MediaWiki talk:AdminSkin

Uhh... light blue and gunky brown? - SanityOrMadness 04:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm just glad I made the PNG well enough that I don't have to worry while they experiment... --Rosicrucian^Talk 04:15, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not digging it either. Maybe we could do up a theme of our own if none of the options available really work. It wouldn't be that hard. --Suki Brits 05:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Toughpigs has voiced willingness to help cook up a custom Monaco theme if we want. Could even have a background image for the top bar akin to Wookieepedia or Stargate. Personally I'm less concerned with the color scheme and more hoping we can nail down a good layout for the sidebar menus soon.--Rosicrucian^Talk 05:47, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

And I should mention that he thinks he may be able to find a way to put the random character thumbnail in there somewhere. Not sure how far he got on that, though.--Rosicrucian^Talk 05:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

If we do that, can we do it completely differently? Having it force down the searchbox while I'm trying to click on it was really really annoying, and having "search" printed on it is misleading anyway. --ItsWalky 17:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, if you want, I can definitely help with a custom Monaco skin... Or, more accurately, I can ask Scott to help with it, cause he's better at it than I am.

There's instructions on this page: Monaco Skin Customization. It's all done through adding bits of code to MediaWiki:Monaco.css. Changing the colors is really easy -- you just find the right bit of .css code, and swap in the color that you want. (I use this page to find color codes.)

There's two tricky bits. To change the color of the Wikia logo and the drop-down menus in the top header, you need to upload those as .png files. There are some sample logos and menu headers here, or you can make your own. The other tricky bit is making the background strip behind the logo.

Here are some examples of customized Monaco skins, if you want some ideas: Wookieepedia, Marvel Database, DC Database, Stargate Wiki, FFXIclopedia, Marvel Movies, and Speed Racer.

If you want help with the customization, just let me know what you'd like it to look like. Or just go ahead and play with it.

I asked Christian about the random character thumbnail -- he's the widget designer. I'll let you know what I hear from him. Meanwhile, there's another widget that you might find interesting -- the Image Slideshow.

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It's a widget that appears in the sidebar that displays images. You can set it to show the most recent images, random images from the site, or images that pull from a list that you can create. You can set it to run as a slideshow, scroll through it, or pause it.

I haven't used that widget yet, so there's a few things that I don't know. It may actually be possible to use that (or modify it) to be the random character thumbnail. If we can set it as the default for all visitors on this wiki, default it to pull from the list that you create, and set it to send people to the article instead of the image page when you click on it... then that's exactly what you guys want. I'll check to see how it all works. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 17:21, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I can remove the "SEARCH" from those random character images easily enough, since it's all one PSD file anyway. I was mostly follwoing Wookieepedia's lead there. If we're on the subject of customizing it... well, what's the max width? I could see it taking up maybe half again as much vertical space as well for a little more visibility, and instead of "SEARCH" have, say, "GO!" to the right. --M Sipher 18:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Any progress on tweaking the color scheme or skin? I for one don't mind the blue so much, but maybe we could replace the sandy color with red (white text, probably). Maybe tweak the blues so they're shades of the same blue in the TFA logo and thus they don't clash.--Rosicrucian^Talk 16:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

And after toying around with some of the default schemes, I didn't like how the Autobot symbol looked on them so I altered it slightly. The PNG should now be boffo with just about any dang scheme.--Rosicrucian^Talk 16:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

So...

So, no moves towards a better colour scheme? - SanityOrMadness 01:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

After looking at the TFA packaging, I've made this:

Now, the Monaco customization page says if we were to implement this, it would be the following added to the CSS:

#background_strip {
   background-color: white;
}

#accent_graphic1 {
   background-image: url(http://images.wikia.com/transformers/images/6/6b/TFA_style_ziptone_bg.gif);
   height: 155px;
   width: 300px;
}

If we were to use that as the top strip, and somehow get rid of the sandy colors and the brown, I'd say we'd be doing pretty well.--Rosicrucian^Talk 16:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Strip's going now, remember... - SanityOrMadness 16:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, the wide masthead is going. The design document states the background strip will still be available for further customization. Personally I'd love it if we emulated TFA's packaging a little more. It's got a pretty clean look, and it's based around a white background. Perfect for our needs in that the admins don't want things looking too busy.--Rosicrucian^Talk 17:19, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

• puts the code in his wikia css file*

Huh, that doesn't look half bad. it's hard to see what it'd look like on our site though. Um... *noodlesin photoshop*

there! Something like this. -Derik 17:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah keen, glad to see it works out well. That's almost exactly what I was aiming for.--Rosicrucian^Talk 18:04, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi -- I don't want to butt in, just to clarify if you need it. The background strip will still be there, but most of it will be hidden behind the edit bar and the article area. You can see how it works on Communitytest -- that logo is transparent, and then the white behind it is the background strip.

There's some css trickery that'll allow you to move the article space back down, to reveal the background strip. But that means you lose some article space, so it's up to you guys how you want to handle it. Let me know if you want to know the details -- I don't know how to do it myself, but I could find out. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 18:07, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thank you Danny, we have actually ported that test over to our wikia global.css files to see it on communitytest. -Derik 18:16, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, this one's designed to be mostly white space with some accent color. Very much intended to look good in both Monaco-1 and Monaco-2.--Rosicrucian^Talk 18:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Playing with the color scheme.

Toyed with the customization suggestions a bit more, and so far this seems to work quite well:

#wikia_header {
   background-color: darkblue;
   border-color:     white;
}

#wikia_logo {
   background-image: url(http://images.wikia.com/help/images//b/b2/Whitelogo.png);
}
* html #wikia_logo {
   background-image: none;
   filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='http://images.wikia.com/help/images//b/b2/Whitelogo.png', sizingMethod='crop');
}

.headerMenuButton dt, .headerMenuButton dd {
   background-image: url(http://images.wikia.com/help/images//d/dc/Whiteheaderbutton.png);
}
* html .headerMenuButton dt, * html .headerMenuButton dd  {
   background-image: none;
   filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='http://images.wikia.com/help/images//d/dc/Whiteheaderbutton.png', sizingMethod='crop');
}

.headerMenu, .headerMenu a {
   background-color: white;
   color:            black;
   -moz-opacity:     .95;
   opacity:          .95;
}

.widget dt {
   background-color: darkblue;
}

#search_box {
   background-color: darkblue;
}

#page_bar {
   background-color: red;
}

#page_controls a {
   color:            White !important;
}

#link_box {
   background-color: #efefff;
}

Thoughts? This is of course in keeping with the background strip above.--Rosicrucian^Talk 19:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

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