To customize the look of your site there are several things to consider:

• Do you want to change the default look for your site and all the wikis created on it?
• Do you want the organizers of the wikis on your site to be able to change the theme of their wikis?
• Do you want organizers to be able to change the colors of their wiki’s theme?

Changing the Default Theme for Your Site

The default theme for your Private Label site is Tatami. Anytime someone creates a new wiki on your site, that wiki will use the Tatami theme. You can control the look of new wikis on your site by changing to a different pre-made or custom theme. To change the default theme for your site:

1. Go to “Site Administration” and then the “Settings” tab.
2. Click on “Site Look & Feel.”
3. There, you’ll see your site-wide theme. Click on “Change Theme” to select a different default theme for your site.
4. On your Themes page, you can apply a custom theme or one of our pre-made themes. Once you click “Apply,” this theme will become your site’s new default theme.

The Theme: Site-Wide or Individual Wikis

As a Private Label administrator, you have the ability to control the branding of your site and wikis. As a business, you might want each wiki to use the same theme, creating a unified look for your site. As an administrator of your school’s site, you might decide to open all themes up to your educators, allowing them to personalize their classroom wikis. To change your preferences for the site-wide theme:

1. Go to “Site Administration” and then the “Settings” tab.
2. Click on “Site Look & Feel.”
3. There, you’ll see the option “Use Site-Wide Theme.” If you would like every wiki to look the same, choose this option. If you would instead like organizers to choose their wiki’s theme, deselect this option.
4. Click “Save” to apply this change.

Your Colors: Site-Wide or Individual Wikis

You can also determine whether you want to restrict color selection to the site administrator or open it up to wiki organizers. To set your preferences for this option:

1. Go to “Site Administration” and then the “Settings” tab.
2. Click on “Site Look & Feel.”
3. You will see the option “Use Site-Wide Colors.” If you would like everyone to use the site’s colors, choose this option. If you would like organizers to choose the colors of their own wiki, deselect this option.
4. Save your preference.

Western Sydney Institute’s site is a great example of how a site can have a unified look while giving wiki organizers the ability to personalize their wikis. They have a branded site-wide theme for their institute but allow organizers to select their wiki colors. You can get a sense of how this works by checking out their home page, Business Services’ wiki and their Information Technology wiki.

Want to learn more? Visit this post for more resources on setting up the look of your site.

The Basics of Customizing Your Theme

As these customizations involve changing your HTML and CSS, let’s begin with a quick introduction to creating a custom theme. To edit your theme:

1. Go to your wiki, “Manage Wiki” and then “Look and Feel.”
2. Click on the option to “change or make a new theme.”
3. Scroll to the bottom of that page. In the “Make a New Theme” section, give your new theme a name and select one of the pre-made themes to start from. Click “Edit” to be taken into the HTML and CSS code that you will be changing.
4. Make the desired changes to your theme, preview the changes, and save your theme. To use the theme for the wiki, return to the Themes page under “Look and Feel,” go to the theme, and click Apply.

Removing the page, discussion, history, or notify me tab on your wiki

By making some quick changes to your theme, you can hide the Page, Discussion, History, or Notify Me tab at the top of your wiki. You might do this as an educator who wants to hide the history tab from students or as an organizer who would like to make the wiki even simpler for your community by removing all the tabs. To do this you can edit your theme and change the CSS for the <$WikiPageMenuEntries$> theme component:

1. The top section of the theme’s code is CSS, or code which formats the HTML components in your theme. The CSS will be in the head of the theme between the <style type=”text/css”> and </style> tags. This is the section where we’ll be changing the code for this customization.
2. To remove the discussion tab from your page, paste the following CSS on a new line in the section between the two <style> tags:
   .WikiPageMenuEntries #discussion { display: none; }
3. To remove the history tab, you can instead add in this code:
   .WikiPageMenuEntries #history { display: none; }
4. To remove the notify me tab, add the following CSS:
   .WikiPageMenuEntries #notify { display: none; }
5. Finally, if you would like to remove the page tab, you can paste in this CSS:
   .WikiPageMenuEntries #page { display: none; }
6. Once you have removed the components from the theme, preview your changes, save your theme and apply the theme to your wiki.

