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How to change the available options for the period for which entries can be listed on the Recent changes page in MediaWiki

At the top of the Recent changes page there are some options with which you can select to view the changes made during a specified period. By default, you can choose to see a list of the changes made during the last 1, 3, 7, 14 or 30 days. When a user visits the Recent changes page by default the changes from the last 7 days are displayed. You can select a different period by clicking on one of these available links.

f you want to, you can change the options for the available period that can be selected. For instance, you may want users to be able to view a list of the edits from the last 7, 10, 14, 30 and 60 days. You can achieve this by adding the variable $wgRCLinkDays to the LocalSettings.php file of your MediaWiki and use it to specify the days. For instance, if you add the following on a new line at the end of the LocalSettings.php file:

$wgRCLinkDays = array( 7, 10, 14, 30, 60 );

then the available options on the Recent changes page will be for 7, 10, 14, 30 and 60 days.

You should also keep in mind that the default period will be listed as an option regardless of whether you've included it as a number with $wgRCLinkDays. By default, this period is set to 7 days for all users, but registered users can select a different default period from their account preferences. For intance, if you have selected the periods 7, 10, 14, 30, 60 to be available and the user has selected 8 days as their default period. Then when that user is logged in and opens the Recent changes page, the available options for the time period will be 7, 8, 10, 14, 30, 60 (and 8 will be selected by default).

You should also keep in mind that there's a maximum period for which edits are kept in the Recent changes list. Once they become older they are cleared from the database table. So you shouldn't add an option for a longer period than this maximum one. By default, this period is set to around 90 days. You can change it with another variable. For more information check out the article on how to change the period for which changes are kept in the Recent changes list in MediaWiki.

The LocalSettings.php file that you have to modify to change these options is in the root MediaWiki folder on your MediaWiki hosting account. If, for example, your MediaWiki 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 will be public_html/LocalSettings.php. One way for HostKnox customers to edit files is from the File manager of the Pixie control panel. A different approach 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.

For general information on the Recent changes page read the section on the Recent changes page in the tutorial on how to track and patrol edits in MediaWiki.

There are some other articles related to the Recent changes page that you may find useful:

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