Mailing List Archive

Answer to navbar question.
First of all thanks to Michelle from this list I finally found out how
to easily change the navbar/navbox. Since other people on this list
seem to be confused about this same point I will post how to do it
again. When i get a change I will add this info somewhere to
wikimedia though I'm not sure where is a good place.

Let wikiname be your wiki's name, i.e. things in the project namespace
are of the form wikiname:whatever.

Go to wikiname:All system messages . This will be a very long page.
Search for the entry on the navbar that you wish to change. For
instance if you wanted to change 'Community Portal' search for this.
You will be presented a link to change the text displayed (in the case
of community portal the variable is just portal). Nearby is another
link to change the url, usually the variable name you just
changed-url.

I'm not sure how to add *new* links. I think you may need to go out
and edit SkinPHPTal.php and xhtml...stuff.

WARNING: These changes will not take effect immediatly. After I made
my changes the very next page I displayed was updated but after that
the change did not show up on later pages for another hour or more.
This was what caused me so much confusion.

Peter
Re: Answer to navbar question. [ In reply to ]
On Sep 19, 2004, at 8:21 PM, Peter Gerdes wrote:
> Go to wikiname:All system messages .

As I mentioned in another message, this page is slow, sometimes broken,
and no longer produced as of 1.3.3. Instead use [[Special:Allmessages]]
which is the same thing but much faster and more reliable...

> I'm not sure how to add *new* links. I think you may need to go out
> and edit SkinPHPTal.php and xhtml...stuff.

Basically there's not a convenient way yet. You got to do the... stuff.
:P Hopefully someone will have a chance to code up an easier way for
1.4. (This is a hint to your would-be coders out there...)

The more or less easily editable ones are the 'community portal' and
the site support link (set URL in $wgSiteSupportPage in
LocalSettings.php, and customize the link text in
[[MediaWiki:Sitesupport]].

> WARNING: These changes will not take effect immediatly. After I made
> my changes the very next page I displayed was updated but after that
> the change did not show up on later pages for another hour or more.
> This was what caused me so much confusion.

All MediaWiki: messages changes made through the wiki should take
effect immediately. However, pages cached by your browser will still
show old text until you force a reload. (Hitting the 'refresh' button
usually is insufficient if the page itself hasn't been marked as
changed due to an edit or related page edit.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)