Help:Navigation

Navigation is the menu found on top of all pages that provides links to the most important and interesting pages on your wikia.

Video overview
This video overviews the details your wikia's navigation and how to get started with editing it. 

Step-by-step

 * Navigation is found at the top of every page of your community. It contains two areas: the pre-populated "On the wiki" menu and the other customizable menu item.
 * The "On the wiki" tab is default open, and provides important links on your wikia, including Wiki activity, Random Page, Videos, Photos, and other features that may be enabled on the wikia (such as Chat). This tab is maintained by Wikia Staff, please refrain from moving the tab or removing any of the pre-populated items on it.
 * Wiki_nav.png


 * The local navigation menu (all other menu items besides the "On the wiki" tab) can be edited by admins on your wikia.
 * To edit this menu, click on the contribute button, then choose the "Edit Wiki Navigation" link from the dropdown from any page. Or you can use the link found on the Admin Dashboard.
 * Contribute_menu.png


 * The editor will load the page MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation
 * After you make your changes, you will need to Preview the new menu before you can Publish them. The Preview button is located beneath the Edit Summary box. The preview runs a validation tool which ensures the new menu will not cause issues with the display of the wikia.

How many links can it contain?
The Navigation menu offers a maximum of 280 links, although it is not necessary to use all of them. The links are grouped as:
 * 4 Level 1 links which combine for a total width of 550px. These are the links that are always visible above the colored menu bar.
 * 7 Level 2 links with a maximum total width of 729px. These are the links that appear on the colored bar when hovering over any of the level 1 links.
 * 10 Level 3 links with a dynamic width and a minimum width of 150px. These appear as dropdown style menus under each of the level 2 links.

To add a link, you need to use wikitext to define the links and text that appear on the menu. The wiki text for the level pattern is as follows:
 * Wiki_nav_editing.png

Auto-populating the menu
One way to make sure the navigation has dynamic content that highlights the strengths of your wikia is to use magic words to automatically fill in menu items.
 * To do this, use # symbols around the magic words you choose to use.
 * Since magic words generate lists of pages, they may only be used as Level 2 menu items; the list they generate will appear as the Level 3 menu items.


 * Supported Magic Words
 * #categoryX# - Where X is a number greater than 0. This gets the top 8 pages from the Xth-biggest category on a wikia.
 * #category-Y# - Gets the top 8 pages from Category:Y (replace "Y" with the name of your category).
 * #newlychanged# - Gets the most recent changes from your wikia.

Saving your changes

 * Once you have added in the wiki text for your menu items, you will need to hit the Preview button, which is located underneath the edit summary box.
 * You must Preview changes to your navigation before they are saved. The Publish button will only appear on the bottom right of the preview window.
 * The Preview button will show your new navigation, and check for errors in the wiki text. For example, it will report an error if you try to use a Magic Word in a Level 1 or Level 3 menu item. It will also run a width validator tool which will inform you if your menu items are too wide to display at the minimum width of the site. The warning will display like this:
 * Width_validator.png


 * If there are any problems, you will need to return back to the editor to adjust your navigation.
 * When your preview contains no errors, the Publish button will appear in the preview window. Click Publish and your new navigation will be live.
 * Wiki_nav_menu_levels.png

Things to note

 * You can link to any page, and it is important to think about what are the most important places for visitors to see when they come to your wikia.
 * We recommend adding links to popular pages, and links to show where to find the wikia's community.
 * Sometimes, it isn't appropriate to link to an article (if you want to have a heading on the navigation, for example) so you can put the code  to create a heading on the navigation which doesn't link anywhere.
 * Remember that you can only save (Publish) changes to the menu from the Preview screen.

Next pages

 * Learn how to edit your My Tools
 * Learn how to view the latest wiki activity
 * Learn how to edit the community corner

Further help and feedback
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