Template:Sidebar/doc

This template is about the vertical navigation template. For the horizontal template, see Template:Navbox. For the left sidebar of the interface, see the article in the Mediawiki Manual.

This template is a metatemplate for the creation of sidebar templates, i.e. boxes that are vertically-aligned navigation templates. Sidebars, like infoboxes, are usually positioned on the right-hand side of a page.

{{Sidebar with collapsible lists}} is a version of {{Sidebar}} that adds collapsibility to its sections, i.e. the means to show or hide sections by clicking links beside their headings.

Templates using the classes class=navbox ({{navbox}}) or class=nomobile ({{sidebar}}) are not displayed in article space on the mobile web site of English Wikipedia. Mobile page views account for approximately 68% of all page views (90-day average as of September 2024). Briefly, these templates are not included in articles because 1) they are not well designed for mobile, and 2) they significantly increase page sizes—bad for mobile downloads—in a way that is not useful for the mobile use case. You can review/watch phab:T124168 for further discussion.

Note that MOS:LEAD discourages the placement of sidebars in the lead section of articles.

Usage

{{Sidebar
| name = {{subst:PAGENAME}}
| class =            
| wraplinks =        <!-- "true" otherwise (default:) omit -->
| float =
| templatestyles = 
| child templatestyles = 
| grandchild templatestyles = 

| outertitleclass = 
| outertitle = 

| topimageclass = 
| topimage = 
| topcaption = 

| pretitleclass = 
| pretitle = 

| titleclass = 
| title = 

| imageclass = 
| image = 
| caption = 

| headingclass = 
| contentclass = 

| aboveclass = 
| above = 

| heading1 = 
| heading1class = 
| content1 = 
| content1class = 

| heading2 = 
| heading2class = 
| content2 = 
| content2class = 

| heading3 = 
| heading3class = 
| content3 = 
| content3class = 

<!-- (omitting infinite heading/content parameters) -->

| belowclass = 
| below = 
| navbar = 

}}

Note that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section § Elements discourages the placement of sidebars in the lead section of articles, though they may be included on a case-by-case basis.

Parameters

No parameters are mandatory. If {{navbar}} links are to function correctly (unless their appearance is suppressed; see the navbar parameter below), the parameter name needs to be set (to the name of the sidebar's page). (This does not apply if the Lua module that produces {{Sidebar}}, Module:Sidebar, is being used directly.)

Parameter	Explanation
|above=	Same as the |above= offered by {{Navbox}}.
|name=	The sidebar's name, i.e. the name following "Template:" in the title shown at the top of the sidebar's page. Required if the V T E {{navbar}} links at the bottom of the sidebar are to function correctly, unless their appearance is suppressed (see the navbar parameter below) or {{Sidebar}} is not being used as a wrapper for Module:Sidebar. When {{Sidebar}} is used as a wrapper, setting |name={{subst:PAGENAME}} is recommended.
|float=	Accepts the values none and left. The former aligns the box left without floating and the latter with floating behavior. The default float is right and does not need specifying. Prefer this parameter (and passing it to any using templates such as with {{Helpbox}}) to specifying your own floats in TemplateStyles.
|outertitle=	Use to place a title for the sidebar immediately above the sidebar.
|topimage=	Use to place an image at the top of the sidebar, i.e. above |title= (if used). Full wiki syntax is expected (i.e. [[File:...]]). To add a caption below the image, use |topcaption=. Per WP:SIDEBAR this field should only be used to define a generic image for a sidebar, not to provide custom images for individual articles: sidebars are not displayed on mobile.
|pretitle=	Use to place a line such as "Part of the X series on" before the title.
|title=	Use to place a title for the sidebar at the top of the sidebar. (If |topimage= is used, it will appear immediately below it).
|image=	Use to place an image between the |title= (if used) and first section. As with |topimage=, full wiki syntax is expected (i.e. [[File:...]]). To add a caption below the image, use |caption=.
|headingn= |contentn=	The nth heading / content. contentn is required if headingn is also to appear.
|templatestyles=	See #TemplateStyles.
|class= or |bodyclass= |outertitleclass= |topimageclass= |pretitleclass= |titleclass= |imageclass= |aboveclass= |headingclass= |contentclass= |headingnclass= |contentnclass= |belowclass=	Classes can be used to make styles easier to target for TemplateStyles. |class= must be used for this purpose for an entire sidebar (otherwise a page with multiple sidebars may take styles intended only for one sidebar). An example for a template named "Template:Example Sidebar" might have the class |class=example-sidebar. |headingnclass= and |contentnclass= can be used to target a specific heading or content group. This should be needed only rarely. These classes can also be used for microformats. Dot before a class-name can be omitted: |class=foo.
|below=	Same as the |below= offered by {{Navbox}}. (Use, for example, to add one or more portal links to the bottom of the template (shown, by default, in bold).)
|navbar=	When |name= is specified, {{navbar}} is shown at the bottom of the sidebar. Setting |navbar=off or |navbar=none will suppress the links showing.

