[Mediawiki-l] Re: Special Menu on Every Page

[Rowan Collins [IMSoP]]

Debi wrote:

> I'm new to the list and new to the concept of the wiki. I've been 
> learning as I go and have to admit that most of this stuff is way over 
> my head at the moment!
> 
> Anyway, this is the request of my team for our new wikipedia:

Just a quick note: "Wikipedia" is actually a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, so it's best not 
to get into the habit of referring to something as "a Wikipedia" if it isn't part of wikipedia.org. 
The generic term is simply "a wiki" or "a WikiWiki".

> We noticed that the Wikipedia.com site had something called a 
> #siteNotice in their MediaWiki:Monobook.css, but I have no idea where 
> this #siteNotice lives and whether or not links can be engrained in them.

My guess would be that that was the formatting for [[MediaWiki:fromwikipedia]] - but I've just 
noticed that that message doesn't appear *at all* under monobook - anyone have any idea why not? 
Just an oversight?

 > We have a special "categories" menu we'd like to add to every page and
 > have it have links to the actual Catetory:xxx pages to enhance navigation.

> We'd like to keep this list of categories up-to-date easily. Right now, 
> we have Template:Showcategories, but that has to be put into each article.

Were you thinking of just a list of inline links (and not have many categories) or an actual 
drop-down menu (which would be better for a large list of categories)? The former you might be able 
to do with strange bits of JavaScript and CSS (although I dread to think how) or by modifying the 
monobook skin itself (and, of course, any other skin you let your users select once they log in). 
For the latter (and indeed the former, if you don't have any PHP wizards amongst you but want an 
auto-updating list) I guess you'll have to lodge a Feature Request at the software's Sourceforge 
Tracker (https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=411195&group_id=34373&func=browse) and hope someone 
feels like coding it for you.

I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with the skinning and CSS and stuff, so can't be more helpful than 
that. Perhaps someone else can shed a bit more light on your options.

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]