On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:27:04 +0300, Mihai Bocsaru mihai.bocsaru@ikonosnewmedia.com wrote:

Is there a way to customize a WikiPedia wiki installation to follow the look and fell of the main Web site?

First point, which may seem pedantic, but is an important distinction, is that the software is called "MediaWiki", not "Wikipedia" (which is a particular site running that software). [It gets worse: see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Names for more confusing distinctions]

I have noticed that in case I will edit:

• MonoBook.php;
• commonPrint.css;

As its name suggests, "commonPrint.css" is the stylesheet used when somebody *prints* a page from the wiki; the styling used when the page is *displayed* is mainly contained, I think, in "monobook.css" (or, more generally, <name of skin>.css, where the skin could have your own name).

I will be able to see some changes on the internal pages, not also the Main page.

That sounds a lot like a caching issue - various levels of cache, on the server and in your browser, will end up with out-of-date versions of the page. To display the latest version you will need to do a "forced reload" in your browser - normally, this requires holding down Shift, Control, or some similar key, while clicking the "refresh" or "reload" button, or pressing the keys for a normal reload. I believe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bypass_your_cache has correct instructions for several browsers.

If you have changed deeper code within the software, you may also need to bypass some of the *internal* caching features, by adding "?action=purge" to the address [or "&action=purge" if the URL already has a "?" in]. AFAIK, this shouldn't be necessary if you are only changing the skin.

Are there any resources that I could read, or do you have any suggestions/comments on how could I reach the above-mentioned goals?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Skins and the file "docs/skins.doc" within your installation of the software may or may not have up to date descriptions of the skinning system, and may or may not help you find appropriate tips...

You might also want to look through the archives of this and related mailing lists - put "site:mail.wikimedia.org" with some search terms into Google.

Happy hacking! :)