TemplateStyles

Further information: Wikipedia:TemplateStyles

The TemplateStyles parameters |templatestyles=, |child templatestyles=, and |grandchild templatestyles= take the pagename of a TemplateStyles page and turn it into a TemplateStyles tag. The TemplateStyles tag is a much more powerful way to add styling to a sidebar.

Some rules of use:

1. Always add a template-specific class in |class= so that the styles added to one sidebar will not "leak" into another sidebar. For example, Template:DYK tools has |class=dyk-tools and the Template:DYK tools/styles.css page targets .dyk-tools for all of its added styling.
2. Do not assume Template:Sidebar will continue to have a table structure (i.e., do not target table or any other table HTML in the TemplateStyles page). The table structure is soft-deprecated and will go away at some point in the future.

These tags are loaded in this order: Core templatestyles (Module:Sidebar/styles.css), templatestyles, child, and then grandchild, which can be used to 'cascade' the styles.

|templatestyles=

This parameter is intended for a template or module calling {{sidebar}} directly.

|child templatestyles=

This parameter is intended for a template or module which calls a sidebar with |templatestyles=.

|grandchild templatestyles=

This parameter is intended for a template or module which calls a sidebar with |child templatestyles=.

The canonical list of classes output with each kind of element of a sidebar (i.e. output for all |contentn=, or all cases of |above=) can be found in Module:Sidebar/configuration in the "class" table. The below is a non-authoritative but otherwise sufficient list for most generic styling:

.sidebar

The top-level sidebar class.

.sidebar-outer-title

The class associated with a |outertitle=.

.sidebar-top-image

The class associated with a |topimage=.

.sidebar-top-caption

The class associated with a |topcaption=.

.sidebar-pretitle

.sidebar-pretitle-with-top-image

The classes associated with a |pretitle=. Only one of these will be output per sidebar, depending on whether |topimage= is present.

.sidebar-title

.sidebar-title-with-pretitle

The classes associated with a |title=. Only one of these will be output per sidebar, depending on whether |pretitle= is present.

.sidebar-image

The class associated with a |image=.

.sidebar-caption

The class associated with a |caption=.

.sidebar-above

The class associated with a |above=.

.sidebar-heading

The class associated with a |headingn=. Every heading will have this class.

.sidebar-content

.sidebar-content-with-subgroup

The classes associated with |contentn=. Every content group will have one of these classes, depending on whether the specific content has a subgroup.

.sidebar-below

The class associated with a |below=.

.sidebar-navbar

The class associated with a |navbar=.

Example TemplateStyles parameter use

For an example of a sidebar which does not need to support children templates of its own (whether because it has no children or because it wants no children):

{{Sidebar
| title                = Child Example
| class                = sidebar-example
| templatestyles = Template:Sidebar/example/styles.css
}}

For an example of a sidebar which does have its own children and an example of one of the children (grandchild templates have a similar use):

{{Sidebar
| title                     = {{{title|Title Child Example}}}
| class                     = sidebar-example {{{class|}}}
| templatestyles      = Template:Sidebar/example/styles.css
| child templatestyles = {{{child templatestyles|}}}
}}

{{Sidebar/child example
| title                = Title Grandchild Example
| class                = sidebar-child-example
| child templatestyles = Template:Sidebar/child example/styles.css
}}

Handling long links

{{Normalwraplink}} may be used to handle individual links that should wrap within the sidebar or otherwise need to be made to wrap, in order to prevent the sidebar from becoming too wide. Use {{normalwraplink|longlinkname}}, where |longlinkname is the long link without its square brackets.

