Help:Links

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There are five types of hypertext links in DCCWiki:

  1. Internal links to other pages in the same wiki (commonly called "wikilinks")
  2. External links to pages at other websites
  3. 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]]

Main Page

Help:Contents

Help:Be_bold

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.

How to edit a page

previewing

different text

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.

DSmainR5

TazzyTazzy

DZ143

Word-ending links
[[Help]]s

[[Help]]ing

[[Help]]ers

[[Help]]almostanylettersyoulikehere

[[Help]]BUTnotalways

Follows so-called "linktrail rules".

Helps

Helping

Helpers

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 ([[#top]]) of the page.

#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 [[#Unique anchor name 1]] on the same page or [[Help:Links#Unique anchor name 1]] on a different page. Omit the "optional text" for an invisible anchor.

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

Section heading
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 [[Help:Links/example|/example]]. See also Help:Subpages.

/example
Link to a subpage without the leading slash
[[/example/]]

Shortcut for [[Help:Links/example|example]].

example
Link to a subpage of parent page for current page. Can only be used on subpages.
[[../example2]]

Shortcut for [[Help:Links/example2|example2]] if you post the link on [[Help:Links/example|example]] page.

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

this example

Media:Example.jpg

Link to a page specific to each reader (user page, etc.)
[[Special:MyPage]]

[[Special:MyTalk]]

[[Special:Preferences]]

Special:MyPage

Special:MyTalk

Special:Preferences

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.

Special:Diff/2393992

Special:Diff/2390639/2393992

Redirect
#REDIRECT [[Main Page]]

Should be the first and only line on the page. See Help:Redirect.

Redirect arrow without text (cropped).svg Main Page


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 "http://" and "https://" are automatically linked, even when no brackets are used.
https://mediawiki.org
Avoiding auto-linked URLs
<nowiki>https://mediawiki.org</nowiki>
https://mediawiki.org

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 [ ]. Using "//en.wikipedia.org" by itself does not result in a link.

Wikipedia

//en.wikipedia.org

External link to the current server
https://{{SERVERNAME}}/pagename
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:[email protected] email me]
email me
Mailto named with subject line and body
[mailto:[email protected]?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.

Edit this page

Edit this page

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.