I don't want to create a polemic for the sake of stirring up trouble, but I'm a little confused over a few things, and I thought I'd share my thoughts about them.
Recently, Meighan posted in a forum that the reason wikia is making technical updates that break css coding wikia-wide without detailed information on it being given, is that wikia does not support css and we should "use the tools in place". OK - so to customise our wikis' skins, we should only be using Theme Designer, and no css. So far so good.
So let's see what can be done with the theme designer. There's some pre-designed themes available, but we don't wanna use those, I mean in wikia's best practices for their spotlights they demand a customised skin. So what can we do in terms of customisation? As far as I can tell, we can set a wordmark, background, and the colour for buttons, links, the header bar, and background colour behind the content. And that's it. Don't set your background colour too dark, because you can't change the text colour. No different colours for visited links either, none of that. A little limited, ok, but, if that's all that Wikia supports, then we shouldn't stray outside of that.
Except - have a quick peruse of the latest staff blog being splashed across the mainpage of community central. Customise your wiki, it cries! Look at these fine examples, that you must strive to emulate! 4 out of the 6 example wiki use extensive css code to achieve their look, and would be impossible to create using only the theme designer. Yet the staff blog is touting them as examples of what great stuff can be achieved when customising your skin?
So two things really - what's Wikia's position on css? And can you get your signals straight? Secondly - thoughts on the theme designer anyone. If this type of customisation is all we're allowed, can we have a few more options on it? My first two suggestions, as detailed above, would be options to change text colour and visited link colour. Anymore suggestions?