Whether you’re looking into wikis as a first grade teacher or a Fortune 500 CEO, chances are you want an attractive site to make collaboration easier. We give you the tools to create an engaging environment.

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.