On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:27:04 +0300, Mihai Bocsaru
<mihai.bocsaru(a)ikonosnewmedia.com> wrote:
Is there a way to customize a WikiPedia wiki
installation to follow the look
and fell of the main Web site?
First point, which may seem pedantic, but is an important distinction,
is that the software is called "MediaWiki", not "Wikipedia" (which is
a particular site running that software). [It gets worse: see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Names for more confusing distinctions]
I have noticed that in case I will edit:
- MonoBook.php;
- commonPrint.css;
As its name suggests, "commonPrint.css" is the stylesheet used when
somebody *prints* a page from the wiki; the styling used when the page
is *displayed* is mainly contained, I think, in "monobook.css" (or,
more generally, <name of skin>.css, where the skin could have your own
name).
I will be able to see some changes on the internal
pages, not also the Main
page.
That sounds a lot like a caching issue - various levels of cache, on
the server and in your browser, will end up with out-of-date versions
of the page. To display the latest version you will need to do a
"forced reload" in your browser - normally, this requires holding down
Shift, Control, or some similar key, while clicking the "refresh" or
"reload" button, or pressing the keys for a normal reload. I believe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bypass_your_cache has correct
instructions for several browsers.
If you have changed deeper code within the software, you may also need
to bypass some of the *internal* caching features, by adding
"?action=purge" to the address [or "&action=purge" if the URL
already
has a "?" in]. AFAIK, this shouldn't be necessary if you are only
changing the skin.
Are there any resources that I could read, or do you
have any
suggestions/comments on how could I reach the above-mentioned goals?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Skins and the file "docs/skins.doc"
within your installation of the software may or may not have up to
date descriptions of the skinning system, and may or may not help you
find appropriate tips...
You might also want to look through the archives of this and related
mailing lists - put "site:mail.wikimedia.org" with some search terms
into Google.
Happy hacking! :)
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]