Rit wrote:

Hi, Im new to all this. Im considering using wikimedia to create an interactive web-art-gallery site.

I have to warn you, MediaWiki is probably not a good fit for a graphics-intensive or image-oriented site. In particular the way images and linked and handled is likely unpleasant for what you might need; though you might be able to set up extensions or hack the behavior.

Ive been looking around but cant seem to find any really well designed/ cool looking sites that use wikimedia - ie the interface always looks like wikipedia. Doe this mean I dont have control over the design of the site? Are there any links/ examples of sites that use wikimedia/ interactivity and have creative interfaces?

Ultimately most wikis are going to look like a wiki, as they have similar general requirements. There's a bunch of text in the middle, and a few menu items around the edges somewhere.

Of course you can change the look to greater or lesser degrees; you can override or replace the entire style sheet, and can override or replace the main HTML layout.

A couple off the top of my head which at least don't scream "MonoBook skin!" to the casual glance:

* http://developer.mozilla.org/ (fits in well with other mozilla sites) * http://mono-project.com/ (not publicly editable) * http://wiki.ehow.com/ (ugly IMHO, but different ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)