Forum:Left Sidebar Cutomization

Look at your left hand side. It has a sidebar which multiple panels. Question: Where can I edit and customize those panels?


 * 1) Is it possible to configure so some panels are hidden/shown by default (The setting is site-wide which applies to all visitors)?
 * 2) Where can I customize the search box, possibly adding new search boxes?
 * 3) How can I edit the Community Panel (i.e. the one with "XXX articles on this wiki")? Hmmm... It seems customization is impossible!
 * 4) how can I edit the Wikia Spotlight?
 * 5) Is it possible to configure what entries are displayed in WikiAnswers / Related community Panel? How?

Thanks a lot. --MyBrute Resource Center@Ronga 11:26, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Please see Help:Sidebar. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 12:51, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks but I knew where to edit the navigational menu and the toolbox links. The questions above asking nothing about these two. The help page seems to say nothing to solve the above problems.
 * Still researching... but it appears all I asked above can't be customized. Could anyone confirm this? --MyBrute Resource Center@Ronga 15:42, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Another help page is stating that every widgets can be customized in CSS (Mediawiki:Monaco.css) using the .widget selector. Also, widgets will get the colors specified in .color1, .color2, etc, if the .widget class dont overide them.
 * As of the hiding of widgets, dont do this !
 * You can't decide for others users what they need.
 * The only place you can hide them is in you own personnal CSS file.
 * And you can't fiddle with any ads on Wikia, that include the Spotlights. — TulipVorlax 19:50, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that help. To clarify what I actually want to do is customizing not only the CSS part of it, but also the content part of it. Adding functionality, configure texts, adding new messages etc.
 * As for other users, I'm not asking to override user preferences. I'm asking if it's possible to configure the default settings, which are usually useful for anonymous or visitors with no preferences.
 * So far it seems the answer is "You cannot". The answers for each question are negative. A site configuring to be really different... no way! --MyBrute Resource Center@Ronga 21:44, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * What is understandable from the link given in last reply is that you're hoping to be able to have a really different skin. The Wikia term of use, or anything related, contain, somewhere a line that say that the default skin of any given wiki have to be Monaco. That is why moslty only colors (or fonts or...) changes are permitted.
 * No, they're is no way to decide wich widgets will be on by default (for anons). As for the widgets content; some widget generate the content themseflves from what is occuring on the wiki (the Community widget, for exemple). Some others have Mediawiki: pages to alter the content, but aside from the toolbox and the sidebar, i dont really know wich one can be altered nor how can they.
 * Widgets might be there since a fair amount of time now, but staff seems to still have trouble documenting things and i think that is because all of this is still more or less in a beta state (aside form the usual "they have better thing to care about").
 * Some widgets still might get removed or changed in a way docs would need great upgrading. But all that is only based on my own understanding of the situation that comes from what i read here and there on Wikia. I dont have any involvement with the staffs (on even on IRC). So you might want to wait for them to come by or use special:contact on the wiki where you want things to happen, if you think this is an urgent matter.
 * I too would like to be able to do some of the stuff you're talking about. Mainly, to set up the default widgets by the help of some kind of special page. Why would this be usefull ? Because most users dont even know there's an untranslated « Manage widgets » link in the user drop down menu.
 * Lastly, as each widgets behave differently, you should ask about them, one by one. I mean, the "Problem report list" list widget, surely can't have his content changed. But clicking the little wrench icon permit users (or only sysops) to set some parameters. This is just an exemple. Another one would be the related wikis widget; that one is supposed to be base on a mediawiki page. Wich one, i dont know. Since i closed it, it never reappeared for me. Lol.
 * I feel like i'm moslty going nowhere with this and have difficulties expressing my toughs in a language that is not mine. So, i'll stop now. — TulipVorlax 23:12, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply Tulip. This surely opens up a lot of potentials and make the site more personalized, making it stand out. I feel the look on the site is "too formal too serious" which is not good for some types of wiki. But there is little we can do to change it. It would be a great addition to allow users to create custom widgets (to be added on the left sidebar). Also it's always a problem of a wiki site, that is the site lacks interaction between editors and visitors. Unlike a forum it's hard to attract visitors to give feedback on wiki sites. I wonder if some extensions like ArticleComments, JSKitComments, would help. --MyBrute Resource Center@Ronga 09:38, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Regarding default widgets and exposing customizing them better to users - this is certainly an area we wish to look at, though it is currently not near the top of our priority list. It's certainly interesting reading users' views on what they would like to see updated/changed - your feedback is much appreciated, regardless of whether we can make changes soon. 10:15, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Community widget: XX articles on this wiki
It would cause a few problems (perhaps really bad ones) for some types of wiki sites. This is a good example:
 * Wikia Templates

Look at the Community widget. How many do this site has? Yes it's 5 only. This number is good enough to drive people away.

However it doesn't really reflect the real situation. It's because the figure shown in the community widget only counts the pages in (main) namespace. Other namespaces, including site custom namespaces, are ignored.

Don't forget they are "visitors" only. They don't have a clue how the count works. Given the above example, they may simply think there are only 5 templates hosted on Wikia Templates, which will give them really bad impressions.

It would be great if we can configure at least the "stat" part of community widget.

These are good additions too:
 * Adding new custom widgets (or maybe just a panel/window to put up some messages on the sidebar)
 * Ability to rearrange widgets
 * Ability to show/hide some widgets

Updated: So now I know a way to fix the ""XX articles things" that I would like to share. I realise the article count can be changed to mean more then NS:0 (the main namespace). For example we may add the template namespace to the content namespaces list, and the count will correct itself. The same thing was done with the Help: space and help.wikia.com. This change has to be done locally so you have to request for changes. Read Help:Wiki configuration too for more information.

--MyBrute Resource Center@Ronga 23:59, 18 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair points indeed. We do want to overhaul the community widget as it's somewhat of a mix of ideas at the moment, and I agree that showing a low number of articles of wikis is not great for appearances. Specifically regarding templates.wikia, I've added the template namespace to the content namespaces - that change should show up in a bit. 16:29, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Did not read this all yet, but i want to tell that i've hidden that widget site wide for me using my global CSS : User:TulipVorlax/global.css. So, i dont see it on any wiki anymore. — TulipVorlax 20:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * @ TulipVorlax, nice tips for global.css, thanks a lot!
 * @ Kirkburn, wikia has been developed in a way that a wide variety of wiki sites have been hosted, some with very different purposes than the traditional serious wiki (Wikipedia). Article counts are good indicators on Wikipedia, but may not so for a lot of other wiki sites. Seeing that configuration of community widget is still not possible, page count is a better indicator to account for all activities made on all wikis overall. Wikia template wants to take template namespace into account. Wiki dealing with multimedia would want to count file namespace too. Forum namespace should be counted for wiki sites with heavy forum activities, and so on. --MyBrute Resource Center@Ronga 19:21, 22 May 2009 (UTC)