Help:Creating Templates

This article needs to be cleaned up to make the instructions less generic and to include more information. You can help by editing it to make it cleaner and pitching suggestions on the discussion page._{(December 2009)}

So you wanna help out the Chewiki by creating a template? Templates save you time by not having to update the coding on each and every page, rather being able to change the template itself. With that in mind, here's some tips on template making.

Creating a Template and Embedding it on Pages

You can create a template in the same way you create a regular pages. Just put Template: before the name of the template you want to create.

To place a template on a page, just put {{name of your template here}} on the page you want to place it on, and it should appear there after you save the changes.

Formatting

If you want your template to be placed in a box, put this. <div class="toc" style="background: #ffc;">Hi, I'm a template. I liek to eat pie.</div>

And you'll get something similar to this.

Customize the template with whatever background color and message you need.

Various Parser Functions

#if

You can also use programming in a template. If you place {{ #if: {{{test|}}} | Hey, {{{test}}} }} in your template, and when placing a template on a page you put {{templatenamehere|test=I liek pie.}}, you should get this:

Hey, I liek pie.

You can do this trick several times in one template.

#ifeq

If you put {{ #ifeq: 70 | 0070 | Value if true here | Value if false here }} on a page, you should get this: Value if true here. This function is case sensitive with letters, but not with numbers.

Additionally, you can use #ifeq to check the namespace/pagename/etc. of a page and produce a certain result. Really helpful, for creating a clean-up template or revamp your failed Featured Articles idea.

{{ #ifeq: {{NAMESPACE}} | Help | Yep. | Nah, man }} produces Yep..

{{ #ifeq: {{NAMESPACE}} | MediaWiki | Yep. | Nah, man }} produces Nah, man.

Magic Words

If you place any of these codes on a page, they should yield the following results:

{{PAGENAME}} = Name of the page; in this case, Creating Templates

{{FULLPAGENAME}} = Entire name of the page including the namespace; in this case, Help:Creating Templates

{{NAMESPACE}} = The namespace of this page, which on this page is Help

{{CURRENTYEAR}} = The year it is right now: 2024

{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} = The current month: May

{{CURRENTMONTH}} = The current month in date form: 05

For more variables, look here!

Additional Info

• Pages can be embedded just like regular templates. Just put the name of the page between the '{{' and '}}' brackets and put a colon before the title.
• Subpages are similar to templates. To create a subpage, just do it as you would create a regular page, but put a / and the name of the subpage you want to create after the main page. Subpages can be embedded like templates too.
• If you need any more help, just look up Wikipedia/MediaWiki articles on templates.