I’m constantly championing Skype within my non-profit organization as a way to increase communication while decreasing costs. As part of our developing MediaWiki intranet I wanted to create a directory of staff members and their skype usernames. I also wanted to add buttons (http://www.skype.com/share/buttons/wizard.html) for calling, chatting, and adding skype users.

Existing skype extensions focused only on showing a users Skype status. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Skype_extension) In true wiki style, I added my own variaton on the code to allow editors to create buttons for different skype actions.

<?php
  $wgExtensionFunctions[] = "wfskype";

function wfSkype() {
global $wgParser;
$wgParser->setHook( “skype”, “renderSkype” );
}

# The callback function for converting the input text to HTML output
function renderSkype( $input, $argv ) {

if( !isset( $argv[‘action’] ) ){
$skype_action = “call” ;
} else {
$skype_action = $argv[‘action’] ;
}

switch( $skype_action ){

case “call”:
$skype_width = 70 ;
$skype_height = 23 ;
$skype_style=”call_blue_transparent_70x23.png”;
break;

case “add”:
$skype_width = 118 ;
$skype_height = 23 ;
$skype_style=”add_blue_transparent_118x23.png”;
break;

case “chat”:
$skype_width = 97 ;
$skype_height = 23 ;
$skype_style=”chat_blue_transparent_97x23.png”;
break;

default:
$skype_action = “call” ;
$skype_width = 70 ;
$skype_height = 23 ;
$skype_style=”call_blue_transparent_70x23.png”;

}

$output = ‘<!– Skype buttons http://www.skype.com/go/skypebuttons –>’;
$output .= ‘<!– MediaWiki extension http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/&#8217;;

     $output .= 'index.php?title=Skype_extension -->';
     $output .= '     $output .= '/js/skypeCheck.js">';
     $output .= '<a href="skype:'.$input.'?'.$skype_action.'">';
     $output .= '<img src="http://download.skype.com/share/skypebuttons/';
     $output .= 'buttons/'.$skype_style.'" ' ;
     $output .= 'style="border: none; width: '.$skype_width.'px; height: '.$skype_height.'px;" alt="Skype me" /></a>';
     $output .= '<!-- end of skype button -->';

return $output;
}
?>

1. Copy the code into a file (e.g. skype.php)
2. Save the file in the extensions directory of your mediawiki folder
3. Add the line include('extensions/skype.php'); to the end of your LocalSettings.php file

In any wiki post, you can add <skype action="specified_action">Skype-Username</skype> where specified_action is call, chat, or add and Skype-Username is a valid skype username.

Buttons appear as