Last modified: 2011-05-03 11:19:18 UTC
Currently the ability to customize the page footer is very limited, you can only have 6 items and they are all used for something so can't really be changed. It would be very good if you could use a syntax which includes other MediaWiki: namespace pages and created it. An example could be: aboutsite-url|aboutsite|||copyrights|||privacy-url|privacy where pagename|linktitle creates a link from the page in the text held in MediaWiki:Pagename and the link looks like the text held in the MediaWiki:linktitle page where ||| denotes a seperation (like the gap between about and privacy in the current implementation) where a single string between |||'s displays the text in MediaWiki:String and so on
Edit the skin files to customise the site's look and feel.
But that gets changed on upgrade and is not very user friendly
Then create a new skin that encompasses the desired look and feel. You can base it off the existing skin. User friendliness isn't an issue at this level, if one is customising the footer to provide a consistent interface. Allowing administrators to hide or remove, e.g. licence messages and suchlike is not at all desirable for most wikis.
It would make sense to make the message use the same format as [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]]. It's not vertical, true, but that's still more readable and more familiar. (In reply to comment #3) > Allowing > administrators to hide or remove, e.g. licence messages and suchlike is not at > all desirable for most wikis. They already can at [[MediaWiki:Copyright]].
I still maintain it's a job for skin customisation, not the MediaWiki namespace. The sidebar content is dictated as such, sure, but the layout is still largely up to the skin.
Now that you mention it, most of the current footer things aren't in footers for non-Monobook skins. It would be rather inappropriate to put them in a footer message, certainly. Whether a second "sidebar" positioned elsewhere on the screen than the side, but possibly skin-dependent, would be a good idea is a separate question.
It could be named MediaWiki:footer-content which suggests it is just the content for the footer and isn't specific to different skins. Anyways, I will see if I can produce some patch which uses already submitted code. That way even if the patch isn't accepted for SVN it can still be provided as a extensions (albeit complicated to add).
Created attachment 2738 [details] Basic attempt at fixing for MonoBook skin ***WILL NOT WORK*** This is a basic hack that may or may not produce the desired effects. I have no means of testing it ATM and I am not a php programmer. Use at your own risk.
Comment on attachment 2738 [details] Basic attempt at fixing for MonoBook skin ***WILL NOT WORK*** It's not usually a good idea to post untested patches on BugZilla except in special circumstances.
Created attachment 3268 [details] Patch this patch has been tested with the SVN phase3 version of MediaWiki and works. It does not change any non monobook-based skins as these don't use the footer in the same way. It retains the current code for backwards compatibility and simply adds some li's after it. It can be modified in the same way as the sidebar, except it uses MediaWiki:Footer. As no extra links will be added by default MediaWiki:Footer does not need to be added in any of the language defaults etc.
Created attachment 3554 [details] Adds to all skins This patch modifies buildSidebar() to be an alias of $this=>buildBar('sidebar') (for backwards compatibility) this allowing buildBar() (formerly buildSidebar() - just with some modifications) to easily be configured to work with both the sidebar and the footer. This adds a footer to all skins, except Simple (MonoBook with custom CSS) which does not show the default items anyway. A few changes were made to use the new function calling replacing buildSidebar() and some occurrences of ' - ' (in the footer) where replaced with $sep for easier modification.
By the way it has been fully tested on revision 21733.
I am going to do a lot of work on the skin system that will involve integration of a customizable footer.
The footerlinks and footericons are customizable via hook and a configuration var (footericons) in 1.17.
Removing keyword patch, since the patch only deals with footerlinks, and those have been patched according to Daniel Friesen
the patch keyword stays since there is a patch attached. Adding reviewed since it appears its been reviewed.
footerlinks and footericons are done, nothing else is mentioned
Still not quite finished, footerlinks is still mostly a hack job, it's just an array of tpl keys, it needs further rewriting to be up to expectations.
