[Mediawiki-l] Extensions and methods available to insert pageelements to all new articles consistently

[William van Zwanenberg]

>>As far as I have correctly understood, you'll have to create some templates.
 
That being the case,  a number of questions arise:
 
1. How do I create a template? Does the MediaWiki website include a tutorial of some sort?  I assume to create one involves some PHP and XHTML programming which whilst I am capable of this, I don't want to have to do unless unavoidable.
 
2. Can I assign specific templates for each of my category pages? For example, I want to create in my wiki a category called "biographies" so this would inevitably result in artcile pages such as: "Biography:Joe_Bloggs" and "Biography:Josephine_Bloggs".
    I'd want both artciles pages to have the same format - that is for them to be laid out exactly the same way and for them to include a floating box with a portrait photography and some basic biographical data such as DoB, name, place opf birth, gender - that sort
    of thing.
 
   My question then is how could i creat just such a template so that all biography pages appeared the same?
 
3. The use of templates implies the need to create corresponding forms that editors (wiki users creating content) then use to input data and which then ensure that the right data appears in the right place on the resultant created artcile page. If this is so, has is it achieved?  Having just installed version 1.15.1 of the wiki software running under a XAMPP architecture on a Windows sandbox, I've found that by default the same basic form appears when one trys to creat *any* page for any category or any namespace. Cleraly there needs to be different forms for different templates and each template (and associated form) need to correspond with the desired look for the category of page.
 
4. How, in practice does wikipedia do this?  In order to acheive a consistent look, presumably different templates are used for each class of article. Are extensions used to create these template and (presumably their corresponding forms).
 
I'm really worried that what I'm trying to do will involve a lot of work on my part - particularly in terms of programming - and I really don't want to have to engage in this unless absolutely necessary.
 
I really like the look at feel of the monobook skin and it's various page elements. If possible, I'd like to use these in my own wiki. Does anyone know if they're publicly available - i,.e., are the templates available to download and can i use them myself or or they copyrighted.
 
I apologise for baraging you with question but I really want to know how this all works ...