Hi Everyone,
Thanks for the responses.
Now there's still quite a bit that I think I'm missing here. My confusion could be a simple matter of being a very new wiki user, and I thank you all for your patience.
That being said, re: rgcjonas's comment:
Anyway i think the fact that the sidebar doesn't take care of $wgExternalLinkTarget is worth a bug report. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29533
I see the post on bugzilla, but to be honest I don't know what is meant by 'Patch for trunk'. I see that there's a a bit of code that was added to SkinTemplate.php; does this code fix the external link problem?
and to nakohdo:
See this thread: http://old.nabble.com/Sidebar-Customization-tt31321544.html You will need some JavaScript, though.
It looks to me like the nabble thread only discusses centering links and collapsable menus. Is there a bit about external links opening in a new tab, and I'm just missing it?
Thanks again. It's not so easy to parse content posted by experts. :)
dan