To Change Separator Character (underscore to Dot) - MediaWiki-l

Elliott F. Cable

13 May 13 May

9:13 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] To Change Separator Character (underscore to Dot)

You'd have to look through most of the source code for mediawiki, methinks. Big project. WHy, if I may ask? On May 13, 2006, at 1:09 PM, Seun Osewa wrote:

...

Hello, I would like to change the separator character on my mediawiki installation from the current underscore format to dot format. I have read a previous exchange in which it was noted that the underscore is hard-coded into mediawiki in many places, but i feel it would be worth the effort. What are the places/files/directories where I should start looking? Thanks! -- Seun Osewa http://www.nairaland.com _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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Elliott F. Cable

9:22 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] To Change Separator Character (underscore to Dot)

... How will this affect you're search engine rankings? And you'd have to modify them ALL, every single one - if you missed one, it would break major things, would it not? The whole linking scheme, really. I'd say 100+. I could be wrong, but in my experience hacking mediawiki, everything is so tightly interwoven that changing even a small tiny thing that you think would only appear once, actually appears in 10 different places. Making this a variable in some ways wouldn't be a bad idea, but in others, it wouldn't work - what about interwiki linking? Templates? using dots in titles that are NOT spaces? But again, how would this help with google? On May 13, 2006, at 1:19 PM, Seun Osewa wrote:

...

Well, I'm launching a new site that I'll be developing for years or more, and I feel that if this project that'll take maybe a few hours in a weekend will affect my search engine rankings by even just 5%, it's worth getting it over with right now. If the community will help me, then instead of just changing the underscores to dots i might even be able to create a patch which makes it possible for people to use any character as the separator character. How many places do you think I'll need to modify? 5? 10? 20? 50? Seun. http://www.nairaland.com/ On 5/13/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable(a)avxw.com> wrote:

You'd have to look through most of the source code for mediawiki, methinks. Big project. WHy, if I may ask? On May 13, 2006, at 1:09 PM, Seun Osewa wrote:

Hello, I would like to change the separator character on my mediawiki installation from the current underscore format to dot format. I have read a previous exchange in which it was noted that the underscore is hard-coded into mediawiki in many places, but i feel it would be worth the effort. What are the places/files/directories where I should start looking? Thanks! -- Seun Osewa http://www.nairaland.com _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Seun Osewa http://www.nairaland.com [vast Nigerian forum] _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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Rick DeNatale

10:51 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] To Change Separator Character (underscore to Dot)

On 5/13/06, Seun Osewa <seun.osewa(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

100? Ouch! Google recognizes keywords in urls that are separated by dots or hyphens, but words separared by underscores are viewed as one unit. A Google rep even recommended hyphens over underscores: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/23564.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/4572.htm The difference is really small, and if a project gets a lot of link love (like wikipedia) it probably wouldn't matter, I guess.

Two comments. 1) Both of those threads are quite old, and google's algorithms don't stand still. 2) As one of those threads pointed out we are talking about separators in the urls here. Mediawiki turns spaces into underscores in the article urls, but the page content will have the words separated by spaces, and presumably the page content counts more than the url. -- Rick DeNatale IPMS/USA Region 12 Coordinator http://ipmsr12.denhaven2.com/ Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/

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Elliott F.Cable

14 May 14 May

12:12 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] To Change Separator Character (underscore to Dot)

I have to say it'd be cool if you'd integrate this, but I'd suggest dashes (-) instead of periods (.) - it'd make more sense to the end- user, and be more user-friendly. Perhaps, just make it an option as you suggested - a configuration variable. Check with brion about getting into the SVN team to comit you're changes. On May 13, 2006, at 2:22 PM, Seun Osewa wrote:

...

