Help:Templates

If you have standard texts you want to include on several pages, the MediaWiki template feature comes into play.

Creation

Templates are standard wiki pages whose content is designed to be transcluded (embedded) inside other pages. Templates follow a convention that the name is prefixed with "Template:", assigning it to that namespace. Therefore you can create them like any other wiki page.

Usage

Templates are wiki pages which can be used in other pages in three ways:

• {{Name}} 'transcludes' (i.e. includes a copy of) the content of the template (stored in the page [[Template:Name]]) whenever the page containing the template transclusion is fetched and displayed; i.e. if the template is later changed, the displayed transcluding page will automatically change too
• {{subst:Name}} replaces that string with the contents of the template, in the source of the transcluding page, when you save that page; the copy of the template contents can then be edited normally (and separately from the original in the template page). To Note: don't use this if you are looking to continually propagate changes from the source template to the page(s) that references it.
• {{msgnw:Name}} includes the template in a form that displays it as raw wiki syntax (the way <nowiki> does) when the page containing it is fetched

In fact, an ordinary wiki page can also be used as a template, simply by specifying the namespace it resides in, so:

• {{Template:Pagename}} includes [[Template:Pagename]]
• {{Foo:Pagename}} includes [[Foo:Pagename]]
• {{:Pagename}} includes [[Pagename]]
  • {{subst::Pagename}} replaces itself with the contents of [[Pagename]]

If no such namespace exists, the full title is assumed to be a template:

• {{Foo:Bar}} includes [[Template:Foo:Bar]]

Parameters

Template with numbered parameters
'''A little thank you...'''<br /> <small>for {{{1}}}.<br /> hugs, {{{2}}}</small>
You type	You get
{{Thankyou|all your hard work|Joe}}
with named parameters
'''A little thank you...'''<br /> <small>for {{{reason}}}.<br /> hugs, {{{signature}}}</small>
You type	You get
{{Thankyou |reason=all your hard work |signature=Joe}}

You can define parameters in templates either numbered as {{{1}}} or named {{{param}}}. Please note that there are a set of three curly braces ({{{ and }}}) around each parameter. This is different than normal template name usage.

Example: You want a little thank you note you can put on the talk page of other users. It will contain a reason and your signature. You could create Template:Thankyou to enter your text, as in the example in the table.

When using the template on a page, you fill in the parameter values, separated by a pipe char (|): {{Thankyou|all your hard work|Joe}}. For named parameters use "name=value" pairs separated by a pipe char: {{Thankyou|reason=all your hard work|signature=Joe}}. The advantage of using named parameters in your template is that they are flexible in order. It also makes the template easier to understand if you have many parameters. If you want to change the order of numbered parameters, you have to mention them explicitly: {{Thankyou|2=Joe|1=all your hard work}}.

You can also provide default values for parameters, i.e. values that are going to be used if no value is provided for a parameter. For example, {{{reason|all your hard work}}} would result in "all your hard work" if no value was provided for the parameter reason.

Control template inclusion

You can control template inclusion by the use of <noinclude> and <includeonly> tags.

Anything between <noinclude> and </noinclude> will be processed and displayed only when the template's page is being viewed directly.

Possible applications are:

• Categorising templates
• Interlanguage links to similar templates in other languages
• Explanatory text about how to use the template

The converse is <includeonly>. Text between <includeonly> and </includeonly> will be processed and displayed only when the page is being included. The obvious application is to add all pages containing a given template to a category, without putting the template itself into that category.

Note: when you change the categories applied by a template, the categorization of the pages that use that template may not be updated until some time later: this is handled by the {{ #ifeq:

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| www.mediawiki.org | job queue | job queue }}.

Organizing templates

For templates to be effective, users need to find them and be able to use them. A simple technique is to include an example on the template page. For example:

<noinclude>
== Usage ==
Allows to establish a link to a subject:
{{NameOfTemplate|Term1+Term2+Term3}}
</noinclude>

Then, an editor can simply copy and paste the example to create a similar page.

Copying from one wiki to another

Templates often require CSS or other templates, so users frequently have trouble copying templates from one wiki to another. The steps below should work for most templates:

If you have import rights on the new wiki

1. Go to Special:Export on the original wiki. Enter the name of the template in the big text box, check "Include templates" and click Export. This will download a .xml file.
2. Go to Special:Import on the new wiki and upload the .xml file.
3. Look for CSS classes (like class="foobar") in the template text. If those classes appear in "MediaWiki:Common.css" or "MediaWiki:Monobook.css" on the original wiki, copy them to "MediaWiki:Common.css" on the new wiki.
4. If the template uses ParserFunctions, you have to install the {{ #ifeq:

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| www.mediawiki.org | ParserFunctions extension | ParserFunctions extension }}.

