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Help Desk > Tutorials > Personal and Group Web Accounts > Wiki |
 Printable Version
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There are many things you can do to customize your wiki. This tutorial will explain how to make some changes to the look and feel of your wiki.
Your wiki comes with the name PmWiki. This name appears on the title bar of the web browser when you view any page in the wiki.
You can personalize your wiki by changing this name to anything you wish. (Hint: Avoid punctuation, especially apostrophes.) You do this by editing the config.php file in your wiki/local folder. Connect to your webpub account to download a copy of config.php , open the file in a text editor such as UltraEdit32, and replace the PmWiki text in the line
## $WikiTitle is the name that appears in the browser's title bar.
$WikiTitle = 'PmWiki';
with a wiki name of your choice.
## $WikiTitle is the name that appears in the browser's title bar.
$WikiTitle = 'Professor John Smith';
Save the config.php file and ftp a copy back to wiki/local, overwriting the existing config.php file. The change in the example, above, will cause the words Professor John Smith to appear on the title bar of each page in the wiki.
The PmWiki logo appears on each page in the wiki. This logo is also a link back to the home page of your wiki. As such, you may want to replace the logo with something more appropriate.
To replace the logo, first create a suitable logo image with a program such as Fireworks or Photoshop and ftp it to a location on your web account. It does not need to be in the wiki folder on your web account. A suitable file will usually be a gif or jpeg file, in a size that would be appropriate for the wiki. The default PmWiki logo is 66 x 32 pixels. A logo of a similar size will fit best with the design of the wiki.
Once the logo is in your web account, edit the wiki/local/config.php file by finding the lines
## $PageLogoUrl is the URL for a logo image -- you can change this
## to your own logo if you wish.
# $PageLogoUrl = "$PubDirUrl/skins/pmwiki/pmwiki-32.gif";
Remove the # from the front of the last line and change the text $PubDirUrl/skins/pmwiki/pmwiki-32.gif to the full URL to your logo image
## $PageLogoUrl is the URL for a logo image -- you can change this
## to your own logo if you wish.
$PageLogoUrl = "http://webpub.allegheny.edu/employee/j/jsmith/jsmith.gif";
Save the changes and copy config.php back to the wiki/local folder on webpub to display your new logo on your wiki.
A number of designs have been created for use with PmWiki. These designs, called skins, can be used to radically change the look and feel of the wiki. Several skins have been installed on webpub, ready for you to use. You can also search the web for others, put them in your wiki/pub/skins folder, and begin using them.
You change the skin of your wiki by editing your config.php file. Look for the lines
## See PmWiki.Skins and Cookbook.Skins.
## Other skins available on webpub: gemini, evolver, jh, jhmp, simple
## To add your own skins, put them in your wiki/pub/skins folder
# $Skin = 'pmwiki';
and remove the # from the last line. You can replace the word pmwiki in the last line with the name of any skin already installed. At present, skins installed on webpub are: gemini, evolver, jh, jhmp, and simple.
## See PmWiki.Skins and Cookbook.Skins.
## Other skins available on webpub: gemini, evolver, jh, jhmp, simple
## To add your own skins, put them in your wiki/pub/skins folder
$Skin = 'evolver';
The code above causes the evolver skin to be used, which makes significant changes to the look of the wiki. Note that this skin does not use the logo, but rather creates it's own logo based on your wiki name.
You can find many more skins for PmWiki on the web. Put the skin folder in your wiki/pub/skins folder on webpub and then edit config.php to call the new skin.
The site SideBar can be used as a navigation bar for your wiki. The default links in the SideBar contain many links to the PmWiki documentation. You will probably want to remove some of these and add other links to pages in your wiki and to other sites of interest to you.
Edit the SideBar by clicking the Edit SideBar link at the bottom of the SideBar.
This will open an Edit Box similar to any other page Edit Box. Create links to other pages on your wiki using the double bracket syntax described in Linking to Wiki Pages. Create links to web pages that are not part of your wiki by clicking the External Link button. This will insert a partial link in the form [[http:// | link text]] .
Edit this text to include the full URL of the website you want to link to. Replace link text with the text of your link.
Click Save and return to any page on your site to see your new SideBar in action.