100? Ouch! Google recognizes keywords in urls that are separated by dots or hyphens, but words separared by underscores are viewed as one unit. A Google rep even recommended hyphens over underscores: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/23564.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/4572.htm The difference is really small, and if a project gets a lot of link love (like wikipedia) it probably wouldn't matter, I guess. On 5/13/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable(a)avxw.com> wrote:

... How will this affect you're search engine rankings? And you'd have to modify them ALL, every single one - if you missed one, it would break major things, would it not? The whole linking scheme, really. I'd say 100+. I could be wrong, but in my experience hacking mediawiki, everything is so tightly interwoven that changing even a small tiny thing that you think would only appear once, actually appears in 10 different places. Making this a variable in some ways wouldn't be a bad idea, but in others, it wouldn't work - what about interwiki linking? Templates? using dots in titles that are NOT spaces? But again, how would this help with google? On May 13, 2006, at 1:19 PM, Seun Osewa wrote:

Well, I'm launching a new site that I'll be developing for years or more, and I feel that if this project that'll take maybe a few hours in a weekend will affect my search engine rankings by even just 5%, it's worth getting it over with right now. If the community will help me, then instead of just changing the underscores to dots i might even be able to create a patch which makes it possible for people to use any character as the separator character. How many places do you think I'll need to modify? 5? 10? 20? 50? Seun. http://www.nairaland.com/ On 5/13/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable(a)avxw.com> wrote:

You'd have to look through most of the source code for mediawiki, methinks. Big project. WHy, if I may ask? On May 13, 2006, at 1:09 PM, Seun Osewa wrote: > Hello, > > I would like to change the separator character on my mediawiki > installation from the current underscore format to dot format. > > I have read a previous exchange in which it was noted that the > underscore is hard-coded into mediawiki in many places, but i > feel it > would be worth the effort. > > What are the places/files/directories where I should start > looking? Thanks! > > -- > Seun Osewa > http://www.nairaland.com > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Seun Osewa http://www.nairaland.com [vast Nigerian forum] _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Seun Osewa http://www.nairaland.com [vast Nigerian forum] _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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iubito

6:26 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] To Change Separator Character (underscore to Dot)

Answer to Seun Osewa, Use the GetLocalURL hook to change _ to - or what ever you want : 'GetLocalURL': modify local URLs as output into page links $title: Title object of page $url: string value as output (out parameter, can modify) $query: query options passed to Title::getLocalURL() For example, in an extension : <?php # Change URL, replace _ by - $wgHooks['GetLocalURL'][] = 'underscoreToHyphen'; //wfRunHooks( 'GetLocalURL', array( &$this, &$url, $query ) ); function underscoreToHyphen($title, $url, $query) { $url = str_replace("_", "-", $url); #wfDebug('extension/underscoreToHyphen : $title,$url='.$url.',$query='.$query."\n"); } ?> 2006/5/14, Seun Osewa <seun.osewa(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

There a very easy system that's used in the SImplemachines Engine: 1) Use PHP output buffering to store the HTML output of the software and then run a regex on it to convert all underscores in internal urls to dots (or another separator character) 2) Write a short function in index.php to convert the request url dots back to underscores. I haven't checked code to see if output buffering is already being used. What do you think? On 5/14/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable(a)avxw.com> wrote:

I have to say it'd be cool if you'd integrate this, but I'd suggest dashes (-) instead of periods (.) - it'd make more sense to the end- user, and be more user-friendly. Perhaps, just make it an option as you suggested - a configuration variable. Check with brion about getting into the SVN team to comit you're changes. On May 13, 2006, at 2:22 PM, Seun Osewa wrote:

100? Ouch! Google recognizes keywords in urls that are separated by dots or hyphens, but words separared by underscores are viewed as one unit. A Google rep even recommended hyphens over underscores: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/23564.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/4572.htm The difference is really small, and if a project gets a lot of link love (like wikipedia) it probably wouldn't matter, I guess. On 5/13/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable(a)avxw.com> wrote:

