Footer Links
A Guide to Using MediaWiki in a Hosted Environment
An instructional website by the developer of mh370wiki.net - a MediaWiki site about Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Part of the interface on a MediaWiki-based website is styled by the class .mw-footer. On this website it is identified by the colour .mw-footer .
This section contains the 'Powered by MediaWiki' logo and links to a Privacy policy, About page and Disclaimers.
Other items can be added.
The MediaWiki Manual:Footer provides instructions which are expanded here.
Every webpage link has two components:- the text on a visible portion; and the path to the destination. On a typical in-page MediaWiki link this is written as [[destination|label text]].
However, Footer Links are different. The link text, and the path are in separate places. So for each footer link we need to create of edit three things:-
- The link text
- The path to the link destination, and
- A page with the content.
The link text and the path are in separate pages in the MediaWiki namespace. If they exist you won't see them; if they don't exist you have to create them; and after creating these pages you still may not see them in a list of pages in that namespace.
The destination page containing the content can be wherever you want it - just make sure the path is correct.
Examples follow.
Privacy Notice
The wording for the link text is added to a page Privacy in the MediaWiki namespace. However, if you use Tools --> Special Pages --> Lists of pages, and select the MediaWiki namespace, there is no page MediaWiki:Privacy.
Instead, use the Search bar to search for MediaWiki:Privacy.
- If the page exists, add the link text to the page and save it. On this website, the wording is Privacy Policy.
- If the page does not exist, choose to create it, add the wording and save the page.
The next step is to create the page with the path. This will be in the page MediaWiki:Privacypage. Use the Search bar to search for MediaWiki:Privacypage.
- If the page exists, add the link wording to the page and save it. On this website, privacy page is in the Main namespace, so the path is just the page name Privacy Policy.
- If the page does not exist, choose to create it, add the wording and save the page.
If you click on the privacy link in the footer, MediaWiki will attempt to open the page named as the destination.
- If the page does not exist, choose to create it, add the relevant content and save the page.
- If the page already exists, check that the content is relevant and current, edit as appropriate, and save it.
Note: If you look at the list of all the pages in the MediaWiki namespace these pages will likely not be visible. Apparently that is ok.
About page
the process is similar for an About page:-
- The link text will be in the page MediaWiki:Aboutsite
- The link path will be in the page MediaWiki:Aboutpage, and
- The page content will be in the destination page as defined by the path.
Disclaimers
- The link text will be in the page MediaWiki:Disclaimers
- The link path will be in the page MediaWiki:Disclaimerpage, and
- The page content will be in the destination page as defined by the path.
Summary
The MediaWiki Manual:Footer has this information. What may not be clear is that the required pages in the MediaWiki namespace are reserved, may not be visible even if they exist, and the logic of separating the link text from the link path is not explained.
I hope the above examples are helpful.
Grant
Articles which relate to Footer Links are included in Category:Footer.
The CategoryTree Extension enables a listing of relevant sub-categories and pages:-
Links
- Manual:Footer
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Footer
- Manual:$wgFooterIcons
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgFooterIcons