extension's license file
	'name' => "",           // Name of extension - string
	'namemsg' => "",        // Same as above but name of a message, for i18n - string, added in 1.24.0.
	'description' => "",    // Description of what the extension does - string. Omit in favour of descriptionmsg.
	'descriptionmsg' => "", // Same as above but name of a message, for i18n - string, added in 1.12.0.
	'version' => 0,         // Version number of extension - number or string
	'author' => "",         // The extension author's name - string or array for multiple
	'url' => "",            // URL of extension (usually instructions) - string
	'license-name' => "",   // Short name of the license, links LICENSE or COPYING file if existing - string, added in 1.23.0
);

The description and author fields get parsed as wiki syntax. This is often used to provide links to the author's homepage in the author field. In version 1.12 and newer, descriptionmsg will override description.

type

$type must be one of the following:

• api — API extensions
• antispam — antispam extensions
• datavalues (introduced in 1.21) — Wikidata-related extensions
• media (introduced in 1.11) — media handlers
• parserhook — extensions that modify, add or replace functionality in the MediaWiki parser
• semantic — Semantic MediaWiki and dependent extensions
• skin — extensions that modify skins
• specialpage — extensions that add special pages
• variable (introduced in 1.6) — make a new variable
• other — does something else

namemsg

The value of namemsg will be treated as the message key for the extension or skin name: see the help page on localisation. As a standard, it's in the form <repositoryname>-extensionname or <repositoryname>-skinname (all lower case).

The name is the same as that of the name property.

descriptionmsg

The value of descriptionmsg will be treated as the message key for the extension description: see the help page on localisation. As a standard, it's in the form ‎<repositoryname>-desc (all lower case).

The description

• Must be a single brief sentence: it has no closing period and implies "this extension" as a subject when needed.
• Is usually in one of the following forms:
  • "Does"/"Adds"/"Allows to do" something (e.g. "Adds <poem> tag for poem formatting");
  • "Allow to do"/"Do" something, with the wiki or the users as subject (e.g. "Hide individual revisions from all users for legal reasons, etc.");
  • "Special page to do" something, or other noun-sentence to describe what the extension is composed of (e.g. "Provides a special page to view global file usage", "Provides Wikimedia specific messages").
    • Includes a link to the (main) added special page(s) if any, using "special page" or "do something" etc. as link labels.

author

Since MediaWiki 1.17 (r81549) the author list can contain the special hackish '...' to denote not individually named authors, i.e. other authors. The triple dot will make MediaWiki insert the "version-poweredby-others" message.

Example

$wgExtensionCredits['other'][] = array(
	'author' => array(
		'Jane Doe',
		'...'
		),
	);

license-name

Since MediaWiki 1.23 it is possible to indicate the license on "Special:Version" as well as linking to a file containing it. For this to work "path" has to be provided as well as a file named either COPYING or LICENSE. The "license-name" key should be used to provide the short name of the license, e.g. "GPL-2.0-or-later" or "MIT" adhering to the list of identifiers at spdx.org. The text from "license-name" will then be used as label for the link.

Example:

$wgExtensionCredits['other'][] = array(
	'path'         => __FILE__,
	'license-name' => 'GPL-2.0-or-later' // GNU General Public License v2.0 or later
);

Until Gerrit change 187178 (MW < 1.25), the COPYING or LICENSE file had to be in wikitext to show properly (see issue T68767)

Example

$wgExtensionCredits['specialpage'][] = array(
	'path' => __FILE__,
	'name' => 'Example extension',
	'version' => '1.9.0',
	'author' => 'Foo Barstein',
	'url' => 'https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MyExtension',
	'descriptionmsg' => 'exampleextension-desc',
	'license-name' => 'GPL-2.0-or-later'
);