If you don't have import rights on the new wiki

1. Copy the template text to the new wiki; link to the original page in the edit summary for attribution.
2. Edit the template on the new wiki, and look through the list of templates at the bottom. The ones in red will also need to be copied from the original wiki to the new wiki. You may have to repeat this process multiple times before all dependency templates have been recognized and copied.
3. Look for CSS classes (like class="foobar") in the template text. If those classes appear in "MediaWiki:Common.css" or "MediaWiki:Monobook.css" on the original wiki, copy them to "MediaWiki:Common.css" on the new wiki.
4. If the template uses ParserFunctions, you must install the {{ #ifeq:

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| www.mediawiki.org | ParserFunctions extension | ParserFunctions extension }}.

See also

• Help:External searches – a template special use case example
• Help:Magic words – fancy stuff you may find in some templates
• Help:Parser functions in templates
• {{ #ifeq:

 gps.alaska.edu

| www.mediawiki.org | MetaWiki: Help:Template | MetaWiki: Help:Template }} – contains a much more thorough manual on how exactly templates function

• {{ #ifeq:

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| www.mediawiki.org | MetaWiki: Help:Embed page | MetaWiki: Help:Embed page }} – embedding pages from namespaces other than Template:.

Syntax

{{Languages|PageName}}

• PageName (optional) - the name of the page to display language links for. If omitted then the English version of the current page is used. This parameter can normally be omitted, as it is only required if you want to link to a page other than the one you place the template on, which is very uncommon. If this parameter is used on a sub-page make sure you supply the root name, not the full page name (e.g. on MediaWiki/fr you would need to use {{Languages|MediaWiki}} and not {{Languages|MediaWiki/fr}}).

Usage

The template should only be placed on pages that exist in more than one language, and it should be placed in the same location on each translation of the page.

The English version of a page is always the main version, with all other languages as sub-pages, named using the appropriate language code (see below).

For example, on the Main Page you would include the text {{Languages}}, both on Main Page itself, and on each of its language sub-pages. The template automatically creates links to any language sub-pages that exist, e.g. Main Page/ja<tt>, <tt>Main Page/fr, and ignores non-existant languages.

See Project:Language policy for further details about translating pages.

Supported languages

This shows you the name of each language's sub-page (using Main Page as an example). Other languages may be added easily as necessary. Please use the appropriate prefix, as used on Wikipedia when adding a new language. Please do not add languages for which no pages exist yet, as this will increase the time needed to include the template without adding any benefit (languages are only displayed to the user when the relevant page exists).

The link on the language names goes to the Wikipedia in that language. If no Wikipedia in your language exists, do not add pages in that language to MediaWiki.org! This wiki is not the place for language advocacy - please go through the correct channels, and once your language has a Wikipedia then please return to add content here.

Page Name	Language
Main Page	English
Main Page/af	Afrikaans
Main Page/ar	Arabic
Main Page/az	Azerbaijani
Main Page/bcc	Southern Balochi
Main Page/bg	Bulgarian
Main Page/br	Breton
Main Page/ca	Catalan
Main Page/cs	Czech
Main Page/da	Danish
Main Page/de	German
Main Page/el	Greek
Main Page/es	Spanish
Main Page/fa	Persian
Main Page/fi	Finnish
Main Page/fr	French
Main Page/gl	Galician
Main Page/gu	Gujarati
Main Page/he	Hebrew
Main Page/hu	Hungarian
Main Page/id	Indonesian
Main Page/it	Italian
Main Page/ja	Japanese
Main Page/ka	Georgian
Main Page/ko	Korean
Main Page/ksh	Kölsch
Main Page/ml	Malayalam
Main Page/mr	Marathi
Main Page/ms	Malay
Main Page/nl	Nederlands
Main Page/no	Norwegian
Main Page/oc	Occitan
Main Page/pl	Polish
Main Page/pt	Portugese
Main Page/pt-br	Brazilian Portuguese
Main Page/ro	Romanian
Main Page/ru	Russian
Main Page/si	Sinhalese
Main Page/sk	Slovak
Main Page/sq	Albanian
Main Page/sr	Serbian
Main Page/sv	Swedish
Main Page/ta	Tamil
Main Page/th	Thai
Main Page/tr	Turkish
Main Page/uk	Ukrainian
Main Page/vi	Vietnamese
Main Page/yue	Cantonese
Main Page/zh	Chinese
Main Page/zh-hans	Chinese (Simplified)
Main Page/zh-hant	Chinese (Traditional)
Main Page/zh-tw	Chinese (Taiwan)

Example

Here is how the language bar looks on the MediaWiki page: