Help:Links

There are four sorts of links in MediaWiki:

internal links to other pages in the wiki
external links to websites
interwiki links (links to other wikis)
inter-language links to other language versions of the same wiki (which Fanlore doesn't have)

Internal links (Wikilinks)

To add an internal link, enclose the name of the page you want to link to in double square brackets [[like this]]. When you save the page, you'll see the new link pointing to your page. If the page exists already, it is displayed in blue; empty pages display in red. Links to the current page are not transformed in URLs, but display in bold.

Generally, it is best practice not to link to every instance of a term on a page. It is recommended to link to the first instance in the main text, the infobox, and the footnotes, and also to later instances in the main text that are sufficiently "far apart".

The first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized and spaces are represented as underscores (typing an underscore in the link will have a similar effect as typing a space, but is not recommended, since the underscore will also be shown in the text).

To create a text link to a category or file, use a colon before the namespace: for example, [[:File:Fanlore-logo.png|Fanlore's logo]] to get Fanlore's logo, or [[:Category:Help]] for Category:Help.

Anchor Links

To link directly to a particular section of a page, use an anchor link, like this: [[Help:Links#Linking Cheatsheet]]. This code is useful for when a concept doesn't warrant its own page (yet), but does have a section on a page.

Linking to a section on the same page as the link doesn't require the page name: e.g. [[#Linking Cheatsheet]].

Anchor links are also good for linking to specific issues of zines. For example, link to T'hy'la #11 1992 by typing [[T'hy'la (Star Trek: TOS anthology)/Issues_11-20#Issue_11|T'hy'la ]] #11 1992.

External links

You can link to any page on the internet just by copy/pasting the URL, but if you want to link text or display the website title, use this code: [http://myurl.com My Page Title].

How to avoid auto-links

By default, when you write a URL as is (with an http:// prefix), it will be transformed in an external link.

To avoid that effect, put the URL between <nowiki> start & end tags, as in:

<nowiki>http://mediawiki.org</nowiki>

Interwiki links

Interwiki links are links from the local wiki to another wiki. Which sites are available for linking in this way depend on your local configuration. Many Wikimedia projects can be linked from Fanlore.

Note that, in the context of an article, interwiki links can be difficult to distinguish from internal links. You may want to use an external link to make it clear that the link will take the reader off-site.

How to link

Interwiki links are formatted like so:

[[interwikisitename:page]]

or

[[interwikisitename:page|display]]

Examples

Linking Cheatsheet

Description	You type	You get
Internal link	`[[Main Page]]`	Main Page
Piped link	`[[Main Page\|different text]]`	different text
External link	`http://mediawiki.org`	http://mediawiki.org
External link, different title	`[http://mediawiki.org MediaWiki]`	MediaWiki
External link, numbered	`[http://mediawiki.org]`	[1]
Anchor link	`[[#See also]]`	#See also
Category link	`[[:Category:Help]]`	Category:Help
Internal link to image file	`[[media:example.jpg]]`	media:example.jpg
Interwiki link	`[[Wikipedia:MediaWiki]]`	Wikipedia:MediaWiki
mailto link	`[mailto:[email protected] email me]`	email me
redirect	`#REDIRECT [[Main Page]]`	→ Main Page

More advanced

Description	You type	You get
Piped link, different title	`[[Main Page\|<span title="different title">different text</span>]]`	different text
External link, same host unnamed	`[http://{{SERVERNAME}}/pagename]`	[2]
mailto named with subject line and body	`[mailto:[email protected]?Subject=URL%20Encoded%20Subject&body=Body%20Text info]`	info