Customizing MediaWiki for beginners

This is a nontechnical (lay) introduction on how to customize your MediaWiki installation. It assumes that you already have MediaWiki installed, and have a basic understanding of how to use HTML and CSS.

changing the background color
To change the background color of the MediaWiki interface outside of the page content and tabs, add the following CSS to the MediaWiki page  (you can access this page by typing " " into your MediaWiki search box).

body {background: red} /* bottom and left of page, up to half of the logo */ /* logo and top of the page */
 * 1) mw-page-base {background: red}

This will change the background color outside of the tabs, search, and page content to red (or whatever your favorite color is).