Wikipedia:Skin

Shortcuts: WP:SKIN WP:MONOBOOK

Skins, in Wikipedia terminology, are different layouts of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as a website powered by MediaWiki, is a skinnable website, which means the presentational style of the pages can be changed, provided you have a Wikipedia account. Without an account, you can only use the default skin, Vector. However, this page features screenshots of all the different skins along with links allowing to load the Wikipedia's Main Page using them. There are a total of 9 alternative skins, mostly kept for historical reasons. They lack many features as they are not actively developed.

Screenshots

How to change the skin

Once you have an account, go to your preferences and go to the "Skin" section of the Appearance tab. With the default skin, this page can be accessed at any time from the "my preferences" link placed on the top right corner. Choose your skin and then click Save. Then, all pages will be loaded with the new selected skin. For a complete description, see Help:Preferences#Skin.

However, any user may change the skin of a page for them only, but only one each time, by typing ?useskin=skinname to the end of the URL. (i.e: ?useskin=vector)

Customisation (advanced users)

Main page: Wikipedia:Customisation

Users can customise the way default skins^[1] appear using specific subpages of their user page. These subpages are viewable by anybody but can only be edited by the user that the subpage belongs to and by administrators. Modifying these wiki pages only affects his or her owner.

Customisation may involve one or both of

1. Cascading Style Sheets or "CSS" (found in the user's ".css" files)
2. JavaScript (found in the user's ".js" files)

There are two ways to apply customisation:

1. Using Special:MyPage/common.css and Special:MyPage/common.js links, which point to a location which applies to all of a user's skins.
2. Using Special:MyPage/skin.css and Special:MyPage/skin.js links which to point to a location which applies only to a user's current skin. For example, if you're using the default Vector skin, Special:MyPage/skin.css takes you to Special:MyPage/vector.css, and if you switch skins to Monobook, its contents will no longer apply.

You can use both the common and the skin-specific files; if you do this, the common file is loaded before the skin-specific one.

Note: these links are redirects to your own customisation subpages; Special:MyPage is an alias for your userpage (try it and see).

If you have edited your personal skin files then you need to wait at least 30 seconds for the servers to update, then bypass your browser cache to see the change.

See also How to import Monobook settings into Vector. For the list of all CSS and JavaScript files involved in the rendering process, see Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes.

CSS

Main page: Wikipedia:Customisation#Personal CSS

The CSS files can be used for all manner of customisation for those fluent in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). A common use which is relatively straightforward is hiding a system message or template you don't wish to see; see Wikipedia:Customisation#Hiding_specific_messages.

JavaScript

Main page: Wikipedia:JavaScript

On Wikipedia, JavaScript can be used to add new features such as add find/replace textboxes or give advanced rollback options. There are scripts to customise everything, from default font style to custom buttons.

Many script pages can be imported and used. Different scripts can also be used in conjunction with each other to accomplish several tasks at once. Some scripts are available as "Gadgets", which means they can be installed by simply ticking a box in the "Gadgets" tab of Special:Preferences.

In order to add pre-existing scripts to your JavaScript page, add {{subst:js|name of script}} to the file. More detailed instructions can be found at the Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Tutorial.

Raw skin usage data

• Original discussion
• Original statistics

caption

skin	how many
0	4824
1	169
2	317
amethyst	29
chick	2926
cologneblue	8158
modern	16571
monobook	34049
myskin	1789
nostalgia	1910
on	1
simple	1580
standard	4473
vector	220406
Total	269787

Notes

1. ^ Default Wikipedia skins are defined in several CSS and JavaScript files. Some of them are only editable by people having write access to the Wikimedia Foundation servers and some are simple wiki pages belonging to the MediaWiki namespace. These wiki pages can be seen directly on Wikipedia, but to prevent vandals from breaking the whole website appearance, they are fully protected, hence making them only editable by administrators (however, any changes can be suggested on their talk page). See Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes

See also

• Help:Cascading style sheets
• meta:Customization:Explaining skins
• mw:Manual:Skins/From Meta
• mw:Manual:Gallery of user styles