Retired Techie
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Media Wiki Logo Change
Published on July 3, 2022 at 6:20 pm by LEWIntroduction
In this post I will be changing the Media Wiki logo located in the upper left corner of the Media Wiki page. As with this previous post, I will be doing this on a shared hosting site.
While there are multiple skins that can be used to help personalize your Media Wiki, changing the logo is probably one of the most impactful things you can do.
As far as what to use for a logo, that is up to you. Design your own, or download some clip art and modify it. This is your wiki, so do what makes you happy.
Prerequisites
A couple of things here. First I have, in the past, tried using the installer to upload a logo, but have not had any success doing this. So I am going to be going through the manual method of doing it.
The logo in the upper right should be 135px x 135 px for best results. It can be a JPEG, GIF, or PNG. Supposedly it can be SVG (I have not had any success with SVG).
This is what the basic Media Wiki should look like after install.
Note that after making some changes (like the logo) you may have to clear your browser cache to get the changes to show up initially.
Copy LocalSettings.php
First thing you will want to do is get a copy of your LocalSettings.php file. If you installed as per this post, then you should have one in your downloads folder. Move it someplace safe.
If you do not have a local copy, then log into your hosting account and download a copy form your wiki site. Your hosting account should have a file browser or FTP program available on your control panel to do this with. Note that we will be using the same method to upload the file once we have modified it.
Alternatively, depending on how much of a command line ninja you are, you could edit it directly on you hosting server using SSH with a program like Putty.
Enable Uploads
Open the LocalSettings.php file and look fo the line starting with this.
$wgEnableUploads =
If you enabled uploads during install, it should be set to true. If not it will be set to false.
Regardless, make sure it is set to true. Then upload your the file back to your hosting server.
Now log into your wiki. You should notice a new link on the lower left hand sidebar called “upload file”.
Upload Your Logo
Go ahead and click on the Upload File link. Use the browse button to find your logo. Add a summery comment if you want. Chose to watch the file or not. Then click the Upload File button at the bottom of the page.
Note you can put the logo in a variety of places in your wiki, however uploading it in this manner makes sure you have direct access to it from your wiki without using the control panel, FTP, SSH, or other tools.
Another Local Settings.php Update
Click on your image in File History, it should become the only thing in the browser window. Now copy the content of your browser address bar, and paste it someplace you will have access too (text editor, sticky note, whatever).
Now open your Local copy of LocalSettings.php, and look for the line starting with “$wgLogos”.
Depending on what version of Media Wiki you are using, there could different things here. But what should be common is a path to the current logo (chang-your-logo.svg).
You are going to want to find the “resources” part of the path. You are going to change this with the url of your logo, starting with “images”. You do not want to change the entire path as there is most likely a media wiki variable at the front. Possibly “$wgResourceBasePath”.
If there are multiple occurrences, change them all. Then upload your LocalSettings.php again.
Testing the New Logo
Now if you go back to the main page, you should see your logo in the upper left corner. If not you may need to clear your browser settings.
If it still does not show up, recheck the paths in LocalSettings.php, and re upload if necessary.
Conclusion
Changing the logo on your Media Wiki site was not to hard. And it is probably one of the best things to do that gives your wiki that personal touch.
Next time around we will look at changing the theme of the wiki.
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