User blog:Dzylon/How to Hide the Sidebar

Introduction
You are all aware of the sidebar positioned to the right of every page. This bar contains the wiki chat box, hot spots list, and search bar. However, the bar takes up a whopping 400 pixels, leaving the article with only 600. That's right, the sidebar takes up 40% of all article space. Did you know that you know that you can disable the sidebar, leaving an article width of one thousand pixels? Thanks to Monchoman, famous for his contributions to community central, you can do just that.

Implementation
Implementation instructions are as follows: /* adds a button that increases the content size and hides the rail */ function CreateContentResizeButton { var headerWidth = $('header#WikiaPageHeader.WikiaPageHeader details').width; var contentWidth = $('article#WikiaMainContent.WikiaMainContent').width; var catlinksWidth = $('div#catlinks.catlinks').width; if(contentWidth < 1000) { $('header#WikiaPageHeader.WikiaPageHeader details').css({"width": '980px'}); $('article#WikiaMainContent.WikiaMainContent').css({"width": '1000px'}); $('div#catlinks.catlinks').css({"width": '1000px'}); $('div#WikiaRail.WikiaRail').css({"display": 'none'}); $('section article header ul.wikia-menu-button').after('Compress'); $('section article header a.wikia-button').after('Compress'); $('section article header a.view-source').after('Compress'); if(wgCanonicalNamespace == 'User_blog') { $('section article div#WikiaUserPagesHeader a.wikia-button').after('Compress'); }	} } addOnloadHook(CreateContentResizeButton); function ExpandContent(headerWidth, contentWidth, catlinksWidth) { $('header#WikiaPageHeader.WikiaPageHeader details').css({"width": '980px'}); $('article#WikiaMainContent.WikiaMainContent').css({"width": '1000px'}); $('div#catlinks.catlinks').css({"width": '1000px'}); $('div#WikiaRail.WikiaRail').css({"display": 'none'}); $('ul#resizeButton').replaceWith('<ul class="wikia-menu-button" id="resizeButton" style="margin-left:10px">Compress</a></ul>'); }
 * 1) Navigate to your global.js file.
 * 2) Create the page with the following text:

function CompressContent(headerWidth, contentWidth, catlinksWidth) { $('header#WikiaPageHeader.WikiaPageHeader details').css({"width": headerWidth}); $('article#WikiaMainContent.WikiaMainContent').css({"width": contentWidth}); $('div#catlinks.catlinks').css({"width": catlinksWidth}); $('div#WikiaRail.WikiaRail').css({"display": 'block'}); $('ul#resizeButton').replaceWith('<ul class="wikia-menu-button" id="resizeButton" style="margin-left:10px">Expand</a></ul>'); }
 * 3.  Bypass your browser's cache (detailed on the top of the global.js page).

Your sidebar is now disabled! What of the functions that existed on the sidebar before it was disabled?

Reform
You can always expand the bar once more, but it's often not necessary...

On Standard Pages

 * For chat, click "chat" on the "On the Wiki" tab. You can find this on the wiki's Navigation bar, near the top of every page.
 * To search, simply visit the home page, where the search bar remains.
 * Community Messages can not be seen without the sidebar. However, you can usually check out the front page for community messages.
 * You must restore the sidebar to see Community Hot Spots.

On Your Profile and Talk Pages
Oddly, on user pages, the sidebar can not be restored. Here are other ways to access the functions that were found there:
 * To view your followed pages, visit Special:Following.
 * You may miss easy access to your point count and badge progression statuses. To view these, you must stop the page from loading the JavaScript, which can be accomplished easily, but in a very roundabout way. First, navigate to your [Special:Mypage|user page]]. Note how the sidebar disappears after the content is loaded. To view the sidebar as before, simply stop the page from loading before the sidebar is hidden. If you stop the page too early or too soon, simply reload and try again.

Closing
Note: I made some very minor changes to the original JavaScript. The original can be found on the page I reference directly below. Source: http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Increase_content_area_width Special thanks and credits: Monchoman42