Hiding options in the Actions menu

You can also change the options your users see in your wiki’s sidebar. If you are a teacher who wants to prevent students from creating a new page on your wiki, you could hide the “New Page” link from them. If you are a non-profit, you might want to hide the “Manage Wiki” link from the visitors to your community site. To do this, you will need to edit your theme. To change your Actions menu:

1. Edit your theme and go to the bottom half of the theme. Look for the <$WikiActions$> component in your theme. This will be in the body of the theme between the <body> and </body> tags.
2. Replace <$WikiActions$> with the following code:

   <!-- <$WikiActions$> -->
<ul style="font-size: 120%;" class="WikiActions WikiElement">
<WikiIsEditor><li><a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/page"><img width="16" height="16" alt="" src="/i/icon_16_page_add.gif"/></a>
<a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/page">New Page</a></li></WikiIsEditor>
<WikiIsNotSpaceMember><li><a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/join"><img width="16" height="16" alt="" src="/i/icon_16_user_add.gif"/></a>
<a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/join">Join this Wiki</a></li></WikiIsNotSpaceMember>
<li><a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/changes"><img width="16" height="16" alt="" src="/i/icon_16_date.gif"/></a>
<a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/changes">Recent Changes</a></li>
<li><a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/about"><img width="16" height="16" alt="" src="/i/icon_16_gear.gif"/></a>
<a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/about">Manage Wiki</a></li>
<WikiIsSuperUser><li><a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/admin/dashboard"><img width="16" height="16" alt="" src="/i/icon_16_bricks.gif"/></a>
<a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/admin/dashboard">Site Administration</a></li></WikiIsSuperUser>
</ul>

   The <$WikiActions$> code hides the different components in the Actions menu of your sidebar. This replacement code makes those different options explicit so you can edit them individually.

3. Once you have pasted this code into your theme, you can customize it and specify which users can see the links on your wiki.

   For instance, if you only want members of your wiki to see the Manage Wiki link, you can add the conditional tag <WikiIsSpaceMember> and </WikiIsSpaceMember> around the Manage Wiki section. In this case,

   <li><a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/about"><img width="16" height="16" alt="" src="/i/icon_16_gear.gif"/></a>
<a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/about">Manage Wiki</a></li>

   gets changed to:

   <WikiIsSpaceMember><li><a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/about"><img width="16" height="16" alt="" src="/i/icon_16_gear.gif"/></a>
<a href="<$WikiSpaceUrl$>/space/about">Manage Wiki</a></li></WikiIsSpaceMember>

4. Some of our more popular conditional tags are:
   <WikiIsLoggedIn></WikiIsLoggedIn>: This applies to someone who is logged in to their account.
   <WikiIsSpaceMember></WikiIsSpaceMember>: This applies to a user that is logged in and is a member of your wiki.
   <WikiIsSpaceOrganizer></WikiIsSpaceOrganizer>: This applies to a user that is logged in and is an organizer of the wiki.

   You can find more conditional tags at http://www.wikispaces.com/Themes#toc31.

5. Once you have changed your theme, you can preview it, and save your changes. Choose the custom theme for your wiki to see the changes.

Place your wiki name next to your logo

This is for those individuals who would like to add their logo and wiki name to the top of their wiki. When you add a logo, the wiki name is hidden. To add it back in:

1. Edit your custom theme and look for the line:
   <$WikiLogoOrSpaceName$>
2. Replace that theme component with:
   <table class="WikiLogoTable WikiElement">
<td><$WikiLogo$></td>
<td class="WikiLogoName">YOUR WIKI NAME</td>
</table>

   where “YOUR WIKI NAME” is the text you would like to appear next to your logo.

