Wikipedia:Customisation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Customisation allows users to tailor Wikipedia to suit their own preferred style. It mostly allows for changes in the way pages are displayed, but there are also many functional tweaks that some editors find useful when editing articles.
The preferences link, available on the menu of a logged-in user, allows you to change most of the options that you will require. This is fully explained at Help:Preferences on Meta-Wiki.
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[edit] User name and signatures
Your username is displayed in the edit histories of all the articles you contribute to and is linked to your user and talk pages. You choose your name when you first register on Wikipedia and it is usual to stay with the same name throughout your time on the project, though it is possible to request a change of username.
Signatures are customised using the preferences under "User profile" where they are referred to as your "Nickname". You should always sign your posts on talk pages and many users choose to customise the way their signature appears.
You can use any wikitext as your nickname. If "Raw signatures (without automatic link)" is unchecked, the software enters "[[User:Name|" in front of, and "]]" after your nickname wikitext.
[edit] Adding a link to your talk page
Perhaps the most common signature choice is to add a link to your talk page. To do so, add "[[User:Name|Name]] | [[User talk:Name|Talk]]" as your signature. Be sure to check "Raw signature", as this is necessary for the software to recognize the markup. The result will look like this: Name | Talk.
The separator is optional, but some way of visually distinguishing your nickname from any additional links is advisable.
Note: If you post your signature to your own talk page, the word "Talk" in the above example will be black rather than an active link; that's to avoid a link on a page that points to its own page.
[edit] More complicated options
When you check the 'raw signatures' box, you specify that full wikitext is to be used between the two dashes and the timestamp. This gives more versatility, and in cases like above the code is less cryptic.
You can also include font tags, images, and templates. Note that changes in the images and templates are retroactive, which on one hand may be confusing, but on the other hand, to rectify annoying signatures, may be convenient. To avoid retroactivity, use a new image or template name. Do not create a signature template in the article or template namespace: instead use a subpage of your own userpage such as sig, and link it with "{{User:Name/sig}}". Using a template like this, however, is strongly discouraged, as it increases the transclusion overhead for talk pages.
Instead of transcluding a signature directly from your user space, you can use the subst: prefix, which defines template substitution. For example, you can replace "{{User:Name/sig}}" with "{{subst:User:Name/sig}}" and reduce server strain. Read more about the pros and cons of template substitution at Wikipedia:Template substitution.
- See also: Wikipedia:How to fix your signature
[edit] Skins
- Main article: m:Customization:Explaining skins
A MediaWiki skin is a style of page display. There are differences in the HTML code the system produces (but probably not in the page body), and also different style sheets (CSS) are used.
The default is the MonoBook skin. There are a variety of user-made skins available for you to browse through.
The special page My Preferences offers a preview of the various skins for the Main page. This is not exactly interesting for typical articles, therefore here's a list of previews for this page:
| monobook (default) | cologneblue | myskin | chick |
| standard (classic) | nostalgia | simple | dummy |
To test other pages replace title=Wikipedia:Customisation in the URL. For legacy Web browsers not supporting CSS classic is apparently a good choice. For modern browsers the default monobook offers a wide range of user customisations.
The dummy cell replaces the recently deleted useskin=amethyst by action=render.
Here's a table linking the raw CSS for various skins, see also Help:Mediawiki_CSS for the Common.css. As expected Myskin.css is empty, roll your own:
| talk monobook | talk cologneblue | talk myskin | talk chick |
| talk standard | talk nostalgia | talk simple | talk common |
[edit] Editing
There are many user-made tweaks that allow for easier and quicker editing. These often only work on specific skins, so you must be using the one stated. Incomplete list of pre-made customisations:
| Name | Version | Description | Skins | Author |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit Top | 0.1.2 | Allows you to edit just the first section of an article. | MonoBook | pile0nades |
| Navigation popups | ? | When you hover over links, popups appear which let you quickly access many editing features and preview articles and images. | Any | Lupin |
