User blog:2Actimv/Part 13. Contributing to a Wiki: Top Navigation Bar

People use the top navigation bar to discover the wiki and to find some nice pages. Below I tell you everything about making a good top navigation bar.

Where can I do?
You have to go to the page "MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation". One way to find it is to click on the "Contribute" button on the right top of the page. Click then on "Edit Wiki Navigation". But you can also type it in the url after the name of your wiki.

Levels
There are some levels in the navigation. * is for the first level, ** for the second and *** is for the third.

Add Pages
To add pages you can use this code: **(name page)|"name page" Change:
 * (name page) for the link to the page
 * "name page" for the name you want to show

Add Categories
To add categories you can use this code: **#Category:(name category)#|"name category" Change:
 * (name category) for name of the category
 * "category name" for the name of the category you want to show

Add links to special pages
To add links to special pages you can use the following code: **Special:(the special page)|"the word you want to show" Change:
 * (the special page) for the name of the special page
 * "the word you want to show" for the word you want to show

Link to another Wiki
To add links to other wiki's you can use this code: **(url)| "name of the wiki" Change:
 * (url) for the url of the wiki
 * "name of the wiki" for the name of the wiki

Special Codes
There are some codes to show special things:
 * - Shows the top 8 pages from the "Category:Soccer".
 * - Shows a list of the top visited pages from "MediaWiki:Most popular articles".
 * - Shows the pages wich are edited the last time
 * - Shows a list of the 8 most active users

Example
(this example is from a wiki about soccer)
 * Wiki Content
 * newlychanged#|Recently Changed Pages
 * Category:Competitions#|Competitions
 * Category:Clubs#|Clubs
 * Category:Players#|Players
 * Category:Stadiums#|Stadiums
 * News
 * News
 * Blog:Recent posts|Recent blog posts
 * Community
 * Blog:Recent_posts|Recent blog posts
 * Special:Forum|Forum
 * Special:Chat|Chat
 * Affiliated Sites
 * (url)| "name of the wiki"
 * (url)| "name of the wiki"

Save
If you want to save you have to click first on the button "Preview". If you've clicked on that button you see the button "Publish", click on that button to save your edit.

More Options
You can find on Dev Wiki more options to customize or add extra rows to the navigation bar.

If you have questions about making your own bottom navigation boxes or want help with something please go to my message wall to ask me about it. You can also ask an admin on this wiki, go to the forum or ask in the chat.