Manual:Interface/Sidebar

Sidebar example

See also: Manual:Remove Tabs

MediaWiki:Sidebar allows a user to modify the navigation bar. The navigation bar provides links to the most important locations in the wiki and supplies site administrators with a place to add an important collection of links. For instance, most wikis will link to their community discussion page and some useful tool pages.

The Monobook and Vector skins place the navigation bar on the top-left (top-right for right-to-left languages) along with the search bar and toolbox, but the placement may be different in other skins. This sidebar is not shown to users of the Mobile site (i.e. the version of the site produced by Extension:MobileFrontend / Skin:MinervaNeue - use the MobileMenu hook for that).

Customize the sidebar

To customize the MediaWiki:Sidebar on a wiki, you need first to be logged in with a user that has the editinterface permission. For administrators this is enabled by default.

You can access MediaWiki:Sidebar by either:

• Going to http://yourdomain/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar&action=edit in your browser.
• Typing MediaWiki:Sidebar in search bar, and validating with Enter.
• From Special:AllMessages, searching for "side".

Here is example code added in MediaWiki:Sidebar for a sidebar:

* navigation
** mainpage|Accueil
** Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes
* new heading
** portal-url|Forums
** https://www.mediawiki.org|MediaWiki home

This example will result in the following sidebar:

Sidebar example

If you have to create a new page, you will be presented with the default content for the sidebar in the editor. In order to successfully create a MediaWiki:Sidebar page, you need to change the content before saving.

Splitting the navigation bar into new sections

The navigation bar can be split into sections, each with a new heading of its own. This is done by adding one asterisk.

The heading for each section is taken from the first-level list element ("navigation" and "new heading" in the example above). If this text corresponds to the name of an interface message (an existing page of that title in the MediaWiki namespace), then the text of that page is used as a label; otherwise, the header title is used as-is. Please note the {{int:}} magic word does not work since it is useless: MediaWiki automatically looks for a translation to display before to fallback to the default message.

In the example above, * navigation and * new heading are section headings.

Creating links in the sidebar

Links are created with 2 asterisks (called Second-level list elements). For example:

** _target|link text

_target

The link _target can be the name of an interface message (page in the MediaWiki namespace) or wiki page, or an external link. In either case, the link can be internal, interwiki, or external.

Do the following to determine the _target:

1. Get the _target text.
2. If there is an existing or default interface message with that name, use the content of that message instead of the _target text.
3. If the output from the previous step is a valid URL (beginning with http:// or other URL protocol), the link will point to that URL.
4. Otherwise, it will treat it as the link _target of a wikilink (linking to that page name or interwiki).
5. In case it would end up linking to '-', the whole entry is removed from the sidebar. (This is useful for removing an entry on all languages by changing the message holding the link).

Examples:

• "** portal-url|portal" - Uses the text of MediaWiki:Portal-url (which contains "Project:Community portal").
• "** https://www.mediawiki.org|MediaWiki home" - Links to https://www.mediawiki.org since this is a valid URL.
• "** Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes" - Links to Special:RecentChanges, since there is no interface message of that name and that is not a valid URL.
• "** w:Foo|Some interwiki page" - Links to w:Foo for the same reason.

link text

The link text can be the name of an interface message (page in the MediaWiki namespace) or plain text.

• If the link text is the name of an existing or default interface message, the content of that message will be used. MediaWiki will check for localized versions; for example, if the current language is fr (French) and the link text is the interface message "forum", it will check for "forum/fr" before using "forum".
• Otherwise, the link text is used as the _target as-is.
• Notice that the link text is not optional as in normal wiki links. If the link text is missing, the item is ignored.

Examples:

• ** Homepage|mainpage - Uses MediaWiki:Mainpage (which contains "MediaWiki").
• ** Special:Recentchanges|Recent changes - Uses "Recent changes", since there is no interface message of that name.

_target link w:Foo is the english version interwiki article. For another language version must be used language code before the _target article name. For example to polish version w:pl:Foo or shortly pl:Foo. But for the multilanguage wiki _target as this, is better use Special:MyLanguage. You can try for example link to Help:Links article.

Special:MyLanguage/Help:Links#Interlanguage_links | helplinks

String helplinks is translatable message from MediaWiki namespace, similary as portal above, but _target URL is result of the special page. Not generated from content of the translatable message as MediaWiki:portal-url. If the translated content of _target page exists, is directly opened. If not, is opened default language version of it.

Section order (elements)

Some skins allow customizing the order of some special elements, like the search bar, toolbox, and languages. That can be done by adding the special keywords SEARCH, TOOLBOX and LANGUAGES respectively, to MediaWiki:Sidebar using the heading syntax.

