Manual:Preferences

Via UserPreferences you can customize the wiki for yur personal needs.

Where to find the

What are user preferences?

You reach your personal preferences via the arrow next to your user name in the TopBar. Clicking on the arrow opens up a drop-down menu. Click on Preferences.

This takes you to the special page "Preferences", which is divided into different tabs.

Alternatively you can enter Special:Preferences in your browser's address bar to call up your user preferences.

The functionality of UserPreferences

Please note that you might have older page data in your Browser cache and that you may need to empty this before you can see the new settings. If you want to adopt the standard settings, click on Restore all default settings. All parameters will then be set to the standard values for anonymous users.

Screenshot: Tab showing a variety of preferences and optionsUser profile

User menu

As a BlueSpice user, you can customize a lot of settings to make your wiki experience more personal and more efficient.

For example, you may want to show a real photo of yourself or maybe you prefer a randomely generated image. You can also set when and how you want to be notified about changes that are happening on your wiki. To find content tailored to your needs, you can even exclude entire namespaces from your search results if you only need information from particular areas of your wiki.

Just remember that all settings only affect your own wiki experience (except for your profile information, of course, which is visible to all users).

To access your preferences:

1. Click on the user menu.
2. Click Preferences. This opens the preferences page with multiple tabs.

Alternatively, you can access the page Special:Preferences directly.

User profile

Basic Information

Basic information: Your personal system data like your username, your group membership or number of edits is shown here, but the following settings can also be made:

Real name: Enter this as you would like it to appear in the system

profile image

• Real name: This name is shown throughout the wiki. When users hover over your real name, your profile picture and contact information is shown.

• Change password: If your wiki is not connected with the central authentications authentication system of your company, you can manage your password here.
• User image:
  • User image text field: Enter the webadress of a picture on another website and click Save at the bottom of the page. The profile picture points directly to the external image:
  • Change profile picture link: Upload an image to the wiki. Click Browse and then Upload to create a new profile image. If you click Generate new avatar, the system generates a graphic instead.
• Privacy policy acceptance checkbox: Select and save this checkbox setting to confirm that your accept the privacy policy. Administrators can review this setting for all users on the page Special:Privacy_Admin.

Internationalisation

• Language: You Users can change your their personal language for you and the navigation systemthat is used in the layout and menus. BlueSpice currently has support for supports de-formal-German (formal), de-German and en-English
• Gender: Select male, female or neutral salutation
• Change password
• Remember my login on this browser

Signature: Enter a signature, particularly useful for discussion pages.
Email options: You can set up the basic options for MediaWiki's notification: enable mail from other users and more. The Notifications tab gives you additional options for email notification

• .
• How do you prefer to be described? Option for setting your gender preferences.

Signature

• Your existing signature: shows a preview of your current signature including your profile info when you hover over the link.
• New signature: Enter a new name for your signature and save the Preferences page.
• Treat signautre as wikitext: Your signature will be shown as text-only.

Email options

If you provide an email adress, you can specify to receive email notifications in addition or in place of wiki notifications. As long as the email adress is not confirmed, the system will not send emails. This also affects the settings in the Notifications tab.

If you want to exclude minor page edits from email notifications, you need to set it under the email options here.

Appearance

Under Skin

Skin

If your wiki has more than one skin, you can choose how the wiki will be displayed, changing its look and feel. In BlueSpice 3 only the standard skin is delivered. More skins must be installed before they can be selected. Note that these changes only effect your view of the site.
Reading preferences: enable or disable page previews.
Date format: Define how dates should look like.
Time offset: Choose your time zone.
Files: Under "Files", you can limit the capacity used by file description pages, by setting the maximal size of the image display. You can also set the dimensions of the thumbnails. And enable the MediaViewer.
Diffs: tbd
Advanced options:

• Display of links and stub links
• Show hidden categories
• Activate "Jump to"XXX links. This activates extra links at the top of the page. They are designed for automated voice output ("screen readers") and PDAs, and are only visible in very old browsers. So normally, this function can be deactivated.
• Justify paragraphs.
• Automatically number headings. Normally, headings are not enumerated. You can change this here.
• Enable collapsing of items in the sidebar in Vector skin.
• Exclude me from feature experiments.

