[Mediawiki-l] User Variable for Use in Templates

[Rowan Collins]

On 06/02/06, Stéphane Thibault <thibault.stephane at gmail.com> wrote:
> With my level of technical knowledge, I'm not exactly sure why this
> would defeat page caching. Do you have a link or two to suggest so I
> would understand better what's at stake here.

Basically, page caching means storing processed pages so that they can
be served to multiple users without the extra processing required to
recreate them from wikitext. If you get as many visitors as, say,
Wikipedia, this amounts to a *huge* saving in the amount of servers
you need to keep the site responsive.

If you had a {{USERNAME}} variable, no two users would ever see the
same version of a page, so they couldn't be cached. (Obviously, the
link to "User:..." at the top of the screen is generated each time
anyway, but the *content* of the page can still be cached locally, and
stuck inside the extra bits of skin)

As Rob says, though, if you're only running a small site, it may not
be too much of a problem to disable the relevant levels of cache,
letting each page be rendered fresh.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]