Help:Preferences
Clicking on the Clicking on the Template loop detected: Help:Preferences link in the upper right while logged in allows you to change your preferences. You will be presented with the User profile section, as well as a bar of tabs across the top for changing other types of settings.
Contents
User profile
Basic Information
Changing your password
To change your password, enter your old password in the first box and your new password in the last two. If you want this site to remember your login, check Remember my login on this computer. Note that this function requires you to have cookies enabled in your browser, and if your cookie is cleared or expires you will no longer be remembered.
Email Options
If you have supplied an email address, you will need to click the verify address button in order to use these functions. You will receive an email; simply open it and follow the link to enable the following functions.
- Email confirmation
- Enable email other users
- Send me copies of emails I send to others
- Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed
- Email me on replies to a thread I am watching
Appearance
Skin
Here you can choose the skin you want to use. You can preview the available skins before choosing them, by clicking on the "skin preview" link next to each skin. Please refer to A skin defines a look and feel for the MediaWiki interface. Although the look and feel varies between skins, in general all skins have the same interface components. Each skin can show the same interface component differently, by showing it in different colors or positioning it differently on the page.
To try out the available skins and change skin, click on the my preferences link while logged in, then click on the "skin" tab. You can preview the available skins before choosing them, by clicking on the "preview" link next to each skin. for more details.
Date and format and time offset
The following is normally rendered depending on preferences:
[[2001-01-05]] (or [[2001]]-[[01-05]]) (with leading zeros) [[2001]] [[January 5]] ([[2001]] [[January 05]]) [[January 5]], [[2001]] ([[January 05]], [[2001]]) [[5 January]] [[2001]] ([[05 January]] [[2001]]) [[January 5]] ([[January 05]]) [[5 January]] ([[05 January]])
Files
Here you can determine how images will be displayed. Images displayed by direct pasting of a URL (if the wiki has it enabled) will not be affected by this setting.
- Image size limit (for file description pages): This setting lets you choose how big image previews will be on the Image: pages. If you know what your current screen resolution is you may like to set this to one or two sizes smaller than your own screen. If you have a slow connection (such as dial-up) you may want to limit them to 320×240.
- Thumbnail size: Define how big you want thumbnails to appear. This setting will not affect thumbnails with dimensions determined by an editor, nor can it increase images beyond their original dimensions.
- Use Media Viewer: this setting (on by default) determines whether the Media Viewer should be used to provide a smoother image viewing experience.
Editing
These are the settings to control editing pages, including whether to automatically watch pages that you have edited or created.
- General options
- Editor
- Preview
Recent changes
Display options
- Days to show in recent changes: Here you can specify how far back the recent changes pages will go. Note that the list will stop prematurely if the number of edits is exceeded (see below).
- Number of edits to show by default: Here you can specify how many edits should be displayed.
Watchlist
These are the settings to control the behavior of the watchlist (See Your watchlist is a display for tracking changes, similar to the Recent changes display, but limited to showing changes only across your set of "watched" pages. You can see your watchlist by following the "Watchlist" link in your account menu (on the top right). This feature is only available to users who have registered and logged in.
Before you see anything interesting here, you have to actually add some pages to your watchlist. Do so by navigating to a page that interests you, and click the star icon or "Watch" tab.
The watchlist feature is mainly useful on a very busy wiki where the "Recent changes" display becomes too overwhelming with many changes you don't want to follow. On a typical low traffic wiki, you can normally see all of the editing activity across the whole wiki without feeling overwhelmed. On a more busy wiki you will find that many edits are taking place on pages which you personally find less interesting. To help track changes which are more interesting, start watching pages!
Typically you would watch pages related to your interest areas, and also pages where you care most about the content. If you make a significant edit to a page, you might want to watch the page (so you know when there are any follow-up edits). Note that there is a also a checkbox on the edit screen ("Watch this page") for this purpose.
On the watchlist display, some page names appear in bold. This indicates whether or not you have visited the page to see the change. It's a bit like read/unread emails in an email inbox. The "Recent changes" display will also have some new bold highlighting, but for a different reason. Here bold is just indicating edits to pages on your watchlist.
Email notifications
According to the relevant preferences, changes to pages you watch may also be notified to you by email. The main preference for this is "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed".
After receiving an email notification for a page, you have to visit the page while logged in if you want to be notified of further changes to the same page.). Most of these options are also available on the watchlist display itself, but by setting them in your preferences, you control the default behavior of the watchlist i.e., it will perform the same actions every time you visit the page.