Use the |wraplinks=true parameter to enable link wrapping (disabling nowraplinks CSS class) for the whole template.

Nesting

One sidebar template can be nested (embedded) into another one by using the |child= parameter. This feature can be used to create a modular sidebar, or to create more well-defined and logical sections.

{{Sidebar
| title = Top-level title
| content1 =
 {{Sidebar |child=yes
  | title = First subsection
  | heading1 = Heading 1.1
  | content1 = Content 1.1
 }}
| content2 =
 {{Sidebar |child=yes
  | title = Second subsection
  | heading1 = Heading 2.1
  | content1 = Content 2.1
 }}
| below = "below" text
}}

Note in the examples above that the child sidebar is placed in a content field, not a heading field. Notice also that the section subheadings do not appear in bold if this is not explicitly specified. To obtain bold section headings, move the titles to the heading field, using

{{Sidebar
| title = Top-level title
| heading1 = First subsection
| content1 = 
 {{Sidebar |child=yes
  | heading1 = Heading 1.1
  | content1 = Content 1.1
 }}
| heading2 = Second subsection
| content2 = 
 {{Sidebar |child=yes
  | heading1 = Heading 2.1
  | content1 = Content 2.1
 }}
| below = "below" text
}}

Deprecated parameters

The following parameters are deprecated in favor of TemplateStyles and templates/modules using them are categorized into Category:Sidebars with styles needing conversion. The category page has further conversion information.

A specific real conversion example is Template:DYK tools where the styles were moved to Template:DYK tools/styles.css.

Parameter	Explanation	TemplateStyles replacement class
|style= or |bodystyle=	Additional CSS for the whole sidebar.	Class assigned to the template in |class=
|basestyle=	Additional CSS for a grabbag of parameters: |pretitle=, |title=, |headingn=, and |listtitlen= (for {{sidebar with collapsible lists}}).	See related parameters for targeting pretitle, title, all headings, and all lists. Applies before the specific style parameter so must be placed above that parameter's declarations if any in the TemplateStyles sheet.
|outertitlestyle=	Additional CSS for |outertitle=.	.sidebar-outer-title
|topimagestyle=	Additional CSS for |topimage=.	.sidebar-top-image
|topcaptionstyle=	Additional CSS for |topcaption=.	.sidebar-topcaption
|pretitlestyle=	Additional CSS for |pretitle=.	.sidebar-pretitle or .sidebar-pretitle-with-top-image
|titlestyle=	Additional CSS for |title=.	.sidebar-title or .sidebar-title-with-pretitle
|imagestyle=	Additional CSS for |image=.	.sidebar-image
|captionstyle=	Additional CSS for |caption=.	.sidebar-caption
|abovestyle=	Additional CSS for |above=.	.sidebar-above
|headingstyle=	Additional CSS for section headings.	.sidebar-heading
|headingnstyle=	Additional CSS for |headingn=.	Class assigned to the heading in |headingnclass=
|contentstyle=	Additional CSS for all section content.	.sidebar-content and/or .sidebar-content-with-subgroup
|contentnstyle=	Additional CSS for |contentn=.	Class assigned to the content in |contentnclass=
|belowstyle=	Additional CSS for |below=.	.sidebar-below
|navbarstyle=	Additional CSS for the generated navbar.	.sidebar-navbar
|navbarfontstyle=	Additional CSS passed to the navbar module to target the VTE (colors usually).	.sidebar-navbar li, .sidebar-navbar a

Tracking category

• Category:Pages using sidebar with the child parameter (3,872)
• Category:Sidebars with styles needing conversion (4,163)

See also

• Last pre-Lua version
• {{Sidebar with collapsible lists}}
• {{Infobox}}
• {{Side box}}
• Wikipedia:UBLIST, for help using unbulleted lists within content.