However, some skins like MonoBook no longer support defining the position of the search element, and the search element is placed right after the first section of the sidebar instead. In that case, to move the search element at the top, the workaround is to define an empty leading section. For example:

* empty section
* navigation
** mainpage|mainpage
** Special:Recentchanges|Recent changed
* new heading
** portal-url|portal
** https://www.mediawiki.org|MediaWiki home

Note that some skins may display the first section differently, or place some element between the first and the second section (if any).

Tooltips and Accesskey

A tooltip is a message which appears when a cursor is positioned over an icon, image, hyperlink, or other element in a graphical user interface.

If you add an item to the sidebar, it will have no "tooltip". But you can create a tooltip by doing the following:

• create a wiki page named "MediaWiki:Tooltip-n-<id of the item>"

• and put the tooltip in that page.

An access key or accesskey allows a computer user to immediately jump to a specific part of a web page via the keyboard.

Accesskeys can also be created by doing the following:

• create a wiki page named "MediaWiki:Accesskey-n-<id of the item>"
• and put the accesskey in that page.

Example:

• * Homepage|mainpage-description - Uses MediaWiki:Tooltip-n-mainpage-description and MediaWiki:Accesskey-n-mainpage-description.

Translations

You can translate the strings, which you use, by editing the according pages in the MediaWiki namespace.

Example: - The string, which will replace the item named "mainpage", is taken from MediaWiki:Mainpage. To set/change this text for users, who display your wiki in German, you can put the according text on the page MediaWiki:Mainpage/de.

That way you can easily translate these texts through the MediaWiki interface.

Please note that MediaWiki will by default use the content of the Sidebar page in that language, which corresponds to the default language of your wiki. So, if your wiki e.g. uses French as its default language, edit MediaWiki:Mainpage/fr in order to show a modified sidebar to all users, who have not changed their language setting and to all anonymous users.

For more advanced translation, see Help:Extension:Translate/Unstructured element translation .

Advanced customization

The sidebar can be fully customized by implementing JavaScript or CSS, or by editing the PHP files directly. Before using these methods, note that:

• JavaScript is fragile: it will not work for users with JavaScript disabled, and scripts frequently fail in different browsers or skins.

• Editing the PHP files can easily cause unexpected errors, and your changes will be lost in the next update unless you manually change the new files.

Remove the Sidebar and main logo at MediaWiki:Sidebar

To completely remove the sidebar and logo:

Blank the MediaWiki:Sidebar page and save.

Then add:

#column-content { margin: 0 0 1em 0; }
#content { margin: 0 0 0 0; }
#p-cactions { left: .1em; }

This moves the main text of your wiki to the left.

Completely remove the sidebar, tabs and search bar

See also: Manual:Remove Tabs

Deletes the logo, and the entire sidebar:

#p-logo, .generated-sidebar, #p-lang, #p-tb  { display:none; }

Deletes the search bar:

#p-search { display:none; }

Deletes the talk tab:

#ca-talk { display:none!important; }

Deletes the Page tab:

#ca-nstab-main { display:none!important; }

Force UI-messages to follow content

Some pages should sometimes follow the content language, especially for multilingual sites. This can be controlled with the setting $wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg . Each message overridden in this way must be explicitly given, for example to let the sidebar link to versions given by the content language for the main page and the portal page add the following to

LocalSettings.php

code

$wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg = [ 'mainpage', 'portal-url' ];

Add or remove toolbox sections

The toolbox appears on the left under MediaWiki:Sidebar in certain skins. On Vector 2022 it appears on the right of the screen (in LTR languages).

As of MediaWiki 1.43 you can append links to the toolbox using MediaWiki:Sidebar via MediaWiki:Sidebar.

* empty section
* navigation
* TOOLBOX
** portal-url|Forum

Adding toolbox items prior to 1.43 via JavaScript

The toolbox appears on the left under MediaWiki:Sidebar. The toolbox is a dynamic element requiring programmatic methods such as skin extensions, PHP (see skins/MonoBook.php and creating a new skin) or JavaScript.

The JavaScript solution uses User:{username}/common.js / MediaWiki:Common.js, available for MediaWiki 1.9+.

• Entire MediaWiki website: copy the script below into MediaWiki:Common.js
• One specific user: copy the script below into Special:MyPage/common.js (or the JS page for the user's current skin, such as Special:MyPage/monobook.js).

Now simply configure which link should appear in which section. You also can remove some links if you want to.

