Knowledgebase
How to enable and disable user talk page notification in MediaWiki
Pages in MediaWiki can have an associated talk page/discussion page which can be used to comment the page with which it's associated. The same is true for user pages. Each registered user can create a personal page on the site and an associated talk page on which other users can write comments to the user. There's an option for user talk page notification with which (when the option is enabled) users will be notified via email when somebody posts a comment or edits the talk page associated with their personal user page.
The option can be enabled and disabled globally for the whole site. When it's enabled each user can select from the options for their account whether to receive talk page notifications. When the global option is disabled, it will not be available in the user account preferences and respectively it will be disabled for all users.
The option can be initially enabled during the installation of the application. It's disabled by default. After that you can enable/disable it by modifying a line in the LocalSettings.php file of your MediaWiki. Find the following line in the file:
$wgEnotifUserTalk = false;
When it's set to false the option is disabled. To enable it replace false with true. When this option is enabled a corresponding option becomes available in the user account preferences of each user. It's enabled by default which means that the user will receive notifications via email when there's a change on their talk page. Note that the user will not be notified when they edit their own user talk page. The user can disable that option if they don't want to receive the notifications. They can do this from Preferences button in the top right corner>User profile tab>Email me when my user talk page is changed checkbox. Note however that if email authentication is enabled (it's enabled by default) and the user hasn't confirmed their email address, the user will receive no notifications of any kind.
The LocalSettings.php file that you have to edit to achieve this is located in the root MediaWiki folder on your MediaWiki hosting account. Assuming that the application is installed directly in the public_html directory on your account (making the frontend accessible at yourdomain.com), then the path to the file on the account will be public_html/LocalSettings.php. One way for HostKnox customers to edit files directly on their accounts is from the File manager of the Pixie control panel. Another way to do it is to download the file on your local computer, edit it with a text editor (e.g. Notepad) and upload it back overwriting the old file. Files can also be edited on the account via SSH.