Knowledgebase
How to rebuild the Recent changes list in MediaWiki
The Recent changes page on the frontend of your MediaWiki site lists the most recent page edits and changes. In some cases you may need to regenerate and rebuild this list; for example, you may need to do it after you import pages. For this purpose MediaWiki comes prepackaged with a file called rebuildrecentchanges.php. By executing that file you can rebuild the Recent changes list.
The file is in the maintenance folder of your MediaWiki. The maintenance folder in its turn is located in the root MediaWiki directory on your hosting account. If, for instance, the application is installed directly in the public_html directory on your MediaWiki hosting account, then the path to the file on the account will be public_html/maintenance/rebuildrecentchanges.php.
You can run this script by executing a command via SSH. When HostKnox customers log into their account via SSH, they are logged into a folder which is a direct parent folder of the public_html directory. So if they don't change the current working directory and MediaWiki is installed directly in public_html, they can execute the script with the command:
php public_html/maintenance/rebuildrecentchanges.php
If before that you change the current working directory to the maintenance folder (e.g. with the command cd public_html/maintenance), then you can execute the same command but without the folder path since the file is located in the current working directory:
php rebuildrecentchanges.php
After you execute the command a few messages will appear with the actions that are performed.
HostKnox customers have a free SSH access to their hosting accounts. For more information on how to connect to your account via SSH and perform different tasks check the SSH articles in our knowledge base.
For general information on the Recent changes page check out the section on the Recent changes page in the tutorial on how to track and patrol edits in MediaWiki.
Other articles related to the Recent changes page that you may find useful:
- how to change the available options for the number of entries to be listed on the Recent changes page in MediaWiki
- how to change the available options for the period for which entries can be listed on the Recent changes page in MediaWiki
- how to change the default number of edit entries on the Recent changes page in MediaWiki
- how to change the period for which changes are kept on the Recent changes list in MediaWiki