User blog:2Actimv/Customize your wiki

Everybody who is a founder or is an admin on a wiki is usually struggling with the layout, home page design and other things. What could you customize on your wiki? And where do you do these things? In this blog post I'll tell you everything about some things you can easily customize on your wiki. For extra information about the options and how you can do some things please go to my blog or to the help pages on Community Central.

Layout
You can do this on "Special:ThemeDesigner. You can change there the background of your wiki, change the colors of the buttons, links and header, add a favicon and change your wordmark. It's also possible to choose a standard theme.

Home page
Your home page is one of the most important pages on your wiki. You can tell something of your subject and the wiki, introduce some nice pages and categories, add a poll, show the latest blog posts, add some photos and videos and much more.

Making a nice home page design cost time, but it's an option to make a standard home page, that won't cost much time.

Navigation bar
It's also possible to change the navigation bar on your wiki. You can add the best pages to the bar or add important categories. Click on the "Contribute" button on the right top. You can find this button on every page on your wiki. Choose "Edit Wiki Navigation" to change the bar.

Articles
There are many ways to customize your articles. If a page looks nice, more people will read them. You can use photos and videos, headers, infoboxes, other templates and much more.

Features
If you want to enable features you go to the page "Special:WikiFeatures" on your wiki. You can enable there not standard features on your wiki like polls, blogs, message walls, the new forum, chat, achievements and article comments. It's also possible to show all pages in a category with the photos and you can enable top 10 lists.

Coding
On "MediaWiki:Wikia.css" you can add your special codes to change things on your wiki. From pictures in the buttons to change the icon of the edit button. It's also possible to customize the chat. If you want to customize the chat you go to the page "MediaWiki:Chat.css". Don't forget to import this page to "MediaWiki:Wikia.css". There are many pages to insert your codes, but these are the pages people use the most time.

Tips

 * Customize your community message. Go to the page "MediaWiki:Community-corner"
 * Customize the welcome message of the wiki
 * Customize the welcome message of the chat on your wiki
 * Use headers on pages
 * Add infoboxes for the basic information on pages
 * make something special on your wiki like news or polls
 * Make a logo for your wiki
 * Customize your user page
 * If you use headers and want to remove the content box, add the following code on the top of the page:



If you have questions about customizing your wiki or want help with something please go to my message wall to ask me about it. You can also ask staff, ask an admin on this wiki, go to the forum or ask in the chat.