Help: Links
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There are five types of hypertext links in DCCWiki:
- Internal links to other pages in the same wiki (commonly called "wikilinks")
- External links to pages at other websites
- External links to internal pages in the same wiki
Please note that this list does not include category links and file links, which are used to place pages into categories and display images or other media files, respectively.
Internal links
To [[Help:How to edit a page</>|create]] a so-called internal link to a page on the same wiki (a "wikilink"), use double square brackets wiki markup, [[like this]]. When you preview or save your changes, you will see a link that can be followed to the target page. If the page exists the link is displayed in blue (like the word "create" in the first sentence of this paragraph); if the page does not exist, the link appears red (so the [[like this]] link is actually rendered like this). Following such a "redlink" to a missing page (whether or not it is actually red) will usually enable the user to create the page.
To markup any arbitrary string of text (not necessarily a page title) as a link, use a "vertical bar" or "pipe" character, like this: [[Help:Categorization|category links]] results in the link category links.
The first letter of the link target is usually not case-sensitive (unless the wiki is configured otherwise), meaning links can be capitalized or not (so Help:Be bold and Help:be bold are equivalent). However, the case of every subsequent letter must match the target page exactly (so Help:Be bold and Help:Be Bold are not equivalent). Spaces in the page title may be represented as underscores (so Help:Be bold and Help:Be_bold are again equivalent), but using underscores in links will make them visible in the page text (but this can be prevented by using a "pipe").
If the page title you are linking to is that of the page you are editing, the result is not a hyperlink at all but simply bold text (for example, on this page the markup [[Help:Links]] gives the result Help:Links). If you're trying to create a wikilink to the current page, you probably want to link to a specific section or to an anchor within the page; see the examples below.
| Name/Description | Syntax | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Internal link | [[Main Page]] [[Help:Contents]] [[Help:Be_bold]] |
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| Piped link |
[[Help:How to edit a page|How to edit a page]] Links to a section/anchor within the target page. [[Help:Editing pages#Preview|previewing]] Piped link to an anchor on the same page [[#See also|different text]] See also Help:Piped link. |
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| Pipe trick | [[Product:DSmainR5|]] [[User:TazzyTazzy|]] [[Product:DZ143|]] The pipe trick involves less typing for editors, but is potentially confusing to readers, as seen in these DynamicPageList examples. |
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| Word-ending links | [[Help]]s [[Help]]ing [[Help]]ers [[Help]]almostanylettersyoulikehere [[Help]]BUTnotalways Follows so-called "linktrail rules". |
Helpalmostanylettersyoulikehere HelpBUTnotalways |
| Avoiding word-ending links | [[Help]]<nowiki />ful advice |
Helpful advice GPLv3 |
| Link to an anchor on the same page | [[#See also]] Anchors are provided automatically on section headings and to the top ( |
#See also |
| Setting an anchor for incoming links | <div id="Unique anchor name 1">optional text</div> <span id="Unique anchor name 2">optional text</span> Rendered block-level and inline, respectively.
Doing this would allow for Setting an anchor in a section heading ==<span id="Alternate Section Title"></span>Section heading== Note the placement. This must be a "span" tag, not a "div". (Such anchors allow sections to be retitled without breaking incoming links.) |
optional text
optional text |
| Link to an anchor at another page | [[Help:Links#External links]] |
Help:Links#External links |
| Link to the current page's talk page | [[{{TALKPAGENAME}}|Discussion]]
See also Help:Magic words#Page names |
Discussion |
| Link to a subpage | [[/example]] Shortcut for |
/example |
| Link to a subpage without the leading slash | [[/example/]] Shortcut for |
example |
| Link to a subpage of parent page for current page. Can only be used on subpages. | [[../example2]] Shortcut for |
example2 |
| Visible link to a category page | [[:Category:Help]] Without the leading colon the link would not be visible and the page would instead be placed into the category; this is a very common mistake. See also Help:Categorization. |
Category:Help |
| Visible link to an image or media file | [[:File:Example.jpg]] [[:File:Example.jpg|this example]] [[Media:Example.jpg]] Without the leading colon on the "File:" examples, the images would actually be displayed. See also Help:Picture tutorial. The |
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| Link to a page specific to each reader (user page, etc.) | [[Special:MyPage]] [[Special:MyTalk]] [[Special:Preferences]] |
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| Internal link to a specific revision | [[Special:PermanentLink/2393992]] Revision numbers can be found in each page's edit history. (It is very common to see links to specific revisions implemented as external links because it's easy to cut-and-paste an entire URL to form an external link.) |
Special:PermanentLink/2393992 |
| Internal link to a "diff" | [[Special:Diff/2393992]] [[Special:Diff/2390639/2393992]] The default (in the first example above) is to show the changes from the previous revision. See also the comments in the previous item. |
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| Redirect | #REDIRECT [[Main Page]] Should be the first and only line on the page. See Help:Redirect. |
.svg){kind=icon} Main Page
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External links
To create an external link, usually to a page at a different website, enclose the URL followed by space and the link text in single square brackets (see examples below). When you save or preview the page, you will see a link rendered slightly differently than an internal wikilink. It may be a different color and/or be followed by an arrow icon to show that it may lead to another site.
| Description | You type | You get |
|---|---|---|
| External link with specified link text | [https://mediawiki.org MediaWiki] |
MediaWiki |
| Numbered external link | [https://mediawiki.org] This is what happens if you omit the link text. Multiple links of this type on the same page are numbered sequentially. |
[1] |
| Bare external link | https://mediawiki.org URLs beginning with " |
https://mediawiki.org |
| Avoiding auto-linked URLs | <nowiki>https://mediawiki.org</nowiki> |
https://mediawiki.org |
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Protocol-relative external link |
[//en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia] [//en.wikipedia.org //en.wikipedia.org] The link will be HTTP or HTTPS depending on the protocol of the page currently being viewed (which could be different for different users).
This is only supported inside of square brackets |
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| External link to the current server | https://{{SERVERNAME}}/pagename
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https://dccwiki.com/pagename |
| External link to other host passing the pagename | https://google.com/search?q={{PAGENAMEE}}
See also: URL encoded page names |
https://google.com/search?q=Links |
| Mailto link | [mailto:info@example.org email me] |
email me |
| Mailto named with subject line and body | [mailto:info@example.org?Subject=URL%20Encoded%20Subject&body=Body%20Text info] |
info |
External links to internal pages
To add a link to a page on the same wiki using URL query parameters, you may need to use external link syntax.
| Description | You type | You get |
|---|---|---|
| External link to the current page's edit page | [https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Links&action=edit Edit this page]
[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} Edit this page]
See also Help:Magic_words#URL_data and External links above. |
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| External link to the current page's edit page, and styled to look like an internal link | <span class="plainlinks">[https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Links&action=edit Edit this page]</span> The "Plainlinks" class can be used in cases where you want an external link to look like an internal one, by suppressing the icon that normally appears after it. |
Edit this page |
Limits
An internal wiki link is limited by maximum page title size.