This course jumps into the deep end of the pool; we are going to go over every essential aspect of MediaWiki development, including:

• Mapping out the core code
• Creating extensions
• Modifying and Creating Custom Skins

This course is for intermediate-level LAMP developers and up, preferably with some styling experience.

The Structure and Purpose of MediaWiki

• Where we are now
• How it ended up this way
• Current efforts, and the future

The path router

• The startup and shutdown of MediaWiki

The Includes Directory

• 'Here be dragons': a map to the includes directory
• Walking through
• Marking out your points of interest

Essential files, classes, and methods

• Database
• The parser
• Image Handling
• The API
• The Job Queue
• Pages, articles, revisions, and titles
• Global functions

Extensions

• What you need to know
• A Game of Chess: Choosing your moves wisely
  • Hooks
    • The limitation of hooks
  • Object-oriented extension versus hooking
    • Dead ends, and how to avoid them
• When you have no other choice: modifying the core code

Special Pages

Troubleshooting

• Where did it go?
  • Tracing the path of an object
• What went wrong?
  • Debugging in MediaWiki
  • Finding the root of an error
  • Exceptions

Skins

• We're extensions too!
• Vector, and the current skinning efforts in MediaWiki
  • What is changing
• Creating a skin from scratch
  • The classes you must work with (or around)
  • Creating the raw skin
  • Theming, and CSS classes at your disposal
• JavaScript modules and page output

MediaWiki and the Database

• The schema

Contributing, Gerrit, and working with the team