Sidebar

Typically to the left side of Monobook is the wiki's Sidebar. While not necessarily part of the cosmetics of customizing a Monobook theme, the sidebar is one of the most important features of the Monobook experience. A wiki's sidebar primarily contains several boxes in which links to important or high-use pages are listed. Above the sidebar's content is the wiki's logo. The logo, however, is added to the page differently as it is added to the wiki via a file uploaded to File:Wiki.png. In addition to the logo, the sidebar also typically sports the wiki's search bar. However, through css, the search bar may be moved elsewhere if need be.

The sidebar on-wiki is located at MediaWiki:Sidebar.

Default sidebar
The default sidebar features only basic pages that the default wikia software adds to the wiki upon its creation. The wiki's sidebar, like the rest of the default theme, features a white background with a black border. The actual content of the default sidebar is broken into five boxes: content navigation, community, search, toolbox, and wikia. The toolbox and wikia boxes of the sidebar cannot be edited via the MediaWiki:Sidebar page, however, the content navigation and community sections can, and can be changed to have different headings.

Customizing the sidebar (content)
The content of the sidebar may be modified to fit many types of wikis. The sidebar's content are primarily only links to other pages – typically the most important pages of the wiki. The sidebar's purpose primarily is for easy navigation to the wiki's central content. Implementing project pages, categories, and special pages is usually advised for customizing a sidebar's content.

Pages and headings are added to the sidebar by using bullets to signify which is which. As an example sidebar layout: All pages marked by ** are the pages the sidebar is linking. Anything put in there is treated as if it was being linked with. In being so, the | is used simply to show what the link will appear as on the sidebar, where as the part before is the page the link links to. The headers of the sidebar are marked by * and do not link to any page.
 * Content
 * The main page
 * Category:Animals
 * Category:People|People listing
 * Community
 * Forum:Index|Forums
 * Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes

Customizing the sidebar (cosmetics)
Customizing a sidebar is a simple feat. A sidebar can be customized in several ways, however.

Background coloring
The sidebar's background can be simply colored by using the following code, filling in the variables: .generated-sidebar .pBody, #searchBody, #p-tb .pBody, #p-wikicities-nav .pBody, #p-lang .pBody { background:url(" "); OR       background-color:# ; } The headers of the sidebar can also feature a background color. To do so, use the following code, filling in the variables: div.portlet#p-content_navigation, div.portlet#p-lang, div.portlet#p-Community, div.portlet#p-wikicities-nav, div.portlet#p-tb, div.portlet#p-search { background-color: # ; }
 * It should be noted that if the sidebar's traditional 'content_navigation' and 'community' headers are edited via MediaWiki:Sidebar, they should be changed to fit the newer versions.

Borders
Using css, one can also color or round the borders of the sidebar. Borders can be either half-rounded, fully rounded, or sharp. The last of which being the default.

For fully rounded borders on a sidebar, a simple code placed under the  line of the Monobook.css page: Of course, the border radius, color, and size can be modified by the user's choosing. border-width: 2px 2px 0; -moz-border-radius: 0 1em 1em 0; -webkit-border-top-right-radius: 1em; -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 1em; border-radius: 0 1em 1em 0; border-bottom: 1px solid #000; border-right: 1px solid #000; border-top: 1px solid #000; border-left: 1px solid #000; For half-rounded borders in the sidebar, a similar coding is used. The only different is the change to the left border which will need to be replaced with using: border-left:0 !important;

Examples of customized sidebars

 * To be added. Images of the sidebars Monobook Wiki has made will appear here.