I am a completely newcomer to Mediawiki and have an enquiry regarding its installation and configuration. I hope therefore that subscribers of this mailing list will make allowances for me if I have inadvertently mailed the wrong list were my enquiry would be better directed at another. If this is the case, I apologise and would ask that users direct me to a more appropriate list that is more suitable. I write because I am seeking some guidance and assistance concerning the issue of Namespaces. However, before I explain the nature of my enquiry in detail it's necessary to first explain where I am at with regards to installing the software. At the moment, I have the software installed on a Sandbox server that is running of a XAMPP architecture. Once the wiki has been built and tested however and I have finalised registering a domain, the wiki will be installed on a Linux based server utilising a LAMP architecture (or if not Linux, Solaris as no firm decision has yet been made). The current windows based sandbox installation is as follows: - PHP 5.30 installed - MySQL 5.1.37 installed - DB user: root@localhost - PHP's memory limit is 128M - Installation directory c:\xampp\htdocs\eurowiki - Script URI path: /eurowiki The questions I have concerning namespaces are as follows. I apologise if these questions seem somewhat elementary but as I said, I am a complete newcomer to the software and I have only just started to get my head round how it all works and have only just begun to read all the information contained within the help section of the main mediwiki website: 1. In addition to the default namespaces created during initial installation, can I create namespaces of my own and if so, how do I do so? I would like to create potentially another 5 unique namespaces specific to my wiki installation. What I need to know therefore is (a) if this is possible and if so (b) how to do so. 2. When creating a new article (wiki page), how do I assign it to a specific namespace? Is this achieved through nothing more complicated than giving it a name in accordance with the names associated with one's existing namespaces eg: 'Help: Editing an Article' - to create an article regarding how to edit a given page within the "help" namespace? 3. How can I generate a list of all articles with links to corresponding article page contained within a given namespace and display this in a "special" wiki page (article)? 4. Is it possible to assign different and specific templates for all articles within a given namespace? For example, for purely aesthetic reasons (and because I think it will make orientation of the wiki that much easier for users), I'd like to change some of the graphics and background of all article pages contained within the "help" and "manual" namespaces. They might have say a different logo and a blue background. I wondered if this was possible without having to engage in a major PHP programming hack and if so, how. I'm a reasonably competent PHP programmer but I don't want to have to start making major changes to the course code unless absolutely necessary. 5. Does the software impose any restrictions upon creating one's own additional namespaces beyond those installed by default - e.g. naming conventions, number and type of characters, etc, etc? if so, what are these? In addition to answering these questions, I would be grateful if somebody could reply to this message by explaining in greater detail the process of editing articles within the "mediawiki" namespace so that I can go about changing the appearance of the master templates (and hence the look and feel of the wiki as a whole) and so that I can go about adding 3rd party extensions that will increase functionality. At the moment, if I attempt to create a new article (e.g.: MediaWiki:Common.css in order to alter the general appearance of the wiki), I get the following 403 page appear with the following wording: "Access Forbidden - you don't have permission to access the requested object" Please can somebody explain what is going on here as I obvious want to change start making changes. This same 403 appears regardless of whatever article I try to create where in the process I'm assigning it to a namespace. If when you do reply, you could bear in mind that although I am above averagely competent when it comes to IT issues, I am not a systems engineer and I'm not an experienced programmer (and I have very little idea how media wiki works) so I'd be really grateful if you replied in as simple a language as possible as explained everything in detail. This way I can learn from the experience. Thank you.