Forum:Monobook fans: read this

Going back in time with monobook

If you've just started editing here in the past few months, you may not be aware there's an entirely different way to look at the wiki. If you go under Special:Preferences, you'll see there on the first page an option to change the skin to a thing called "Monobook". Monobook was the skin with which many long-term editors fell in love with wiki editing, and it's basically similar to the skin seen today at Wikipedia. That is, there's no background, and all the navigation is done from a column on the left margin. There was a big uproar about a year ago when Wikia decided to switch all its wikis over to what's called the "Wikia" skin.

Well, we hadn't really ever done any kind of heavy manipulation of the basic Monobook skin when Wikia came along. So the facelift that's been going on for a few months really only changed things in Wikia. Some of those changes weren't so good for those looking at the site in Monobook. One of the biggest problems was that our site logo in that skin had entirely disappeared! Also, the new stub, protection and wikipediainfo tags that look great in Wikia were colliding with things in Monobook.

Well, we're now gradually starting to retrofit the site with some kind of Monobook awareness. So today a new logo was put in for Monobook, and the tags are now not colliding with things over there. However, Monobook simply doesn't display stub templates as there's simply no room for them. I doubt that this means that we're going to be going to full customisation of the Monobook skin any time soon. There are still going to be things that kinda work better in Wikia. But if you're an editor that prefers Monobook, and you're seeing something that really annoys you, add a message below describing the problem, and I'll see what I can do to help. 23:38:04 Sat 11 Jun 2011
 * Well, I have found a small problem: the "Recent Changes" link on the Monobook's left column has been replaced with "Wiki Activity". Now I don't have a shortcut back to the RC; I have to manually go back through my page history to return to the RC. -- Bold  Clone  00:04, June 12, 2011 (UTC)
 * That's a change made by Wikia themselves.  It's long been gone from Monobook, to the point that it can't be considered an actual "feature" of the skin anymore.   I'm talking about fixing things in Monobook that are a result of changes we've made locally to the Wikia skin.  The easiest workaround for your problem is simply to create a bookmark to Special:RecentChanges and place that bookmark in a prominent, easy-to-find place on your browser.  16:00:18 Sun 12 Jun 2011
 * Admins can change the Monobook sidebar by editing MediaWiki:Sidebar. Anyway, I restored the link to RC there. The link to WikiActivity wasn't actually put there by Wikia, but by Mini-mitch. By mistake, I assume, since WikiActivity doesn't actually work with Monobook. Ausir(talk) 10:57, July 9, 2011 (UTC)
 * Heh, serves me right for not actually clicking on the links. I just saw Wiki Activity there and thought it, y'know, did something.  Thanks for catching that, Ausir.  Subsequently found out that half the links on that monobook sidebar didn't actually do anything, so it's now been revamped to include only working links.  And sorry for that slight bit of misinformation there, BC.  Recent Changes is gone from wikia, not monobook.  I briefly got the "Wiki Activity" button in the wikia skin linking to Special:RecentChanges, but then that was deemed a TOU violation, and it was returned to the Wiki Activity page.


 * Long story short: you can have Recent Changes in monobook, and Wiki Activity in wikia, but not the other way around.06:18:24 Tue 12 Jul 2011
 * You can always add Recent changes to your bottom toolbar in the Wikia skin too, via the 'customize" button. Ausir(talk) 14:35, July 12, 2011 (UTC)