Help:Sidebar

Wikia's skin can be fully modified to create both the look and function you desire. One way to do this is to change the sidebar, which provides navigation links to important parts of the wiki.

The sidebar is divided into two sections: the main navigation, which has multiple levels, and the two-column toolbox:
 * For admins - you can edit the default navigation sidebar which is seen by everyone on your wiki
 * For users - you can set a custom navigation for yourself only

Main Navigation Sidebar
The sidebar will come with a default menu before it is modified. This can be found on our messaging wiki and includes:

Admins
To customize the main navigation sidebar (just below the search box), click on the Edit this menu text, which will bring you to the MediaWiki:Monaco-sidebar page. You will be able to edit the text here, which will then modify the sidebar.


 * Each asterisk represents a level in the menu hierarchy. In this example, the three top-level items displayed in the sidebar are "Superheroes Wiki", "Characters" and "Comics".


 * Hovering over the "Characters" item will bring up the second tier of the menu, "Heroes" and "Villains". These are represented by two asterisks. The articles about Superman, Batman and Spider-Man are located inside the "Heroes" submenu, and therefore have three asterisks on the editable menu.


 * The menu items automatically link to their respective articles. You can use external links here - the software will recognize them and link to them properly. If you'd like to use text that is different from the article name, first use the article name followed by a pipe character (|), followed by the display text. This is also true for external links; unlike the usual space, you will need a pipe instead.

* mainpage | Superheroes Wiki * #popular# | Editor's pick   (see "magic word" section below) * Category:Characters | Characters ** Category:Heroes | Heroes *** Superman *** Batman *** Spider-Man ** Category:Villains | Villains *** Lex Luthor *** Penguin *** Green Goblin * Category:Comics | Comics ** DC Comics ** Marvel Comics * #category-minorcharacters#  (see "magic words" section below)

Main Navigation - Magic Words
In addition, we've added a few "magic words" that you can use in the main navigation, and allow for specific information to be pulled in. The new magic words are as follows:


 * #category1# = Creates a multi-level menu item that displays the name of the category with the most articles, shows the top 7 pages in that category, and has a "see more..." link to the category page.
 * #category2# = Same as above but for the category with the 2nd most number of articles.
 * #category- # = you can specify a particular category name ( #category-superheroes#, for instance).
 * #popular# = This is meant to be an "editor's choice" list that the admin of each wiki can populate. You can add articles to the top of this list here: MediaWiki:Most popular articles. If there are no entries on that page (or fewer than 7 entries), the rest of the list will automatically be populated with the articles with the highest traffic on that wiki.
 * #visited# = a list of the articles with the most traffic on that wiki.
 * #voted# = a list of the highest ranked articles by vote.
 * #newlychanged# = articles that have most recently been changed.
 * #topusers# = a list of featured users.

Note:
 * For the #category1# and #category2# magic words, categories with certain keywords will be excluded from the #category1# and #category2# lists. These include: Image/images, Stub/stubs, Screenshot/screenshots, Screencap/screencaps, Article/articles, Copy edit, Fair use, File/files, Panel/panels, Redirect/redirects, Template/templates, Delete/deletion, TagSynced.
 * If you specifically want a category with one of those keywords on the main nav, then use #category- # and replace the " " with the category name you want.
 * If you wish to include a category with a space in the name, e.g. "Wikia Widgets", replace the space with an underscore, e.g. #category-Wikia_Widgets#.

Users

 * To customize the main navigation menu for your personal preference, edit the User:/Monaco-sidebar page (you can reach it through this shortcut: Special:Mypage/Monaco-sidebar).
 * You can use the same format as listed above, as well as magic words.
 * This modifications are wiki specific.

Internationalisation
Changing the navigation and toolbox in this way will only change the view for logged out users, and users with the same language set as that of the wiki. Logged-in users who have chosen a different language in their preferences will see the default menu for their language unless you have also created a translation on your wiki by editing MediaWiki:Monaco-toolbox/xx (where xx is the language code).

So on an Italian wiki, only users who are viewing in Italian will see your menu customizations. A user who has chosen German in their preferences will not see them.