Help:MediaWiki sitenotice and sidebar

If your user privileges are set so that you are a bureaucrat, you can:

• Install and remove site-wide notices on Ballotpedia.
• Change the appearance of Ballotpedia's sidebar.

Site-wide notices

A site-wide notice is a notice that appears simultaneously at the top of all pages throughout Ballotpedia.

To install a site-wide notice:

• Go to MediaWiki:Sitenotice. (You can also get there by typing: MediaWiki:Sitenotice in Ballotpedia's search box.)
• Install the words and graphics you want to appears simultaneously at the top of all pages.
• Save your edit.

What the site notice should look like after you remove text from it. Note that hyphen!

To un-install a site-wide notice:

• Go to MediaWiki:Sitenotice. (You can also get there by typing: MediaWiki:Sitenotice in Ballotpedia's search box.)
• Remove all text and code from the page.
• Type one lone hyphen ("-")
• Save your edit.

Sidebar

When you go to the sidebar page, you'll see something that looks like this. (Click to enlarge.)

When you go to the "edit" page of the sidebar page, you'll see something like this. (Click to enlarge)

The sidebar is the list of links on the far left of the screen.

To change the appearance of the sidebar:

• Go to MediaWiki:Sidebar. (You can also get there by typing: MediaWiki:Sidebar in Ballotpedia's search box.)
• Follow the editing pattern that you see there.
• To create a new section, preface the word(s) you want as the label for the new section with one asterisk ("*")
• To create bullet points under any section heading, preface each such bullet point with two asterisks ("**")
• The words before the pipe ("|") must match the title of the article you want readers to access when you click on that particular link.
• The words after the pipe ("|") are however you want that link to be described.