The default installation of MediaWiki is extremely functional but not too easy on the eyes. There are some nice examples of skins online. Particularly good looking examples are the Hula and Beagle projects. The Beagle guys are really nice and released their skin, which I used as an example for this website’s previous incarnation. There were a couple of bugs on the Beagle skin that I fixed and simplified for this site.

In order to customize the skin you will need to walk through the code. Here’s a brief description of the files.

  • Beagle.php: Specifies where everything fits together. If you want to move the navigation bar, eliminate the searchbar or enable Google Analytics this is the place to do it.

  • main.css: Specifies everything from text style, size and color to the look of the navigation bar.

  • logo.png: The Dogully tree logo up at the top of your screen

  • title_bg.png: The orange gradient that sits behind the logo. Specified in main.css