Embedding +1 (Google Plus) on MediaWiki sites

Here are the steps that I followed for embedding +1 button on a MediaWiki Site that I administer - called as GeetShabda - which is a place for sharing lyrics for Marathi songs.

See this Page to see it working!

As per the code provided by Google on the Webmasters site - I started exploring options to include it in the MediaWiki site. However, I could not find any ready steps - so I decided to share this with everyone.

1. <!-- Place this tag in your head or just before your close body tag -->
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

2.  <!-- Place this tag where you want the 1 button to render -->
     <g:plusone></g:plusone>

Steps for MediaWiki installations:

(I am a newbie to Mediawiki and hence this might not be the *best way* to achieve this)

1. Go to LocalSettings.php
1. Add the following code

 $wgHooks['BeforePageDisplay'][]  = 'MyExtensionJavaScript';

function MyExtensionJavaScript( $out ) 

{

  # -----------------------------------------------

  #  Merge JavaScript into OutputPage

  # -----------------------------------------------

  $script = '<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js">'
                    . '</script>';

  $out->addScript( $script);

  return true;

}    

 --- This ensures that the step (1) above happens correctly. and the plus one API is loaded and referenced from the HTML head.

              2. Go the the .php file . In my case the site uses the Vector template and hence I edited the Vector.php

                          1. In Vector.php add the below code after

<!-- firstHeading -->
<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading"><?php $this->html( 'title') ?>
<g:plusone size="medium" href="/"></g:plusone>
</h1>
<!-- /firstHeading -->

And voila - You would have a +1 Button on all your pages.

Update: 14-July: Rendering of code update (as per comment by Tom. Thanks!)

Beautifying Wiki URL(s)

Recently, I started helping my sister for developing geetshabda . The site (project) aims to build the largest repository of information on music in local languages in India and especially Marathi - to begin with.

Due to this, I decided to get my hands dirty into MediaWiki.  Below tips should help you in setting up clean URL(s) for your media-wiki installation on GoDaddy.

    * When testing these instructions, be sure to launch a new browser instance to prevent browser caching from hiding the latest configuration changes.

[edit] .htaccess
Create .htaccess in wiki installation directory (with GoDaddy File Manager or by FTP) with this content:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^wiki/(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1 [PT,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^wiki/*$ /index.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^/*$ /index.php [L,QSA]

[edit] LocalSettings.php

Add the following to the end of LocalSettings.php (in Subdomain directory):

# SHORT URLS:
$wgScriptPath = ""; # Path to the actual files
$wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1"; # Virtual path

It may be necessary to set $wgUsePathInfo to true with this code:

$wgUsePathInfo = true;