Code

function ModifySidebar( action, section, name, link ) {
	try {
		switch ( section ) {
			case 'languages':
				var _target = 'p-lang';
				break;
			case 'toolbox':
				var _target = 'p-tb';
				break;
			case 'navigation':
				var _target = 'p-navigation';
				break;
			default:
				var _target = 'p-' + section;
				break;
		}

		if ( action == 'add' ) {
			var node = document.getElementById( _target )
							   .getElementsByTagName( 'div' )[0]
							   .getElementsByTagName( 'ul' )[0];

			var aNode = document.createElement( 'a' );
			var liNode = document.createElement( 'li' );

			aNode.appendChild( document.createTextNode( name ) );
			aNode.setAttribute( 'href', link );
			liNode.appendChild( aNode );
			liNode.className = 'plainlinks';
			node.appendChild( liNode );
		}

		if ( action == 'remove' ) {
			var list = document.getElementById( _target )
							   .getElementsByTagName( 'div' )[0]
							   .getElementsByTagName( 'ul' )[0];

			var listelements = list.getElementsByTagName( 'li' );

			for ( var i = 0; i < listelements.length; i++ ) {
				if (
					listelements[i].getElementsByTagName( 'a' )[0].innerHTML == name ||
					listelements[i].getElementsByTagName( 'a' )[0].href == link
				)
				{
					list.removeChild( listelements[i] );
				}
			}
		}


	} catch( e ) {
		// let's just ignore what's happened
		return;
	}
}

function CustomizeModificationsOfSidebar() {
	// Adds [[Special:CategoryTree|Special:CategoryTree]] to toolbox
	ModifySidebar( 'add', 'toolbox', 'CategoryTree', 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CategoryTree' );
	// Removes [[Special:Upload|Special:Upload]] from toolbox
	ModifySidebar( 'remove', 'toolbox', 'Upload file', 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload' );
}

jQuery( CustomizeModificationsOfSidebar );

Usage

function CustomizeModificationsOfSidebar() - Has to be customized for adding or removing links in specific sections:

ModifySidebar( "action", "section", "name", "link" );

parameter	value
action	add to add a link; remove to remove a link
section	navigation, toolbox, languages but also any other existing customized section; the given link will be added to or removed from this section
name	contains the text of the link
link	contains the URL of the link

Restricting modifications to specific usergroups

If you want to restrict the modification of the links to a specific user group (e.g. bureaucrat), change:

jQuery( CustomizeModificationsOfSidebar );

to

if ( mw.config.get( 'wgUserGroups', [] ).indexOf( 'bureaucrat' ) !== -1 ) {
	jQuery( CustomizeModificationsOfSidebar );
}

For restricting the modifications to IPs instead of a specific user group, use

if ( mw.config.get( 'wgUserGroups', [] ).indexOf( 'user' ) === -1 ) {
	jQuery( CustomizeModificationsOfSidebar );
}

Add or remove toolbox sections (PHP)

You can add in your file LocalSettings.php the hook described on this page. With this, you can modify via MediaWiki:Sidebar the links in the toolbox panel (remove some links, change their name) and add custom links (e.g. add the "Recent changes" link there instead of the navigation panel).

Make expanding/collapsing sidebar for all users (Monobook skin only)

If you use the Monobook skin and don't want to miss the expandable menu bar from e.g. Vector skin, paste the following code into MediaWiki:Monobook.js of your wiki.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Code snippet to make your sidebar items expandable. 
// Use this code ONLY for the Monobook skin. 
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

$( document ).ready( function() {
	// Set the default expanded items by their headline
	var defaultExpandItems = ['Navigation', 'Orga'];
	// Set the basic-name for the cookies, which save the current state of expanding
	var expandCookieName = 'disdance_project_wiki_nav_expanded_';

var maxHeights = [];
	var expandeds = [];
	var labels = [];
	initNav();
});

function initNav() {
	$( '#p-logo' ).css({'position': 'relative', 'display': 'block'});
	$( '.generated-sidebar h5,#p-tb h5 ').each( function( i ) {
		var id = $( this ).parent().attr( 'id' );
		maxHeights[id] = $( this ).next( 'div' ).height();
		var str = $( this ).html();
		labels[id] = str;

if ( $.cookie( expandCookieName + id ) == 'false' ) {
			expandeds[id] = false;
			minimize( $( this ) );
		} else if ( $.cookie( expandCookieName + id ) == 'true' ) {
			expandeds[id] = true;
			maximize( $( this ) );
		} else if ( defaultExpandItems.indexOf( str ) == -1 ) {
			expandeds[id] = false;
			minimize( $( this ) );
		} else {
			expandeds[id] = true;
			maximize( $( this ) );
		}
		$( this ).css({'cursor': 'pointer'});
		$( this ).click( toggleNav );
	} );
}

