Help:Navigation

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

Video overview

File:Fandom University - Setting Up Your Navigation Menu

This video overviews the details your wiki'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 always present in the navigation bar and provides important links on your wiki, including Wiki activity, Random Page, Videos, Photos, and other features that may be enabled on the wiki (such as Chat or Discussions). This tab is maintained by FANDOM Staff, please refrain from moving the tab or removing any of the pre-populated items on it.

• The local navigation menu (all other menu items besides the "On the Wiki" tab) can be edited by admins for your community.
• To edit this menu, click on the "Contribute" button, then choose the "Edit Wiki Navigation" link from the dropdown on any page. You can also use the link found on the Admin Dashboard.

• The editor will load the MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation page.
• 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 wiki.

Adding navigation items

• Each item in the navigation bar is represented by a line in MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation page.
• Level 1 items are prefixed with one asterisk (*), level 2 items are prefixed with two asterisks, etc.

• After asterisks representing the level of the navigation bar the item is in comes the name of an article that navigation item should be linking to.
• If the text in the navigation bar should be different from the name of the page it's linking to, set the navigation bar item to include a pipe between the name of the page it's linking to and the text that should display (for example, if the item should be linking to page "Lion" and the displayed text should be "Kitten", set the item to "Lion|Kitten").
• If you don't want the navigation item to link to anything, add #| in front of it (for example, #|Community)
• For example, a navigation bar set to

* #|Content
** Page One
** Page Two
* #|Community
** Blog:Recent posts
** #|Policy
*** Project:Policy|Policy
*** Project:Administrators|Staff

• will contain:
  • Two Level 1 navigation items, Content and Community, that aren't linking to any pages.
  • Four Level 2 navigation items, two being under Content and linking to Page One and Page Two pages on your wiki, and two being under Community and linking to Blog:Recent posts and Policy, with Policy one not linking to anything.
  • Two Level 3 navigation items under Policy, first linking to Project:Policy page on your wiki and displaying the text "Policy", and second one linking to Project:Administrators and displaying the text "Staff".

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.

Auto-populating the menu

One way to make sure the navigation has dynamic content that highlights the strengths of your community 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 wiki.
  • #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 wiki.

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:

• 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.

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 community.
• We recommend adding links to popular pages, and links to show where to find the community.

Next pages

• Learn how to edit your your toolbar
• Learn how to view the latest wiki activity
• Learn how to edit the community corner

Further help and feedback

• Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
• Check Fandom Community Central for sources of further help and support
• Check Contacting Fandom for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article