6 MediaWiki includes four core skins:
8 * Vector: The default skin. Introduced in the 1.16 release (2010), it has been
9 set as the default in MediaWiki since the 1.17 release (2011), replacing
11 * Monobook: Named after the black-and-white photo of a book in the page
12 background. Introduced in the 2004 release of 1.3, it had been the
13 default skin since then, before being replaced by Vector.
14 * Modern: An attractive blue/grey theme with sidebar and top bar. Derived from
16 * Cologne Blue: A lightweight skin with minimal formatting. The oldest of the
17 currently bundled skins, largely rewritten in 2012 while keeping its
22 Several legacy skins were removed in the 1.22 release, as the burden of
23 supporting them became too heavy to bear. Those were:
25 * Standard (a.k.a. Classic): The old default skin written by Lee Crocker during
26 the phase 3 rewrite, in 2002.
27 * Nostalgia: A skin which looks like Wikipedia did in its first year (2001).
28 This skin is now used for the old Wikipedia snapshot at
29 https://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/
30 * Chick: A lightweight Monobook skin with no sidebar. The sidebar links were
31 given at the bottom of the page instead.
32 * Simple: A lightweight skin with a simple white-background sidebar and no top
34 * MySkin: Essentially Monobook without the CSS. The idea was that it could be
35 customised using user-specific or site-wide CSS (see below).
40 It is possible to customise the site CSS and JavaScript without editing any
41 server-side source files. This is done by editing some pages on the wiki:
43 * `MediaWiki:Common.css` for skin-independent CSS
44 * `MediaWiki:Common.js` for skin-independent JavaScript
45 * `MediaWiki:Vector.css`, `MediaWiki:Monobook.css`, etc. for skin-dependent CSS
46 * `MediaWiki:Vector.js`, `MediaWiki:Monobook.js`, etc. for skin-dependent
49 These can also be customised on a per-user basis, by editing
50 `User:<name>/vector.css`, `User:<name>/vector.js`, etc.
55 Several custom skins are available as of 2019. List of all skins is available at
56 [MediaWiki.org](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Category:All_skins).
58 Installing a skin requires adding its files in a subdirectory under `skins/` and
59 adding an appropriate `wfLoadSkin` line to `LocalSettings.php`, similarly to
60 how extensions are installed.
62 You can then make that skin the default by adding:
65 $wgDefaultSkin = '<name>';
69 Or disable it entirely by removing the `wfLoadSkin` line. (User settings will
70 not be lost if it's reenabled later.)
72 See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skinning for more information on
75 ### Legacy custom skins
77 Until MediaWiki 1.25 it used to be possible to just put a `<name>.php` file in
78 MediaWiki's `skins/` directory, which would be loaded and expected to contain
79 the `Skin<name>` class. This way has always been discouraged because of its
80 limitations (inability to add localisation messages, ResourceLoader modules,
81 etc.) and awkwardness in managing such skins. For information on migrating skins
82 using this old method, see
83 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skin_autodiscovery.