Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Wiki This

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Ok, so I’ve got a wiki space to play with. Yay! But I have no clue on how to edit the template. Boo! (Somehow “Wrichard, the free encyclopedia!” isn’t really cutting it.) So, if anyone knows how to get under the hood and start playing with the code, could they puhleeese point me in the right direction???

Comments

  1. Jason says

    Hi Will,

    Iknow that with my wiki software, I had to edit the wiki.php file directly. I don’t know if that helps, but it worked for me. I have been using WikiniMST for writing a couple of courses. I am able to create and remove pages as I need, and I can always pick up where I left off, whether it be at home of the library.

    Good luck!
    Jason

  2. Tim Wilson says

    Will, have you seen the MediaWiki Users Guide yet? The help on editing is pretty good (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing). The easiest way to create a new page is to link to and then follow the link. For example, if you had some wiki text that had the following markup:

    I love [[chili]].

    You could save that page and then view it to follow the link to your new wiki page entitled “Chili.” Then you could start editing that page. Another method is to do a search for a page. If it doesn’t exist, you’ll have the option to create the page. The “new page by linking” method is preferred because it minimizes the chances for orphaned, and therefore hard to find and useless, entries in the wiki. Good luck.

  3. Jason says

    Hi Will,

    Iknow that with my wiki software, I had to edit the wiki.php file directly. I don’t know if that helps, but it worked for me. I have been using WikiniMST for writing a couple of courses. I am able to create and remove pages as I need, and I can always pick up where I left off, whether it be at home of the library.

    Good luck!
    Jason

  4. Will R. says

    Tim, what I’m struggling with is how to change the look of the page itself. Can I change the background color? The title heading? Etc.?

  5. Tim Wilson says

    There should be three different skins available as a user preference, but that might not be what you’re after. To change the text of the “From Wrichard, the free encyclopedia,” for example, you need to visit http://will.teacherhosting.com/wiki/index.php/MediaWiki:Fromwikipedia and edit that page to say what you want. You will need WikiSysop status to have permission to do that. For a list of all the Mediawiki messages that you can edit, visit http://will.teacherhosting.com/wiki/index.php/MediaWiki:All_messages

    The Mediawiki User Guide has a lot of information, but it took me a long time to figure that out. As far as modifying background colors and such, you should find some CSS files in the root of your wiki directory. You can modify those to change the look. Creating custom skins isn’t something I’ve delved into just yet. One easy change it to upload a new graphic for the site. Just upload it and give it the same name as the default one.