Help:Wiki template

This wiki software allows us to define templates, which in other languages might be called macros (or other similar terms).

Overview

A template can define standard text that you'd like to appear in more than one place. For example, you could define a template named needswork that, when inserted into a page, displays text like this:

This page needs more work to make it look good.

Furthermore, templates can have arguments (parameters) that allow you to specify repetitive data in a standard and more easily understandable way. For example, you could define a template named trial-committee that provides space for someone to type the names of trial committee members and then displays the list in a nice format as defined within the template, rather than making the editor do all the work over and over.

Template usage

When editing an article, you see templates like this:

 {{needswork}}

or like this:

  {{trial-committee|chair=Fred Smith|secretary1=Jane Doe|secretary2=Tien Tranh}}

Template definition

To create a template, you simply create an article titled "Template:nameofyourtemplate"; for example, Template:needswork or Template:trial-committee. Whatever you put into that article then appears whenever you insert the template (as shown in "Template usage") into another article.

Complexities

Of course, it's almost never that simple. Here are some example templates, whose content you can examine by clicking their edit tabs:

• Template:Addtocategory, which displays standard text and also uses a predefined variable to display the name of the current article.
• Template:Disambig, which displays standard text and also puts any article in which it appears into a specific category.
• Template:Trial, which allows parameters, then displays the values into a formatted table AND this template displays usage information about the template itself.

See also

• Special:Prefixindex where you can select the Template namespace and see the names of all templates that currently exist.
• BTwiki templates, which lists existing templates and shows what they produce

External links

(need links to detailed help on wikipedia, wikimedia, etc.)