User blog:Dryuuu/Customise the toolbar at the bottom

I felt I wanted/needed to make this post for users, just for the sake of being informative!

You know the little bar that's usually floating at the bottom of the page, it sort of looks like the page body "tucks" into it.. well.. do you use it? Have you ever used it? Do you find it useful or useless?

I'll just go over it a little to recap, or perhaps motivate you to check it out in case you never use it.. because only recently, I started paying attention to it.

Customising the bar


Click to see full.

This is how mine appears at the moment. Is it different from yours? I was fooled into thinking how when I became admin how I modified it to look was how everyone else saw it. The only thing that everyone else sees is the background on it, which I made make the background of the Wikia bar at the top, for the sake of consistency and good design. You cannot customise the background, unless you're me! But I'll go over what you can customise, and what each of these things do...



To bring up the 'Customise' menu, click 'Customise'. It should be noticeable, with the little screwy icon next to it.

This window will pop up. You can bring it up anywhere, and you won't leave the page or lose what you're doing (don't be surprised if you do, though), even though 'Customise' does appear to be a link that takes you to another page when you roll the cursor over it.

Here you will see the toolbar list. Going down on the list is going from left to right on your toolbar. To re-arrange, click and drag each column item from the right edge down to where you desire. You will also notice the folder is the expandable menu, so drag items in and out of there if you don't want to be seeing them all the time but still need them in reach.

Random page
Random page saves you going to the top navigation menu. It does exactly what it says- takes you to any random page in the Wiki. Useful if you're on an editing spree, or just plain bored, or you're feeling really lucky and can't be bothered using the search function. You should also notice that on the Home page, the featured character, creature, location and object now have new 'Tooltips' (boxes that appear when you rollover) with an 'Other option'. This will take you to a random page of that category. It's good if you're only looking for a random creature for instance, so you don't keep ending up with locations. Who needs the Isle of the Blessed when you can have a cockatrice!

Edit page
It does exactly what it says, as well- you will open the editing menu for the page you're currently on. Don't think you can bypass any restrictions on pages using this, if it's an admin only page you can still see the Source but not edit it. Yeah, so it's good if you want to grab some source as well!

A tip for editing as well- press CTRL+B to toggle bold text on/off, and CTRL+I for Italics, and CTRL+U for Underline. It will save a lot of time! Unfortunately no shortcuts for linking yet, that I know of...

Upload photo
(From computer only) This will take you out of the page, so be warned! Unfortunately I don't know of a shortcut for Multiple Photo uploads at the same time, but if you enter Special:MultipleUpload into the search bar you can do it from there, as well as from the navigation menu at the top, under Community>Media.

Follow
I personally never use this. I find it useless, I just memorise my preferred pages (I don't really have any..) if I had it my way I would have a little pop up menu in the bottom right corner, like the chat on Facebook, with an auto-generated list of the pages I've recently been on, my most visited pages, the pages I've created, most recently edited pages and some favourites I've added manually. It would light up when the page has had some activity, and point out the changes. Unfortunately Wikia is not cool enough for this yet! I have suggested it to them, and I've got an invite for the community council to test out early features and have some input, so one day- maybe one day...

Oh, but anyway, just click 'Follow' to add it to your 'Following' list immediately, no dialogue boxes or anything. You will probably have email notifications on by default, which I never use, as it clogs up my inbox.

History
Now this is a good one, especially if you're tracking an edit, or vandalism. You will be taken to a list of recent contributions, and the users who did them, with options to rollback (if admin), undo, and compare changes.

Some users may find themselves not using this at all. I have a habit of clicking the drop down bottom near 'edit' at the top and clicking 'History' from there.

My contributions
Clicking this won't jump you to the contributions of the particular page you happen to be on, but will show your contirbutions for every page on this Wiki. It's basically a shortcut to the Contributions tab of your profile!

Recent changes
Don't mistake this for 'Wiki Activity', which shows recent changes for all pages. This just shows for the page you're on. It can be handy, but once again caters for very personal preferences and isn't something everyone would die for.

Wiki Activity
After writing this, I now find myself with a new assortment of links in my toolbar... so don't follow the example I set above!

Wiki Activity is contributions of all pages from different users- it's the main feed on this Wiki. Depending on the browser you have, you may or may not be warned to save changes to the page you're on (if editing) if you click Activity. Just be careful, mm'k?

Rename
Not sure whether this is working at the moment or not, but I'm assuming it will take you to another page when clicked. I wouldn't keep this at the bottom, as Renaming is only something that should be done occasionally here. Don't be too fussed about page names, as long as they are precise and easy to remember!

What links here
Click it to see a list of pages that link to or redirect to the page you're on. This is really useful if you want to see how lonely the page you're on is! If you're looking for lots of lonely pages to give company, though, I suggest visiting http://merlin.wikia.com/wiki/Special:LonelyPages. The more pages linking to each other, the more views circulated.

Theme Designer and Admin
Accessible only by admins. This is Wikia's page on the two. These are pretty basic tools, and with them you can only edit the wallpaper, logo, fav icon (icon in address bar), and some text colours. To do more advanced stuff, like have the "parchment" look and feel this Wiki has, the time in the bar at the top, the design for the Wikia bar and the toolbar, "tooltips", a custom cursor, and all of that, MediaWiki:Wikia.css has to be edited, which is, too, admin only, but is for more pro/advanced users!

Last note... remember to hit Save to apply your preferences for how you want your links ordered in the toolbar!

I hope you enjoyed reading! Happy Wiki'ing!