Tag: MediaWiki

Displaying Google Adsense in MediaWiki

This post shows how to insert code that displays ads in MediaWiki. The proposed methods use hooks instead of modifying the skin. This has two advantages:

  1. No need to modify each skin separately. This allows users to change skins and ads will be presented to them in the same logical place.
  2. It makes upgrades simpler. Hooks reside in LocalSettings.php which isn’t modified by MediaWiki version upgrades, unlike skins.

The examples below show how to insert ads into the header, footer and sidebar of each page. I’ve used the Google Adsense ad-serving code, but it could be easily replaced by the ad-serving code of any other ad network.
Continue reading Displaying Google Adsense in MediaWiki

Tracking MediaWiki External Links Statistics using Google Analytics

When you track MediaWiki statistics, you usually track only internal page statistics, but tracking external links which leads out of your site is not some thing you can ignore. Unfortunately we probably can’t put actual tracking code in the pages linked to by our site’s external links. Fortunately we can track the actual clicks on those links that lead out of the site, and it’s quite easy to do when tracking statistics with Google Analytics. If you don’t already use Google Analytics with your MediaWiki site, open a new account in Google Analytics and see my previous post: Track MediaWiki Statistics using Google Analytics.

Continue reading Tracking MediaWiki External Links Statistics using Google Analytics

Track MediaWiki Statistics using Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the best free web-statistics services available. It’s also quite easy to use with MediaWiki. To install Google Analytics in you MediaWiki you should put the tracking code, which is something that looks like:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct="UA-xxxx-x";
urchinTracker();
</script>

in every page, preferably just above the </body> tag. The best way to do so will be to put the tracking code inside the base skin php file. That means that unless you changed the default skin for MediaWiki you need to edit /wiki/skins/MonoBook.php. In this file you will find the </body> tag towards the bottom of the file. Insert the tracking code just above it, save the file, and you’re done, as all pages will now show the script. Google Analytics will start gathering statistics usually in about 24-28 hours.

Update: If you also want to track external links to files and other websites take a look at Tracking Mediawiki External Links Statistics Using Google Analytics.