Help:Layout

If you're a semi-experienced Wiki editor, you may be wondering, "why doesn't look anything like Wikipedia?"

This is because the company that hosts does not give  administration any choice in the default "skin" (also known as "style" or "theme") presented to new or anonymous users. We would dearly love to have Wikipedia's default skin, "Vector," or to set our site default to Vector's predecessor, "Monobook," but Wikia doesn't provide those options.

Monobook is still available, however, even if we can't make it the default. If you'd like to have a more professional look, just follow these simple instructions:

Part 1
Log-in to. This will require you to create an account. Logging in can be done from the login button in the top-right corner of any page, or from Special:Userlogin.

Part 2
Follow these instructions to change your skin on the preferences page:


 * 1: Hover over the button in the top right, which will either contain your user avatar or a generic silhouette icon. Do not click as this will take you to your user page, instead wait for the drop-down menu to appear.
 * 2: In the drop-down menu, click on "My preferences".


 * 3: Scroll to the "Appearance" section and select "MonoBook" in the "Layout" menu. (If your option under "Ads" is set to "Show all ads", you may also want to change this to "Don't show all ads".)
 * 4: Click "Save".


 * 5: Enjoy the increased content space and simplified navigation that Wikia previously hid from you.

Comparison
What do you gain by doing this? In these screenshots (taken in Google Chrome 41.0.2267.0dev-m, with no settings changed between shots, in a 1024x768 viewport), compare the visible content in the Wikia skin, which has unnecessarily large spacing, overrides your font choice, and takes up large amounts of space with ads and widgets, compared to the MonoBook:


 * This article uses material from the "Help:Skin" article on Wookieepedia at Wikia and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.