[Mediawiki-l] Change skin for all users

[Rindler, Andreas]

Hi,
we have been using the skin Cavendish on a MW 1.6.5 installation for a while. I would like to upgrade to 1.10.0 and get rid of Cavendish  but there is no version of the skin availabe for 1.10.0. (unless someone knows a version of the skin that works with 1.1.0.0 including Mediawiki:Common.js edit toolbar). Cavendish is the default skin for everyone. I want to change the default skin for all users to a new skin. I have tested this and I am getting some interesting results. 
 
1. I remove Cavendish.php and the cavendish folder under /skins
2. I add my new skin
3. I change $wgDefaultSkin to the new skin
 
All users who were on the default skin before get bumped to 'Classic' skin automatically and not to the new default skin. Any experienced user would just go and change their skin. But I have many users who will just think that the software broke and don't know what to do.
 
Does anyone know how to fix this gracefully?
 
 
Options I have looked at so far:
 
a) Exchange the skin files to the new skin but keep the old skin name.
 
b) Hack in the database on table user, field user_options. This is a blog, and I don't know yet how to 1) retrieve, change and save a blog object and 2) how to do this for a couple hundred users.
 
 
Any help is appreciated! We are planning to do a system upgrade this weekend.
 
Cheers,
Andi
 
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