Help:Widgets

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Manage your widgets!
File:Widgetbarpsych.png
The widget carousel
Special:Widgets

Widgets are boxes that can be dragged-and-dropped onto the Monaco sidebar, containing a set of links or functions that may be useful for your wiki.

They can be added to the left-hand navigation sidebar, or accessed through the Widget Dashboard, and you can arrange the widgets to suit your preferences.

Widget basics[edit source]

Adding widgets[edit source]

To explore and add widgets, choose "Manage widgets" from the bottom of the drop-down list in your user bar at the top of the page.

You will see a row of icons appear at the top of the article space, the "widget carousel", which you can scroll left/right. Click the green "+" icon next to a widget to add it to your sidebar, and close the bar using the red "X"

Alternatively, you can visit Special:Widgets. This list also behaves like the widget bar - you can click the green "+" button to add items from this list to the sidebar.

Using widgets[edit source]

The wrench icon is used to customize settings, and the up/down arrows expand and minimize widgets. Clicking on the 'x' in the right corner closes the widget.

Widget dashboard[edit source]

The Widget Dashboard is a special page where you can arrange any or all the widgets you want to review at one time to get a quick snapshot of what is happening on your wiki - it provides more space for you to work with than the sidebar. To add widgets to this page, add widgets to your sidebar, then drag them to this page.

Visit it at Special:WidgetDashboard, and read more at Help:Widget Dashboard.

Full list of widgets[edit source]

Not quite sure what each widget is capable of? Here is a comprehensive list of all widgets and how they can be used:

Widget icon Widget Info
Active talk pages
File:Activetalkpagesicon.png 		150px Set a limit and see which talk pages have been recently edited. This keeps you up to date with what activity is occurring across all talk pages.
Bookmark
File:Widget bookmark.png 		150px Allows you to bookmark pages as you go around wikis.
Contributions
File:Contributionsicon.png 		Contributions widget Handy way to view your contributions.
Help needed
File:Needhelpicon.png 		150px Some wikis are incomplete or could use your help with editing. The Need Help widget appears empty in the sidebar at first.
Image slideshow
File:Imageslideshowicon.png 		150px Displays a slideshow of the most recently uploaded images to this wiki.
Last wikis
File:Lastwikisicon.png 		150px This shows which wikis you visited last, so that you can easily navigate back to the ones you were viewing most recently.
Most visited
File:Mostvisitedicon.png 		150px This widget lists the most visited articles on this wiki. Click on More... to fully expand the list.
Problem reports
File:Problemreportsicon.png 		150px View a list of the problem reports for the wiki you are viewing.
Recent changes
File:Recentchangesicon.png 		150px The most recently edited articles within this wiki are listed here.
Shoutbox
File:Shoutboxicon.png 		150px Allows you to chat live on the wiki!
Recently Edited By
File:Recentlyeditedicon.png 		150px Click on the wrench icon to set the limit to how many recent editors there were to the article you are viewing.
Stale pages
File:Stalepagesicon.png 		150px This drops down a list of articles or stubs which have not been edited or changed in a long time.
Tips
File:Tipsicon.png 		150px This widget will display and tips the admins on that wiki have built in. These tips might be about wikimarkup - they may be about wiki policy - or they may be general tips pertaining to that wiki's topic. Find out all the things you didn't know.
Top content
File:Topcontenticon.png 		150px Filter articles by most popular, most visited, newly changed, or by highest rating. Use the dropdown menu to select from how you want your articles to be displayed.

Featured - Special:Top/most popular; these are community-chosen links
Most popular - Special:Top/most visited; pages with the highest number of page views
Newly changed - Special:Top/newly changed
Highest ratings - Special:Top/highest ratings

Top referrers
File:Topreferrersicon.png 		150px This cloud of tags lets you know which sites are sending visitors to your wiki.
Top users
File:Topusersicon.png 		150px See a list of the most frequent visitors and contributors to this wiki - the top five edit counts.
Top voted
File:Topvotedicon.png 		150px Thanks to the star ratings at the bottom of each article, you can now view the top rated articles that were voted on by other users. See page rating.
Watchlist
File:Watchlisticon.png 		150px Keep a list of the articles you are watching. See watchlist.
Wiki Page in Widget
File:Wikipageinwidget.png 		150px Instead of viewing a page in a new browser window or tab, you can set it to appear within this widget. Great for designing your own custom widget.