... How will this affect you're search engine rankings? And you'd have to modify them ALL, every single one - if you missed one, it would break major things, would it not? The whole linking scheme, really. I'd say 100+. I could be wrong, but in my experience hacking mediawiki, everything is so tightly interwoven that changing even a small tiny thing that you think would only appear once, actually appears in 10 different places. Making this a variable in some ways wouldn't be a bad idea, but in others, it wouldn't work - what about interwiki linking? Templates? using dots in titles that are NOT spaces? But again, how would this help with google? On May 13, 2006, at 1:19 PM, Seun Osewa wrote: > Well, > > I'm launching a new site that I'll be developing for years or more, > and I feel that if this project that'll take maybe a few hours in a > weekend will affect my search engine rankings by even just 5%, it's > worth getting it over with right now. > > If the community will help me, then instead of just changing the > underscores to dots i might even be able to create a patch which > makes > it possible for people to use any character as the separator > character. > > How many places do you think I'll need to modify? 5? 10? 20? 50? > > Seun. > http://www.nairaland.com/ > > On 5/13/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable(a)avxw.com> wrote: >> You'd have to look through most of the source code for mediawiki, >> methinks. Big project. WHy, if I may ask? >> >> On May 13, 2006, at 1:09 PM, Seun Osewa wrote: >>> Hello, >>> >>> I would like to change the separator character on my mediawiki >>> installation from the current underscore format to dot format. >>> >>> I have read a previous exchange in which it was noted that the >>> underscore is hard-coded into mediawiki in many places, but i >>> feel it >>> would be worth the effort. >>> >>> What are the places/files/directories where I should start >>> looking? Thanks! >>> >>> -- >>> Seun Osewa >>> http://www.nairaland.com >>> _______________________________________________ >>> MediaWiki-l mailing list >>> MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org >>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l >> >> _______________________________________________ >> MediaWiki-l mailing list >> MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l >> > > > -- > Seun Osewa > http://www.nairaland.com [vast Nigerian forum] > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Seun Osewa http://www.nairaland.com [vast Nigerian forum] _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Seun Osewa http://www.nairaland.com [vast Nigerian forum] _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Sylvain Machefert http://iubito.free.fr http://tousauxbalkans.jexiste.fr

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Seun Osewa

6:53 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] To Change Separator Character (underscore to Dot)

Wow. Thanks! It seems to be working perfectly with just this one change. I'll keep testing. I'm very new to this code. Thanks again, iubito! On 5/14/06, iubito <iubito(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Answer to Seun Osewa, Use the GetLocalURL hook to change _ to - or what ever you want : 'GetLocalURL': modify local URLs as output into page links $title: Title object of page $url: string value as output (out parameter, can modify) $query: query options passed to Title::getLocalURL() For example, in an extension : <?php # Change URL, replace _ by - $wgHooks['GetLocalURL'][] = 'underscoreToHyphen'; //wfRunHooks( 'GetLocalURL', array( &$this, &$url, $query ) ); function underscoreToHyphen($title, $url, $query) { $url = str_replace("_", "-", $url); #wfDebug('extension/underscoreToHyphen : $title,$url='.$url.',$query='.$query."\n"); } ?>

-- Seun Osewa http://www.nairaland.com [vast Nigerian forum]

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Seun Osewa

9:59 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] To Change Separator Character (underscore to Dot)

Ok, I've noticed a problem. After making that change: - Pages linking to new pages created with the new separator character always show the link in bright red, wrongly indicating that the pages have not been created. - For all new pages created with the new separator character, whatlinkshere doesn't work. I'm guessing there's another hard-coded underscore that has to do with reference counting that I'll need to change. Help! On 5/15/06, Sy Ali <sy1234(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 5/14/06, Seun Osewa <seun.osewa(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Wow. Thanks! It seems to be working perfectly with just this one

change.

I'll keep testing. I'm very new to this code. Thanks again, iubito!

Perhaps after some testing you could wrap it into an extension and make a reference to it on meta. _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Seun Osewa http://www.nairaland.com [vast Nigerian forum]

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Tels

12:25 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] To Change Separator Character (underscore to Dot)

Moin, On Monday 15 May 2006 12:18, Rob Church wrote:

...

On 15/05/06, Seun Osewa <seun.osewa(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Ok, I've noticed a problem. After making that change: - Pages linking to new pages created with the new separator character always show the link in bright red, wrongly indicating that the pages have not been created. - For all new pages created with the new separator character, whatlinkshere doesn't work. I'm guessing there's another hard-coded underscore that has to do with reference counting that I'll need to change. Help!

Most of the code assumes underscores and spaces are interchangeable.

And don't forget extensions as well as wiki2xml, which also makes this assumption and will thus break with your change. So, the doctor says: Don't change the separator character 'cuz it hurts. Best wishes, Tels -- Signed on Mon May 15 14:25:53 2006 with key 0x93B84C15. Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/ PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email. "One man in a thousand is a leader of men, the other 999 follow women" -- Groucho Marx

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