[Mediawiki-l] how to change sidebar?

[Gart, Mitchell]

I'm new and am trying to change the sidebar of MediaWiki 1.6.5 on
Windows.
I've read the doc at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Configurable_Sidebar
but don't get it.  I've found some of the strings in the sidebar in
languages/Messages.php and have tried changing them but the changes
don't
do anything.  Can somebody tell me how to customize the sidebar?
Thanks,

- Mitch Gart