Theme Builder Plugin

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  • Created by Unknown User (amoran), last modified on Feb 05, 2010

MeriaWiki theme config

This theme configuration is based on the popular open source wiki, MediaWiki - the same wiki used for Wikipedia.

Disclaimer

This theme config is by no means complete, the links in the left sidebar are not yet connected to their respective pieces of functionality. It was created because we get lots of requests asking if Confluence can be made to look more like MediaWiki (especially for organisations migrating from MediaWiki to Confluence which is a very common occurrence).

Prerequisites

You'll need to install the following plugins before you can use this theme config:

  • Confluence 2.1 or above
  • Theme Builder 2.0.x or above
  • Content Formatting Macros plugin (latest version)
  • Page Information Plugin (latest version)

Before you start

This theme config has an image file used for the background. Before uploading the theme config to your site you'll have to check through the XML file for occurrences of %%RESOURCEPATH%% and replace those with URL's to your desired graphics using a plain text editor such as Notepad or SciTE (don't use things like Write or Word as they will make a horrible mess of the XML).

Getting the resource path

We recommend attaching the background image (headbg.jpg) to the home page of the space where the theme is being used and then right-click the links shown on the attachments screen to get the link to the graphic.

The URL that you copied from the attachments screen will probably be similar to this:

http://mysite.com:8080/wiki/download/attachments/65539/headbg.jpg

For best results we strongly recommend using a relative URL - ie. remove the server bit from the start to leave something like this:

/wiki/download/attachments/65539/headbg.jpg

Once that's done, remove the file from the end to get something like this:

/wiki/download/attachments/65539

And then replace %%RESOURCEPATH%% with whatever you are left with.

It's a bit of a messy process - hopefully a future version of Confluence will provide a central place to store files making this process far easier to automate.

Installation Instructions

  1. Create a new space, and select the Theme Builder theme.
  2. Donwload headbg.jpg and then attach that file to the space Home page.
  3. Get the URL to your headbg.jpg file and edit the theme config XML file so it has the correct resource path as discussed above.
  4. Go in to Theme Configuration (Edit > Administration > Theme Configuration)
  5. Choose File > Upload Settings... (you may have to click this twice to get the upload panel to appear)
  6. Upload mediawiki_ThemeSettings.xml
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7 Comments

  1. Unknown User (dudester)

    In the installation instruction #4, I cannot find the link Theme Configuration. All I see are the following after mousing over Edit > Administration from my newly created space's home page:

    1. Templates
    2. Global Templates
    3. Choose Layout
    4. Color Scheme
    5. Advanced
    6. Space Administration
    7. Site Administration

    Am I missing something here? I am using Theme Builder 3.0 Beta 19.

    Thanks,

    Doods Perea

  2. Unknown User (shadman)

    So this is my 2nd attampt at a comment because the time outs seems to be short - and I lost my comment completely. As I said the 1st time, I think this questions needs to be answered so others can benefit. Is this still a valid example / demo? As the previous commentor pointed out, #4 simply does not appear to exist.

    I did find something more though. I went to : Edit -> Administration -> Choose Layout. At the top is linked text that says: "theme administration". That takes you to the Administration section, "Builder Administration". Thre you have 5 tabs: backup, Manage Spaces, Default Layouts, Global Permissions, and Dashboard. Of the 5 only "Backup" allows for a file upload and neither of the 2 are labeled, "Upload Settings". I tried both "Restore Backups" and "Import 2.0 backup file" - neither appear to work.

    So, I'm at the same point. Are there updated instructions? Is this an invalid example?

    1. Unknown User (gfraser)

      This page is pretty out of date - it was done back in the days of Builder 2.x.

      However, we've recently finished a Builder 3.x version of the mediawiki layout which is loads better. Logged in users should be able to

      Unknown macro: {menulink}

      see it here

      . I've just not had time to tutorial-ise it in our [Tutorials] section yet, however we've recently taken on a team of theme developers so this should happen within the next month or so. I'll try and get a Builder 3.x theme config uploaded so people can just install it and then customise to their needs.

      1. Unknown User (shadman)

        Thanks for the reply, Guy. I do understand. But I'm still pretty clueless on how to actually use this tool. It does looks like it has a lot of capabilities. Will keep attempting to create something.

        1. Unknown User (gfraser)

          Well, we're working on several new things that should help:

          • Screen casts showing how to do various things - proving to be somewhat time consuming and we're struggling to find a good cross-platform delivery method (Camtasia Studio seems the best tool so far)
          • Training services - we're doing our first trial run of remote training (probably using Yugma rather than Webex) in the next few weeks
          • Simplified theme customisation services - we already offer bespoke theme development but realised that most jobs fall in to one of three categories (currently imaginatively named Basic, Intermediate and Advanced, pending better names) which will allow us to reduce sales and admin workload to reduce prices and get more done each month

          We're also putting a load of effort in to overall usability - one of our new theme developers described the initial learning curve (especially the wiki macros, but for other people it's the CSS) as being "like getting dressed in the dark"

          For people that are very familiar with wiki notation and CSS, the plugin rocks, however not everyone knows both aspects in detail which can make it daunting at first. Once a theme layout is created, it's trivial to maintain and tweak as you don't need that initial learning curve, hence us wanting to provide more cost effective customisation services.

  3. Unknown User (twaldher)

    Any new news?

    I REALLY need to get a wiki up and running, but, my users want a mediawiki like interface.

    Running Theme Builder 3.1.4, and confluence 2.8, it appears there is no simple upload feature as noted before. But even some help at getting code to add the tabs would be usefull.

    EDIT: Also, the page should at least be updated to reflect the fact that the mediawiki theme is incompatible with 3.x.x and up.

    1. Unknown User (denisev1)

      I totally agree. I'm running Theme Builder 3.2.1 and Confluence 2.8. I only really need the code behind the tabs to use as I can't figure out how to add that functionality correctly to the title panel of my layout.