function minimize( _target ) {
	var id = $( _target ).parent().attr( 'id' );
	// You can change the expires parameter to save the cookie longer/shorter than 7 days like in this code
	$.cookie( expandCookieName + id, 'false', { expires: 7} );
	var str = labels[id] + '  ►';
	$( _target ).next( 'div' ).animate({'height': '0px'});
	$( _target ).html( str );
}

function maximize( _target ) {
	var id = $( _target ).parent().attr( 'id' );
	// You can change the expires parameter to save the cookie longer/shorter than 7 days like in this code
	$.cookie( expandCookieName + id, 'true', { expires: 7} );
	var str = labels[id] + '  ▼';
	var newHeight = maxHeights[id];
	$( _target ).next( 'div' ).animate({'height': newHeight + 'px'});
	$( _target ).html( str );
}

function toggleNav( e ) {
	var id = $(e._target ).parent().attr( 'id' );
	expandeds[id] = !expandeds[id];
	if( expandeds[id] == true ) {
		maximize( e._target );
	} else {
		minimize( e._target );
	}
}

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Sidebar width in Monobook skin (CSS)

You can change the width of your sidebar by adding the following CSS rules to your MediaWiki:Monobook.css

note that this is an article, not a file. This changes the width to 15em, the actions position and portlet width should be an em or so less, so I've set them to 14em in this example.

/* increase sidebar width */
#column-content { margin-left: -15em; }
#column-content #content { margin-left: 15em; }
#p-logo a, #p-logo a:hover { width: 15em; }
#p-cactions { left: 14.5em; }
.portlet { width: 14em; }
#column-content { margin-left: -14em; }
#content.mw-body { margin-left: 14em; }

Change sidebar content when logged in (PHP)

Install and configure the DynamicSidebar extension.

Parser functions in sidebar

Although it is not exactly recommended, the sidebar does support parser functions (such as ParserFunctions ), provided the ** is outside the parser function, and the parser function does not span multiple lines. For example:

*Heading
**{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|User|Page-to-link-to{{!}}text-to-show-on-user-page}}
**{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Talk|Another-Page-to-link-to{{!}}text-to-show-on-talk-page}}

works. However the following would not work since the parser function spans multiple lines:

*Heading
{{#ifeq:1|1|
**foo{{!}}
bar
|
**baz{{!}}fred
}}

Troubleshooting

Changes not showing up

MediaWiki aggressively caches content if possible, which often causes the navigation bar to persist after changes. Purging the cache of affected pages should correct the situation. To perform a mass-purge of all caches at once, touch the LocalSettings.php file or truncate the objectcache table in your database (you may have to do both).

You also need to have $wgUseDatabaseMessages set to true. Also, if your links don't have a | in them, they will not show up because of this line of code in Skin.php: if ( strpos( $line, '|' ) !== false ) {

If you are a user or average wiki admin, you will not be able to do the advanced stuff above to get changes to show up. If purging does not work either, you can sometimes still see CSS changes right away in preview (especially when changing your personal CSS). For example; changing the sidebar width, padding, or margins. Changes can take awhile to show up after saving though. If nothing shows up after awhile you may need to contact the overall wiki, or wiki farm, sysop.

Lowercase link labels

If your links are not being capitalized as intended, try adding spaces around the bar character; for example:

** http://www.example.com/download.php?file=44555 | Download

Sections disappear or show unexpected content

If a section does not display or displays unexpected content, check that the header text isn't the name of an interface message by searching Special:AllMessages. If it is, use a different header text, or create a new interface message and use it.

For example, if you want to use "Sidebar" as header text, create the interface message "MediaWiki:Sidebar-header" containing only "Sidebar". Then, use * sidebar-header as header.

Sections are not displayed if there are no links of the form ** _target | link text (e.g. when the _target was forgotten).

Broken links after updating Special:Version

This will happen e.g., each time there are newer translations for your site language's sidebar items.

One could add new redirect pages each time, but a better solution would be to use one's own sidebar item names instead of trying to keep track of the current MediaWiki translations.

See also

• Sidebar
• Quickbar
• Manual:Interface/Sidebar/Hacks - Unsupported PHP modifying hacks that used to be on this page
• Manual:$wgEnableSidebarCache
• Category:Menu extensions
• Manual:Remove Tabs - Remove MediaWiki tabs