MediaWiki background colour + URL rewriting

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by MrHarper, Dec 26, 2009.

  1. #1
    Hey. I have had a couple of problems getting MediaWiki to do exactly what I want, so I came here seeking help. ANY help is massively appreciated, I'm tired, sweaty and annoyed and if I can get this done I can finally start writing articles. Here we go then, 3 questions... let's start with number..

    1. Okay, here is an example of what I want to acheive:

    http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Forum

    Everything standard colours except for the article area which is a light blue.
    In other words, I want one of the pages of my wiki to be blue.

    I have downloaded and installed the PageCSS extension from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageCSS. The extension itself works fine.. the only problem is my lack of knowledge in CSS. I edited this into the page I want to be blue:

    <css>
    #content
    {
    background: yellow;
    }
    </css>

    And the article area gets a yellow background, which is exactly what I wanted (don't worry, I'm not going to use a yellow background, it was just a test!). But the 'tabs' area (I don't know the real name) stays the same colour. By tabs I mean the discussion, edit, history etc buttons on the top.

    As you can already tell (if I knew I wouldn't ask this question), other than changing borders and background colours I really don't know much about CSS.

    So how do I change the tabs? I edit #content for the stuff below, so what do I edit for the tabs area?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------

    2. What is the colour of the article area on the previously mentioned page http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Forum ? It's a light blue but I've tried #lightblue and it's darker. What do I put after 'background:' to get that colour?

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    3. I'm having a little trouble getting the Short URL thing to work. At the moment I'm on a hostgator account so obviously I don't have root access, so I had to follow this guide: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual...no_root_access

    Don't worry though, if/when I get a server of my own I will revert back to the crappy long URLs and then use the root access method, but it shouldn't affect search engines as after I use the root access method the URLs will be the same as they would be the non-root access method, argh this is confusing to explain... alright, anyway I did all the stuff and it works except for on certain pages - when creating / editing a page or looking at a pages history or logging in, the URL becomes: blahblah.com/w/index.php?blahblah again - I've installed mediawiki into /w/ and the virtual URL should be /wiki/.

    But then if I click on Main Page from a page with a /w/index.php?blahblah URL, it takes me to /wiki/Main_Page. I find it really wierd that it's only screwing up on certain pages. And annoying.

    I understand that the solution depends on what I did wrong. Well, I actually did everything like it says at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual...no_root_access. The situation was exactly the same as the example. Same paths, so I just copied and pasted. Has some nut edited the page and made the code wrong, or is this something to do with HostGator? Or am I just an idiot and missing something obvious?

    One thing that is different, now that I think about it, is where the /w/ directory is. It's not /public_html/w/, it's actually /public_html/domainname/w/, because the wiki is on an addon domain. I doubt that affects anything though. Let me know if it does!

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    Well I've rambled on and probably explained everything terribly but I hope somebody here understands what I mean and can answer one, two, or all three of my questions. I'm now even more tired, sweaty and annoyed (particularly the sweaty bit) and I'm off to get a coke and relax. I'll return soon, please HELP if you know the answer! Thankyou!

    Anthony. :)
     
    MrHarper, Dec 26, 2009 IP
  2. MrHarper

    MrHarper Guest

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    #2
    I really need help with this, it's holding me back. Can anybody help?
     
    MrHarper, Dec 27, 2009 IP