Custom per user navigation portlet ---------------------------------------------- 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!