XWiki Skins

Contents

XWiki Skins

What is a XWiki Skin used for?

  A XWiki Skin is used to customize the interface of a XWiki Enterprise instance.

What are the components that define a XWiki Skin?

  A XWiki Skin is composed of:

  All these components are stored on the server that hosts the XWiki Enterprise instance, inside the webapps/xwiki folder.

How to change the Skin

A. The default XWiki Skins

  A XWiki Enterprise instance contains by default a list of Skins like: 

  • the albatross Skin
  • the toucan Skin
  • the colibri Skin and
  • other skins ( the full list of XWiki Skins that are included in your XWiki Enterprise instance can be found on the server filesystem, inside the webapps/xwiki/skins folder )

B. The usage level for a XWiki Skin

A Skin can be used at different levels:

  • for the entire XWiki Enterprise instance ( if there is no Skin set other levels, the pages will use the global instance Skin )
  • for a space inside the XWiki Enterprise instance ( it has a higher priority then the instance level Skin )
  • for a specific user (it has a higher priority then the space level Skin) and
  • for other custom levels that can be created by modifying the Velocity templates from inside the Skin ( for example, a Skin can be set for a specific page, for a specific group of users and so on )

 

C. Changing the Skin

To change the Skin, the user must have administrating rights. In the case that you have these rights, make sure that you switch to the Advanced mode in your profile, to enable the advanced options on the top main menu.

1. How to preview a Skin  applied on a page

    To check how a page looks on changing the Skin, you can add a parameter named skin to the page URL. For example, to preview the wiki main page on using the toucan Skin, use the following URL: http://localhost:8080/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome/?skin=toucan . If you want to preview the page on using a Skin document named MySpace.MySkinDoc, use the following URL: http://localhost:8080/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome/?skin=MySpace.MySkinDoc .

2. Changing the Skin at instance level

    Each XWiki Enterprise instance contains a document ( Skin Document ) that stores the Skin for the instance. To find out which document is used to store the current Skin, the user has to follow these steps:

  1. go into the Administration interface
  2. go into the Presentation section
  3. check the Skin property that stores the full name of the document

1.png

To change the current Skin, follow these steps:

      

  1. click on the CUSTOMIZE button right beside the Skin property, to open the document
  2. click on the Edit this skin button to edit the document, or go to the top menu and select EDIT -> OBJECTS
  3. change the Skin property ( the property is set to colibri by default ) with the name of another Skin ( for example, albatross )
  4. save the document

2.png

    You can now open any page inside the wiki instance and you will notice the layout difference.

3. Changing the Skin at space level

    A XWiki space can use it's own Skin. For example, if you want to set as Skin for the space Main as being the albatross Skin, follow these steps:

  1. go on any page inside the Main space ( for example, go on the home page: http://localhost:8080/xwiki/bin/view/Main/ )
  2. from the top right menu, choose Administration -> Administer space: Main to open the Administration interface for the space Main
  3. go into the Presentation section
  4. follow the steps 4, 5, 6 and 7 from inside the section C-2

3.png

    You can now open any page inside the Main space and you will notice the layout difference.

  

More about XWiki Skins

In order to find more about XWiki Skins, check the Skins Tutorial from inside the Developer Guide and the Skins Tutorial from inside the User Guide 

    

Tags:
Created by VincentMassol on 2006/12/12 10:03
Last modified by Gilles Sérasset on 2010/03/08 10:57
This wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons license
2.2.1.27354