3. Preview your changes and save your theme.

Some resources for further customization

Here are several resources that you might find useful as you continue to customize your wiki.

http://www.wikispaces.com/Theme+Customizations
Find several other popular theme customizations, including how to change the favicon for your wiki or the size of your sidebar.

http://www.wikispaces.com/Themes
If you’re looking to brand your wiki for your company, organization, or community, this page will be a great resource for you. Our themes use HTML mixed with some pieces of Wikispaces functionality. You can find all of our theme components, conditional tags, modifiers, and text and data elements here.

http://sealwyf.wikispaces.com/Sandbox019
Sealwyf, one of our longest active members, has a lot of great tricks for customizing your wiki with CSS, HTML, and Javascript. You can learn to create two-column layouts on your pages, change the background color of a wiki page, add buttons to your navigation bar, and more. It’s a great resource to check out.

http://www.wikispacetutorials.com
Wikispace Tutorials is a new site created by the designer of the WarnerWolves wiki, Spencer Barfuss. He has created some tutorials for Wikispaces, including how to remove borders from a table, create boxes with rounded corners, and more.

Watch this tutorial to see how to make some basic changes:

Note: To make any of the following changes, you need to be logged in as an organizer of your wiki.

Choose a theme for your site

Wikispaces offers a variety of pre-made themes to choose from. You can choose between placing the navigation bar on the right or left, having a banner at the top of your page, or even choosing a spiral notebook look for your wiki. Or you can fully customize your theme by editing your HTML and CSS. We encourage you to check out our different themes and find one that is right for you. To choose a theme:

1. Go to your wiki and then to “Manage Wiki.”
2. Click on “Look and Feel.”
3. Under “Theme,” click on the link “Change or make a new theme.”
4. On that next page, you can choose from one of our pre-made themes or, using HTML and CSS, fully customize and brand your wiki. Click “Apply” to set the theme you’d like for your wiki.

Set the colors for your theme

Once you have chosen the theme for your wiki, you can take a moment and personalize it by setting the colors of your wiki.

1. Go to “Manage Wiki” and then “Look and Feel.”
2. Under the “Colors” section of this page, you can set the colors for your text and different sections of the page.
3. Save your color selections.

Change the name of your wiki

By default, the name at the top of your wiki is the same as your wiki’s web address. If you would like to change the name at the top of your page:

1. Go to “Manage Wiki.”
2. Click on “Wiki Info.”
3. When you change the wiki name, this will not change the web address of your wiki. You can do this by changing the domain name on this page.

Change the logo for your wiki

Changing the logo on your wiki is a simple way to brand your wiki and give it a personal touch. To add your logo to the wiki:

1. Click “Manage Wiki” and go to “Look and Feel.”
2. In the “Logo” section in the page, click the “Browse” button.
3. Browse your hard drive for the image you want to use. The image you upload will appear at its actual size. If you’d like to change the size of your logo, use an image editor on your computer prior to uploading the logo to your wiki.
4. Click “Save” and your logo will appear at the top of your page.

Customize the navigation of your wiki

By editing the navigation bar on your wiki, you can set the structure of your wiki. This will help people navigate around your wiki and visit the pages you want them to access. By default, all new pages on your wiki are placed in your navigation bar. If you would like to customize which links appear there:

1. Click on the “edit navigation” link on the side of your page.
2. You will be editing your “space.menu” page, the page which contains all the content of the navigation bar.
3. You’ll see an “Include Page List” widget on that page. This is what automatically lists new wiki pages in alphabetical order in the navigation bar. Delete this widget.
4. List the page names or other text you would like in your sidebar.
5. Highlight each page name and link it to its appropriate page by clicking on the “Insert Link” tool in the toolbar.
6. Save the page.

Further resources:

If you know HTML and CSS, here are some advanced customizations for your wiki.
If you’re an administrator of a Private Label site, learn to set up site-wide customization preferences.

To get started, you might want to familiarize yourself with the basics of customizing a wiki. Once you’ve done that, we encourage you to check out these other resources:

See what others have done with the Wikispaces theming system.
Read about the different pre-made themes available on Wikispaces.
Check out some advanced customization options for your wikis.
Set site-wide customization preferences for your Private Label site.