Create a custom widget[edit source]

At MediaWiki:Widgetwikipage a sysop can design a widget that is readily accessible by all users of that specific community wiki. This can be leveraged to

  • complement the links accessible via the Link Toolbox, page footer or page header
  • provide easy access to custom functions written as javascript
  • provide easy access to a semantic (partial) form with which to edit the current page
  • present useful information (weather, tidal clock, etc.)
  • present useless information (biorhythms, zodiac readings, etc.)
  • ... maybe you can think of other applications

Users without sysop privileges can still create a custom widget using any wiki article ... such as a sub-page to their Special:MyPage - e.g. User:Mary/mywidget

To make that custom widget appear in the sidebar:

  1. Add the "Wiki Page in widget" to the sidebar (using either Special:Widgets or the widget carousel)
  2. Click the wrench icon (in top right corner) to reveal the configuration window
    • beside Title of widget: enter any arbitrary name e.g. Useful Links
    • beside Source page: enter the wiki article name e.g. User:Mary/mywidget
      (take care to prepend the colon e.g. ":DemoWidget" when specifying a source page that is in the main namespace)
    • click Save
  3. You may drag that widget into your Special:WidgetDashboard or leave it in the Monaco sidebar.
  4. You cannot share that widget via the widget carousel or Special:Widgets but
    • you can easily create a category e.g. "User widgets" that visitors to your wiki can browse to see what creative ideas your community members have come up with
    • Of course, each user will need to follow steps 1 & 2 to adopt that widget into their Monaco sidebar

Customizing the site-wide Widgetwikipage[edit source]

Aside from customizing the content via MediaWiki:Widgetwikipage a sysop can also customize:

  1. Title (MediaWiki:Widget-title-wikipage) which does appear in: Special:Widgets but not in: the widget carousel, the sidebar or Special:WidgetDashboard
  2. Description (MediaWiki:Widget-desc-wikipage) which does appear in: Special:Widgets but not in: the widget carousel
  3. Labels used in the widget configuration window:

By customizing Title and Description you can better feature your community's custom widget because Special:Widgets lists all available widgets in alphabetical order. The widget carousel (a.k.a. Manage widgets) does not use alphabetical order, in fact it does not adopt the title or description specified via those two WikiMedia messages. Whether this is a bug or merely a limitation of the current design of that special "cockpit" header area is not clear.

Miscellaneous page-focus links[edit source]

The following are suggestions that complement the already existing links which operate on the currently displayed page. In each case the magic words FULLPAGENAME or PAGENAME are used to give focus to the link. 

{|
||[[Special:EditData/Favorites/{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Manage Favorites]]<br/>
[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=purge}} Update this Page]<br/>
[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|printable=yes}} Printer Friendly]<br/>
[[Special:Browse/{{PAGENAME}}| Drilldown Data]]<br/>
[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|showads=1}} Display Ads]<br/>
|width="30%"|''Skin:''<br/>
[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|useskin=wikiaphone}} wikiaphone]<br/>
[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|useskin=monobook}} monobook]<br/>
[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|useskin=monaco}} monaco]<br/>
|}
<div style="background-color:#EEE;padding:0.5em;">
<inputbox>
type=search
width=15
namespaces=Help**
</inputbox>
</div>
<div style="clear:both;float:right;">[[:Category:User widgets|Make a custom widget]]</div>
Caveats
  1. There is a limit to how complex your widget definition can become. It is not a simple character or byte count limit.
    • In the example shown above the addition of just 7 ASCII characters from the empty HTML comment: <!----> - is enough to cause the widget to fail to render in the sidebar even though it renders perfectly well at its definition page.
  2. The rendered height of the Widgetwikipage is variable up to a point and after that a scroll bar appears for any content which overflows.

Embedding[edit source]

Most Widgets can also be embedded directly into a page, see Help:WidgetTag for more details.

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