I want my MediaWiki site to have (either in addition to, or instead of, the sidebar) a bar of links at the top of the site, visible on every page.
Requirements
To minimize future maintenance burden, my requirements are:
No modifications to core, extension or skin code. I do not want to maintain project forks.
Ideally, privileged users should be able to edit the links shown in the menu bar by editing a special page, similar to how
MediaWiki:Sidebar
controls the content of the usual sidebar.
Solutions I have tried
The Topbar extension looks like an ideal solution, but it does not seem to work with the latest MediaWiki versions (see my SO question #37423269 for details if interested).
The MegaMenu extension looks awesome, but has an invasive installation procedure which violates my requirement #1 above. It also requires editing a PHP file to change the links, which violates #2.
The Erudite skin is beautiful, with built-in support for a top menu bar. But in my test, the top menu bar area was empty, and the sidebar was rendered at the very bottom of the page in the footer. The skin documentation does not explain how to customize the top menu bar content.
Is there something obvious I am overlooking here? How do other MediaWiki sites do this?