Logo
- See also: Logo (disambiguation).
A logo on a wiki site is a symbol, image, or other design; graphical or textual, created by a wiki to visually identify itself. In WikiIndex articles of wiki sites, logos of said wiki sites should ideally be uploaded, appropriately categorised, and then wikilinked within its article infobox. Alternatively, wiki logos may be hotlinked directly to their external wiki. The advantage of hotlinking is that if the logo is updated on the external wiki, it will be not be necessary to re-upload the new updated logo here on WikiIndex. However, a disadvantage is that if the wiki site has problems with connectivity, or goes offline and becomes inaccessible; its wiki logo will no longer display here on WikiIndex. A further disadvantage is that hotlinking logos directly to their external site places a greater load on the WikiIndex server, to 'fetch' the logo from its host wiki site, and then 'forward' the logo onto the users own browser. This 'fetch and forward' action takes place every time its wiki article page is loaded (whereas local logos which are uploaded to WikiIndex are forwarded only once, then stored locally in the cache of the users machine, unless a forced 'refresh' or purge of the page is manually requested by the user).
MediaWiki
On wiki sites powered by MediaWiki, when using the popular MediaWiki skins such as Vector and MonoBook usually place the logo in the top left corner of every page on the wiki site; clicking on this logo takes one to its main page. The wiki logo is a helpful reminder of what wiki one is using, since many wikis using the same wiki engine look very similar, even identical; and one could otherwise easily search or edit the wrong wiki site by accident. These logos are usually about 135x135 pixels; although it is useful to create a larger logo in case one wishes to also use it as the logo for say, a Facebook page for the wiki site. See also Manual:$wgLogo.
Other wiki engines
Other wiki engines (when using standard skins) will have the same visual 'similarity' between different wiki sites as detailed above for MediaWiki. However, logo placement on the page, and default logo sizes will vary from MediaWiki, but be unique to their own specific wiki engine.