Date and time

The tab "Date and time" gives you the chance to set up your preferred date format which, for example, is used in signatures. You can also set up your current time zone.

Editing

A number of interesting options are collected together under "Editing". Firstly, you can chose the height and width of the editing window. This is useful when you work with a small or very large display resolution. You can also set up:

Show preview before edit box. If this option is deactivated, the preview will be shown under the edit form.

Always show preview on first edit. The preview of the article is displayed when you click on "Edit".

Links to allow editing individual sections. If you turn this off, you will only be able to edit the article in full.

Editing of individual sections by right clicking (JavaScript). This option is independent of the option above which displays links. When activated, you can edit a section by right clicking on the section title.

Editing pages by double clicking (JavaScript). This option lets you change to edit mode by double clicking on the text. This makes things much easier if you make many edits.

Show edit toolbar. This only works if your browser works with JavaScript.

Mark all minor edits by default. This is useful when you are, for example, looking through the wiki for spelling mistakes.

Use an external editor as standard. Set up your MediaWiki pages for editing so that they are brought up in an external editor and can be edited there. An example is the extension for jEdit which you can get at the URL www.djini.de/software/mwjed.

Use external diff by default. This lets you view the differences between different versions using another program

layout of your wiki here. It only affects your view of the wiki. All other users see the skin that is selected in their preferences.

Reading preferences

You can set if you want to see quick summaries of a page before you click on a link. This requires that the page has some intro text before the first heading on a page.

Date format

You can set how you would like to see the timestamp on wiki pages, for example the timestamp of a user signature on a discussion page.

date format example

Time offset

• Server time: Shows the server time so that you can compare it to your local time.
• Local time: Shows the time set in the time zone setting.
• Time zone: When you select a time zone, your local time will be shown throughout the wiki wherever there is a timestamp.

Files

• Image size limit: Sets the maximum size of the preview image on the file description page.
  

  image size on file page
  
  
• Thumbnail size: Sets the size of the thumbnail image on a page if no custom size is specified in the image settings.
• Enable Media Viewer: If this checkbox is not selected, image links on a page will load the file description page rather than the media viewer overlay.

media viewer overlay

Diffs

• Do not show the page content below diffs: Turns off the VisualDiff view as well as the wikitext view of revisions. Revisions are only shown in classic view.

• Don't show diff after performing a rollback:

Advanced options

• Link underlining:
  • Always: Underlines all links in the content area of a page, even if the selected skin specifies no underlining. The table of contents is not affected by this setting.
    

    example for underlined links
  • Never: Never underlines links in the content area of a page, even if the selected skin specifies underlining.
  • Skin or browser default: Keeps the link settings as specified in the skin.
• Threshold for stub link formatting: Determines when the target page is considered short enough to change the link color to a page that fits the threshhold criteria. If you choose 50 bytes, a link to a page with less than 50 characters (including wikitext), will be marked as a stub link and be shown in a different color. This only works if your wiki skin has a separate color value for stub links defined.
• Show hidden categories:
• Auto-number headings: Adds heading numbers to the page headings
  
  

  headings with auto numbering

Context menu

Page links in the content area of the wiki show a context menu that allows to perform actions on the target page without having to go to the target page first. You can set whether you want to show the context menu with right-click or with right-click + Strg.

context menu

Dashboards

By default, the logo of your wiki links to the main page. You can change this and link to your user dashboard instead.

Player

When a page contains a video, you can set it to autoplay when you load a page.

Timeline

You can set the timestamp on the timeline entries in date format or as age.

Note: It can take up to 24 hours for all timeline entries to show the new timestamp format. When you create a new entry, you shouls see the changed format immediately.

timeline date format

BlueSpice Calumma settings

• Automatically hide main menu: Hides the main menu every time you load a new page.
• Automatically hide tool menu: Hides the tool menu every time you load a new page.

hidden navigation menus

Editing

General options

• Enable section editing by right clicking on section titles: Right-clicking a section title with the mouse sets the page in edit mode. The specified section can be edited immediately.
• Editing pages by double clicking (JavaScript): Double-clicking on the page sets the page in edit mode. The double-click needs to be inside the text area of the page. Clicking in the title section of a page will not set the page into edit mode.
• Show the pending changes diff when editing pages:

Editor

• Edit area font style: Displays source code in monospace, serif, or sans-serif font.
• Mark all edits minor by default: This automatically sets the minor flag in the save dialog. It can be selected or deselected in the save dialog on the page itself:
  
  

  marking a minor edit

Note: Note: The 'Watch this page' checkbox in the save dialog can be activated or deactivated by default under the preferences tab Watchlist under Advanced options: Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist.

• Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary. This reminds you to enter a few words summarising the edit.
• Use live preview (experimental)

Beta features:

• Enable enhanced editing toolbar.
• Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more.

Labs features:

• Enable side-by-side preview.
• Enable step-by-step publishing.
• Enable navigable table of contents.

Recent changes

• : Dispkays a text message when you click Save changes reminding you to enter a summary description. If you do not enter a description after that, the page will save without the summary the next time you click Save changes.
  

  edit summary prompt
  
  
• Warn me when I leave an edit page with unsaved changes: When you reload or leave a page with unsaved edits, a warning message is displayed. You can confirm to leave the page or stay on the page and save your changes.
• Show edit toolbar: Disables VisualEditor in visual editing mode. Disabling is not recommended, as this reverts the editor back to a previous version of MediaWiki editor.
• Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta: You can disable visual editor while it is in Extension:VisualEditor|beta mode. We recommend you do not disable VisualEditor unless you prefer to work with a previous visual editor version.

Preview

This tab lets you choose how many results are displayed in "Recent changes and when displaying short articles". You can also stop minor changes being displayed. If your browser uses JavaScript, you can turn on the extended display of the recent changes.

Watchlist

These preview settings are only applied if you have temporarily disabled VisualEditor and the edit text area is on the same page as the page preview. In BlueSpice 3.1+ you can generally ignore these settings.

• Show preview on first edit: The preview of the article is displayed when you click on "Edit"
• Show preview before edit box: If this option is deactivated, the preview will be shown under the edit form
• Show previews without loading the page:

Reminder

You can set up your watchlist here, for example how many entries should be shown, and whether your own changes should be ignored.

You can also generate your own RSS token or enter one manually here. This token functions like a key with which you integrate your watchlist, for example, in your RSS reader or in Outlook. This lets you check the changes without first logging on to the wiki.

Search

The tab "Search" lets you set up how many hits are given on one page. "Hits per page" displays how many hits should be shown. You can also set up which namespaces will be searched as standard.

Misc

You can set the preference for comparing versions here.

BlueSpice

The tab "BlueSpice" has the options for the individual extensions that BlueSpice integrates in MediaWiki. You can find details of the preferences for the other extensions in the documentation of the relevant extensions.

• User image: insert a file name here.
• Syntax highlighter.
• Dasboard: Site logo links to user dashboard.
• ExtendedSearch: Fulltext or title, number of results and facets.
• PagesVisited: Limit of entries, specify namespaces and sorting.
• ResponsibleEditors: Notifications.
• Quality assurance: Notifications for review process.
• SaferEdit.
• SmartList: Number of entries.
• UserSideBar: Edit the "focus" tab.
• VisualEditor: Use WYSIWYG editor by default.
• WantedArticles: Inlude limits and sorting.
• WhoIsOnline: number of users shown and sorting.
• Widgetbar: Edit the widget bar.
• WatchList: Limit of entries and order.

• Default reminder period: Prefills the date field for reminders with current date + x days specified here.
  
  

  reminder default date
• Set reminder on page creation: When you create a new page, a reminder for that page is automatically created based on the default reminder period you entered.
• Do not create reminder for the following namespaces: Excludes namespaces from the automatic reminder on page creation.

Timeline

• Warn me when I leave an edit of an entry with unsaved changes: If unchecked, any unsaved changes to a social entity (such as blog entry, comment, microblog or discussion topic) will be automatically lost if you navigate to a different page or reload the page before saving your changes.
• Skip dialog on discussion creation: Automatically creates a discussion page when a user adds a discussion directly ona page and the discussion page for the entry does not yet exist. If this checkbox is unchecked, the user has to create the discussion page first before the discussion topic can be posted.

Recent changes

Display options

• Days to show in recent changes: You can set how many results are displayed on the page Recent changes.
• Number of edits to show in recent changes,...:

Advanced options

• Group canges by page in recent changes and watchlist:
• Hide minor edits from recent changes: Hide minor changes from appearing on your Recent changes page. This is useful if pages are saved a lot by a single user without major differences between the edits.

