The image of the day was rendered in this way:

<include src="pictures-of-the-day/fr/picture-of-the-day-400.txt" noesc="noesc" wikitext="wikitext" /><span class="plainlinks" style="font-size: smaller;">| [http://fr.wikimini.org/w/picture-of-the-day-credits.php Crédits]</span> 
<div style="text-align: right;">[[Image:Puce-rouge2.gif]] <span class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=purge}} Actualiser].</span></div>

There is probably a "wiki way" to implement this without requiring the Include extension. Honestly, it's not that obvious so let's propose something.

Success criteria

• no visible changes for the end user / or very minimal changes
• an automatic approach is maintained
• adopt core MediaWiki features (wikitext, APIs, etc.)
• don't require a MediaWiki extension
• don't require custom code with full SELECT access to the wikis' databases
• don't require custom code with full write access to the filesystem
• don't require to manually download files from Wikimedia Commons to our filesystem (InstantCommons could help a lot)

Bonus points:

• don't require a purge

Proposals

Option 1:

We can save the title of the picture of the day in a single template. This template could be updated using a small low-privileged bot, that uses public APIs and runs once a day.

Examples:

File:Very beautiful image.jpg

↑ This page will be updated to reflect the current title of the current Wikimedia Commons picture of the day. The page will not contain brakets so it can be expanted with other templates.

For example, this template could be used to generate a thumbnail:

[[{{Picture of the day - filename}}|thumb|{{{1}}}]

Etc.