[Mediawiki-l] Trouble adding external link using MediaWiki:Sidebar page

[Patricia Barden]

Hello,

I'm having trouble adding a link to the navigation bar using the  
MediaWiki:Sidebar page.

The format for adding an external link is:

http://www.somelink.com |Somelink

The problem is that, in my case, the external address has a pipe  
character in it:

https://www.groundspring.org/donate/index.cfm?ID=2344-0|1118-0 |Donate

So, this shows up in the nav bar as:

1118-0 |Donate

Is there a way to get MediaWiki to ignore the first pipe character?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this.

~Tricia