Edit review

• Basic interface
• When to show the stable version...': Here you can set to 'Always show the latest version for each page. This setting is only useful if the FlaggedRevs feature is active in a namespace. It is a useful settings for users with review permissions who can accept draft versions.Without this setting, the last stable version of a page is shown by default.
• Show the pending changes diff when viewing the latest pending version:

Watchlist

Edit watchlist

• Edit entries on your watchlist:
  • View and remove titles on your watchlist: Links to the page Special:EditWatchlist whre you can manage your watchlist entries. The watchlist is organized by namespaces.
  • Edit raw watchlist: Links to the page Special:EditWatchlist/raw where you can remove pages by page name from a textbox. This list is also organized by namespaces.
  • Clear watchlist: Links to the page Special:EditWatchlist/clear where you can empty your watchlist with the click of a button.

Display options

• Days to show in watchlist: Presets the value in the selection menu Period of time to display on the page Special:Watchlist.
• Maximum number of changes to show in watchlist: Limits the number of changes that are displayed in your watchlist.

This example shows a default setting of 8 days and 20 changes.

watchlist display options

Advanced options

Here, you select all the criteria for automatically adding pages and files to your watchlist and for showing certain changes on your watchlist.

Token

• Watchlist token: The token can be used to create a public RSS feed to your watchlist. Anyone who knows this token can access the feed. The syntax for the feed URL is: https://[YourWikiDomain]/w/api.php?action=feedwatchlist&wlowner=[USERNAME]&wltoken=[TOKEN] .
  

Notifications

When would you Here you can set how and when you would like to receive notifications in email notifications?:

• Do not send me any email notifications.
• Individual notifications as they come in.
• A daily summary of notifications.
• A weekly summary of notifications.

Notify me when someone…: Decide if you want to be informed in the wiki by clicking on the envelope symbol or/and via email. Also choose about what you want to be notified.

Advanced Systemsettings: Enabling of "Notifications" and subscribe for changes in namespaces.

See also

Our reference page.

and/or in the notifications area of your user profile (Web notifications). If you haven't received email notifications yet, make sure that your email adress has been verified. This information is available in the User profile tab, under the section Email options.

To view your Web notifications, go to your User profile menu and select Notifications.

menu link to notifications

The user profile image in the main toolbar and the Notifications menu item show the number of new notifications. Notifications can set for a variety of events, such as new assignments or reminders. You can also select to be notified about changes only in certain namespaces or categories.

To configure which notifications you want to get, click on Preferences in the Settings menu (3).

Email options

You can specify how often you receive emails: never, immediately, daily, or weekly.

notification email options

If you unexpectedly don't receive emails for notifications, check under the User profile tab to make sure that you have already confirmed your email account.

unconfirmed email address

Notify me about these events

Notifications can be displayed in the Notifications page of the wiki. This functionality is provided by the MediaWiki extension Echo.

New message indicator

This setting currently has no effect in BlueSpice. It is a configuration setting for the MediaWiki extension Extension:Echo|Echo (echo-show-alert).

Notifications on namespace events

Select for which namespaces you want to receive notifications.

Notifications on categories

Select for pages in which categories you want to receive notifications.

Review

• Notify me about changes if I am the owner of a review: Select if you want to be notified in email of any workflow changes of a review workflow if you are the owner of the review.
• Notify me about changes if I am the reviewer of a review: Select if you want to be notified in email of any workflow changes of a review workflow if you are the owner of the review.

Under the settings for Notify me about these events, you can set if and how you want to be notified if someone assigns a review task to you.

Extended Search

Here you can set which namespaces you want to include in your search results. This can be useful if you work in only some areas of the wiki or if you are looking for information in a few areas of your wiki only.

Semantic MediaWiki

These user preferences are provided by Semantic MediaWiki. If you would like to change these settings, you can visit the corresponding help page.

Resetting all preferences

If you click Restore all default settings (in all sections), all your customizations on all tabs are reset to their default settings. Since this could affect lots of customized settings, a warning page appears before the reset.

restoring default settings

Use the browser's back button if you do not want to restore the default settings.