Search
Default settings for searches including how many results to display and how much context to show for each result. Check the boxes next to the namespaces which you want to show up, the first time that you search for something. You can override this when doing an actual search, by checking or unchecking the boxes at the bottom of the search results screen. link in the upper right while logged in allows you to change your preferences. You will be presented with the User profile section, as well as a bar of tabs across the top for changing other types of settings.
User profile
Basic Information
Changing your password
To change your password, enter your old password in the first box and your new password in the last two. If you want this site to remember your login, check Remember my login on this computer. Note that this function requires you to have cookies enabled in your browser, and if your cookie is cleared or expires you will no longer be remembered.
Email Options
If you have supplied an email address, you will need to click the verify address button in order to use these functions. You will receive an email; simply open it and follow the link to enable the following functions.
- Email confirmation
- Enable email other users
- Send me copies of emails I send to others
- Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed
- Email me on replies to a thread I am watching
Appearance
Skin
Here you can choose the skin you want to use. You can preview the available skins before choosing them, by clicking on the "skin preview" link next to each skin. Please refer to A skin defines a look and feel for the MediaWiki interface. Although the look and feel varies between skins, in general all skins have the same interface components. Each skin can show the same interface component differently, by showing it in different colors or positioning it differently on the page.
To try out the available skins and change skin, click on the my preferences link while logged in, then click on the "skin" tab. You can preview the available skins before choosing them, by clicking on the "preview" link next to each skin. for more details.
Date and format and time offset
The following is normally rendered depending on preferences:
[[2001-01-05]] (or [[2001]]-[[01-05]]) (with leading zeros) [[2001]] [[January 5]] ([[2001]] [[January 05]]) [[January 5]], [[2001]] ([[January 05]], [[2001]]) [[5 January]] [[2001]] ([[05 January]] [[2001]]) [[January 5]] ([[January 05]]) [[5 January]] ([[05 January]])
Files
Here you can determine how images will be displayed. Images displayed by direct pasting of a URL (if the wiki has it enabled) will not be affected by this setting.
- Image size limit (for file description pages): This setting lets you choose how big image previews will be on the Image: pages. If you know what your current screen resolution is you may like to set this to one or two sizes smaller than your own screen. If you have a slow connection (such as dial-up) you may want to limit them to 320×240.
- Thumbnail size: Define how big you want thumbnails to appear. This setting will not affect thumbnails with dimensions determined by an editor, nor can it increase images beyond their original dimensions.
- Use Media Viewer: this setting (on by default) determines whether the Media Viewer should be used to provide a smoother image viewing experience.
Editing
These are the settings to control editing pages, including whether to automatically watch pages that you have edited or created.
- General options
- Editor
- Preview
Recent changes
Display options
- Days to show in recent changes: Here you can specify how far back the recent changes pages will go. Note that the list will stop prematurely if the number of edits is exceeded (see below).
- Number of edits to show by default: Here you can specify how many edits should be displayed.
Watchlist
These are the settings to control the behavior of the watchlist (See Your watchlist is a display for tracking changes, similar to the Recent changes display, but limited to showing changes only across your set of "watched" pages. You can see your watchlist by following the "Watchlist" link in your account menu (on the top right). This feature is only available to users who have registered and logged in.
Before you see anything interesting here, you have to actually add some pages to your watchlist. Do so by navigating to a page that interests you, and click the star icon or "Watch" tab.
The watchlist feature is mainly useful on a very busy wiki where the "Recent changes" display becomes too overwhelming with many changes you don't want to follow. On a typical low traffic wiki, you can normally see all of the editing activity across the whole wiki without feeling overwhelmed. On a more busy wiki you will find that many edits are taking place on pages which you personally find less interesting. To help track changes which are more interesting, start watching pages!
Typically you would watch pages related to your interest areas, and also pages where you care most about the content. If you make a significant edit to a page, you might want to watch the page (so you know when there are any follow-up edits). Note that there is a also a checkbox on the edit screen ("Watch this page") for this purpose.
On the watchlist display, some page names appear in bold. This indicates whether or not you have visited the page to see the change. It's a bit like read/unread emails in an email inbox. The "Recent changes" display will also have some new bold highlighting, but for a different reason. Here bold is just indicating edits to pages on your watchlist.
Email notifications
According to the relevant preferences, changes to pages you watch may also be notified to you by email. The main preference for this is "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed".
After receiving an email notification for a page, you have to visit the page while logged in if you want to be notified of further changes to the same page.). Most of these options are also available on the watchlist display itself, but by setting them in your preferences, you control the default behavior of the watchlist i.e., it will perform the same actions every time you visit the page.
Search
Default settings for searches including how many results to display and how much context to show for each result. Check the boxes next to the namespaces which you want to show up, the first time that you search for something. You can override this when doing an actual search, by checking or unchecking the boxes at the bottom of the search results screen.