Wikispaces Private Label is the fastest and easiest way to provide wikis for your entire school, school district, University, company, non-profit, department, or division. Along with our easy-to-use wikis come powerful features for integration and management. We provide Single Sign-On so that you can connect your Wikispaces Private Label site to your LDAP or Active Directory server, Moodle site, or any other authentication system so that your users can log in with their existing accounts. We provide a full API so you can do deep integration with existing content and user management systems. And we provide a high availability infrastructure and outstanding service so that you never have to worry about the reliability of your wikis.

Since May 2008 our Private Label Premium customers have gotten all of these advanced features. We have heard loud and clear that when we provide features that make Wikispaces Private Label easier to manage and easier to use, our customers are much more successful. And we are all about making our customers successful.

We’re excited to announce that going forward we will have a single Private Label plan that includes all of our advanced features including Single Sign-On and our full API. And on top of that, Wikispaces Private Label now includes unlimited storage (with a small disclaimer to prevent abuse).

Wikispaces Private Label Pricing is now as follows:

Unlimited User Pricing

K-12 Schools: $2,000 per year
K-12 School Districts: $4,000 per year
Universities: $6,000 per year

Per User Pricing

$1,000 per year per 100 users

See our pricing page for more details.

As always, feel free to email us with any questions or comments.

To register for the event, go to:
http://wikispacesintro0910-4.eventbrite.com/.


Feel free to invite colleagues or others interested in beginning a wiki. The more, the merrier.

Western Sydney Institute (WSI) is a member of Australia’s Technical and Further Education institutes – the largest network for vocational training in Australia. WSI has been using Wikispaces Private Label since the beginning of 2008 and has hundreds of wikis and thousands of members on their site. Beth Hobbs, Kerrie Street, and several of their educators will speak about their Private Label site and how they are using it to enhance collaborative learning in their on-site and distance learning courses.

To join us for the event, you can register at:

http://wikispacesprivatelabel0910-6.eventbrite.com

We hope to see you there.

As always, we keep track of maintenance happenings and problems with the service at an off-site status page: http://status.wikispaces.com/

We’ll post updates there while our work is underway.

With the support of organizations like HorizonT3000, UNICEF, Inveneo, the University of Notre Dame and Wikispaces, BOSCO overcame initial logistical problems and got their organization operating on the ground. To start, they trained a small group to use collaborative technology. BOSCO’s Kevin Bailey describes their training process as throwing the traditional ICT curriculum out the window. “The first thing we do is get them on email, then we let them navigate our simple Intranet site which connects all BOSCO sites to a high speed internal network, useful for posting photos, blogs, and other educational content. After these groups gain competence navigating the web, we point them in the direction of our BOSCO Wikispace so that they can begin collaborating immediately.” According to Kevin, “Collaboration between previously isolated communities can help them reconcile with each other, share information, and articulate local solutions to community problems.” Because Wikispaces was so easy to use, even kids who had never seen a computer before were able to get on their wiki and share their stories.

BOSCO is now in 20 different locations and 8 Internally Displaced Persons camps in Northern Uganda. And the group they initially trained is training others. Residents in the region are posting their stories and are beginning to use the wiki to articulate solutions for their problems. These solutions include proposals for a local farming initiative, an orphan’s group, and a small music festival.

Tom Loughran, the Vice President of BOSCO and a professor at Notre Dame, is very pleased with his choice to use Wikispaces. He had used Wikispaces in his college courses, seen his students jump into it without any training, and recognized its flexibility for his work in Uganda. The service offered by Wikispaces was also an important factor. “The support and encouragement BOSCO has received from Wikispaces has been a big boost for us during these very early days of our pilot efforts.”

BOSCO is growing as more people in the Ugandan villages are trained to use the technology and more people in the global community hear their stories. We encourage you to visit their website and see their wikis yourself. We’ve provided a set of links below to get you started.

Visit BOSCO’s Wikispaces Private Label site
Read stories by a Northern Ugandan
Learn about their cultural preservation music festival
Check out their proposal for a local farming cooperative