Knowledgebase
How to change the site name and the name of the meta namespace in MediaWiki
In this article we'll show you how to change the name of the site and the one for the meta namespace (also referred to as project namespace).
Site Name
The site name is the name used throughout the site and shown at the top of browsers and browser tabs. It's not to be confused with the URL address of the site.
It's first set during the installation of MediaWiki. It's saved in the LocalSettings.php file and you can change it by modifying a line in that file. Open the file and find the following line (it should be almost at the beginning of the file):
$wgSitename = "Example Wiki";
Example Wiki stands for the actual name of your wiki site. So in the quotation marks put the name of your site. If it consists of more than one word, you can put spaces between the words. After that save the file and you're done.
The LocalSettings.php file is in the root MediaWiki folder on your MediaWiki hosting account. If, for instance, the application is installed directly in the public_html directory on the account (meaning the frontend is accessible at yourdomain.com), then the path to the file on the account will be public_html/LocalSettings.php. HostKnox customers can use the File manager of the Pixie control panel to view and edit files directly on their hosting accounts. An alternative method 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.
Meta Namespace
As you probably know the pages on your MediaWiki site are grouped into namespaces. Each namespace has its own name. With the exception of the main namespace (the one that contains all the main articles/pages) the names of the other namespaces are added to the names of the pages belonging to them and they are also added to their URLs. The meta namespace is also called the project namespace. It's the namespace that contains pages with information about the site: e.g. About us page, Privacy policy, Disclaimers, etc. Links to a few such default pages that come preconfigured with MediaWiki are located at the bottom of the site.
As we explained, the name of the meta namespace is added in front of the names of these pages and also to the corresponding URL addresses. For example, if the name is Example Wiki, then the full name of the Privacy policy page will be Example Wiki:Privacy policy. The corresponding URL address of the page (provided that yourdomain.com is the URL of the site) will be yourdomain.com/index.php/Example_Wiki:Privacy_policy.
The name of the meta namespace is initially set during the installation of MediaWiki. By default, if you don't make any changes, it's set to be the same as the site name. Once the installation is complete, if you want to change it, you can do so by modifying the following line in the LocalSettings.php file (it's right below the line for the site name):
$wgMetaNamespace = "Example_Wiki";
Replace the name that's in the quotation marks (e.g. Example_Wiki) with the name of your choice. Note that unlike the site name if the name of the meta namespace consists of more than one word, you should separate words with underscores.