Rich Text Editors For MediaWiki Wikis

When users with a lesser degree of technical knowledge and understanding of markup languages get involved with Wikis and MediaWiki Wikis in particular they quite often get put off from actually doing any editing because of their unfamiliarity with the Wikitext markup language.

Although the Wikitext language was developed with the intention of being a lightweight markup language for its simplicity and ease of use when editing Wiki pages, it's still a markup language and as such takes time to learn.

As a result of this, large Wiki farms and in particular Wikia have incorporated Rich Text editors into their Wikis so that newer users can edit in an environment that they feel comfortable in.

I'm currently working on finding/developing a rich text editor suitable for my own Wiki. Below is a list of MediaWiki-compatible rich text editor extensions I've found so far.

• CKeditor - Previously known as FCKeditor, a modified version of this editor is currently being tested on most Wikia Wikis.
• Extension:FCKeditor (by Mafs) - An experimental rich text editor based off of an older version of CKeditor
• widgEditor A free, open source WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor designed to be used for relatively simple editing in rich text.

I'll update this list as and when I find new ones. If anyone knows of any more please do leave a link to them in the comments section and I'll add them to the list. :)

How To: Install The HotCat Gadget On Your Wiki

The HotCat gadget was originally developed for use on Wikimedia Commons but soon gained popularity on other Wikimedia Wikis including the English Wikipedia, this is where I first heard about this neat little gadget and have since enabled it for use on my own personal account on Wikipedia and installed a customized version of the script on my Wiki.

If you aren't already aware of what HotCat is or what it does, it's basically a tool designed to make adding categories to Wiki pages easier and quicker written in JavaScript (Originally by User:Magnus Manske).





There are 2(?) versions of HotCat currently available, the version currently used on Wikimedia Commons (Be warned, this page contains a lot of code) and the version I use on my Wiki, the version currently in use on the English Wikipedia.


Whichever version of HotCat you decide to install on your own Wiki, the installation method remains the same and just as dead-simple. Either click here and download the full script in .txt format or copy all the code directly from this page and paste it to the MediaWiki page: MediaWiki:Common.js, this will install HotCat for all users of your Wiki. Done!