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   1  skin.txt
   2  
   3  MediaWiki includes four core skins:
   4  
   5  * Vector: The default skin. Introduced in the 1.16 release (2010), it has been
   6    set as the default in MediaWiki since the 1.17 release (2011), replacing
   7    Monobook.
   8  
   9  * Monobook: Named after the black-and-white photo of a book in the page
  10    background. Introduced in the 2004 release of 1.3, it had been been the
  11    default skin since then, before being replaced by Vector.
  12  
  13  * Modern: An attractive blue/grey theme with sidebar and top bar. Derived from
  14    Monobook.
  15  
  16  * Cologne Blue: A lightweight skin with minimal formatting. The oldest of the
  17    currently bundled skins, largely rewritten in 2012 while keeping its
  18    appearance.
  19  
  20  
  21  Several legacy skins were removed in the 1.22 release, as the burden of
  22  supporting them became too heavy to bear. Those were:
  23  
  24  * Standard (a.k.a. Classic): The old default skin written by Lee Crocker during
  25    the phase 3 rewrite, in 2002.
  26  
  27  * Nostalgia: A skin which looks like Wikipedia did in its first year (2001).
  28    This skin is now used for the old Wikipedia snapshot at
  29    http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/
  30  
  31  * Chick: A lightweight Monobook skin with no sidebar. The sidebar links were
  32    given at the bottom of the page instead.
  33  
  34  * Simple: A lightweight skin with a simple white-background sidebar and no top
  35    bar.
  36  
  37  * MySkin: Essentially Monobook without the CSS. The idea was that it could be
  38    customised using user-specific or site-wide CSS (see below).
  39  
  40  
  41  == Custom CSS/JS ==
  42  
  43  It is possible to customise the site CSS and JavaScript without editing any
  44  server-side source files. This is done by editing some pages on the wiki:
  45  
  46  * [[MediaWiki:Common.css]] -- for skin-independent CSS
  47  * [[MediaWiki:Common.js]] -- for skin-independent JavaScript
  48  * [[MediaWiki:Vector.css]], [[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]], etc. -- for
  49    skin-dependent CSS
  50  * [[MediaWiki:Vector.js]], [[MediaWiki:Monobook.js]], etc. -- for
  51    skin-dependent JavaScript
  52  
  53  These can also be customised on a per-user basis, by editing
  54  [[User:<name>/vector.css]], [[User:<name>/vector.js]], etc.
  55  
  56  This feature has led to a wide variety of "user styles" becoming available:
  57  
  58  https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Gallery_of_user_styles
  59  
  60  If you want a different look for your wiki, that gallery is a good place to start.
  61  
  62  == Drop-in custom skins ==
  63  
  64  If you put a file in MediaWiki's skins directory, ending in .php, the name of 
  65  the file will automatically be added as a skin name, and the file will be
  66  expected to contain a class called Skin<name> with the skin class. You can then
  67  make that skin the default by adding to LocalSettings.php:
  68  
  69  $wgDefaultSkin = '<name>';
  70  
  71  You can also disable dropped-in or core skins using:
  72  
  73  $wgSkipSkins[] = '<name>';
  74  
  75  This technique is used by the more ambitious MediaWiki site operators, to 
  76  create complex custom skins for their wikis. It should be preferred over 
  77  editing the core Monobook skin directly.
  78  
  79  See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skinning for more information.
  80  
  81  == Extension skins ==
  82  
  83  It is now possible (since MediaWiki 1.12) to write a skin as a standard
  84  MediaWiki extension, enabled via LocalSettings.php. This is done by adding 
  85  it to $wgValidSkinNames, for example:
  86  
  87  $wgValidSkinNames['mycoolskin'] = 'MyCoolSkin';
  88  
  89  and then registering a class in $wgAutoloadClasses called SkinMycoolSkin, which 
  90  derives from Skin. This technique is apparently not yet used (as of 2008) 
  91  outside the DumpHTML extension.
  92