Manual:Skinning/Vector

How to create a skin FooBar based on the default skin Vector (any name other than FooBar will do of course) in MediaWiki 1.17

copy vector

 * copy directory ./skins/vector to ./skins/foobar
 * copy ./skins/Vector.php to ./skins/FooBar.php
 * copy ./skins/Vector.deps.php to ./skins/FooBar.deps.php
 * in ./skins/FooBar.php, change:
 * everywhere SkinVector into SkinFooBar</tt>
 * everywhere VectorTemplate</tt> into FooBarTemplate</tt>
 * $skinname = 'vector', $stylename = 'vector'</tt> into $skinname = 'foobar', $stylename = 'foobar'</tt>
 * 'skins.vector' into 'skins.foobar'
 * leave other 'vector' occurrences intact, unless you're going to add all vector-related system messages...
 * register your skin's module:
 * in FooBar.php's global scope (for example, by adding the following code to FooBar.php, after the initial  tag, but before any other PHP code (i.e. outside of any function definitions)):
 * you must also add this line to resources/resources.php

colors
The color scheme used in vector is primarily maintained in a bunch of images in ./skins/foobar/images</tt> driven by ./skins/foobar/screen.css</tt>
 * border.png</tt>: color of borders of the contents area
 * page-base.png</tt>: background of page apart from contents
 * page-fade.png</tt>: color fade at top of page

change behavior when not logged in
To change the site's layout/view when not logged in: <?php if ( $this->data['loggedin'] ) { ?> /* code to be used only when logged in */ <?php } ?>