Custom per user navigation portlet
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Anyone done this?
Any ideas how to simply do it?
_Purpose
To allow users to bookmark site pages they often visit. So they can
create quick and deep navigation for their specific topic of interest
within a wide but deep focus wiki such as
Wikiversity.org.
_Description
* Custom nav to appear in left sidebar below the Search box
but above the Toolbox.
* Customized per logged-in user, such as how only user
Foo can edit User:Foo/monobook.css, maybe at User:Foo/nav.
* Parsed like a normal wiki page instead of like MediaWiki:Sidebar
because normal users don't want to learn non-standard markup.
* Other users could use Foo's custom nav portlet by
transcluding it into their own User:Name/nav by typing there
{{User:Foo/nav}}.
* Interest groups could collaboratively create and maintain group
specific custom nav portlets, eg
Template:nav_English_as_a_second_language, to transclude into
their interest group pages and or individual User:Name/nav
with {{nav_English_as_a_second_language}}.
_Current alternatives
Currently in standard MediaWiki a user Foo can put "bookmarks" in
1. browser bookmarks
2. Links in User:Foo page or subpages thereof
3. Links in page Whatever for benefit of everyone
4. Category:Whatever page by labeling the page [[Category:Whatever]]
5. Links in Template:Whatever
However, standard browser bookmarks are too messy as we all know and 2,
3, 4 and 5 are not as convenient to click as left sidebar would be.
Deep wide wiki's such as
Wikiversity.org and other deep wide Open
Educational Resources wiki's are a nuisance to navigate.
A *custom per user navigation portlet* could be an enormous practical
benefit to wiki's that have not just wide but also *deep* topics, such
as Wikiversity. Wikipedia only goes wide, not deep, and is manageable
because each encyclopedia page has a unique, language defined, term or
phrase that defines it as encyclopedic -- going deeper is not an
encyclopedia's mission but is the mission of many other wikis.
Has anyone tried this?
Ideas how to simply write it in PHP as a MediaWiki extension?
Thanks!
Happy New Year!
--
Roger Chrisman :-)
http://Wikigogy.org - free resources
for teachers of English as a second or foreign language