Forum:Template categories

I've been trying to set up a template hierarchy on the new wiki I've just started, and I am trying to organize these templates into categories to make it easier to locate them and find which one to use.

The templates that I'm using have a "meta-template" that contains the basic formatting markup, to coincide with the overall graphical theme of the wiki (also, to make it easier to change the appearance if that is desired), and to lay out other rough organizational appearance issues.

The "main" set of templates then have this meta-template transcluded for this formatting data.

To give a specific example, the "meta-template" I'm using is c:newamsterdam:Template:Quote and one of the "templates" that I'm using this "meta-template" inside of is c:newamsterdam:Quote:Rebecca. In turn, I am using this short quotation on the Main Page, and I have future plans to include the quote on other content pages which is why I'm using templates here rather than embedding the quotes directly into the main page.

What I'd like to do is put into the "meta-template" some method of putting the individual quotes into categories but not have that categorization cascade down into the main content pages. Here is the hierarchy:

Template:Quote ^ |  Quote:Rebecca ^ |  Main Page

I would like to put each of these pages into independent categories, and have the top level contain the categorization information.

I can use the   notation to get this to work for putting the category into the 2nd tier, but the category cascades down to the Main Page as well.

I'd like to use the following syntax:

   

However, all this seems to accomplish is to avoid putting the category into any page at all.

Does anybody know how to set up categorization that cascades down only one level of usage, from a "parent" template like this?

I do realize I could accomplish this by simply adding the category with   tags on the second level of this heirarchy, but I'm lazy and don't want to put in this categorization on every template that I'm using... or at least forgetting to do that when I'm creating dozens of quotes at once, which is my motivation for even attempting this. Also, I would like to keep the templates as simple as possible in terms of only entering the minimal information that repeats itself. --Robert Horning 21:18, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

or (this, to avoid categorizing the template itself) nvm, that does not work. -- Sixorish 05:51, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Tried   ? I'm not sure if includeonly can be nested like this though, may have to do something like:


 * this should work to suit your needs, but is not very efficient if you plan to do this with the same namespaces: (you'll need to have 'Quote' become a namespace for this since you don't already have it). main namespace articles won't get categorized with this -- Sixorish 10:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Ow, that is an ugly hack, but it does get the job done. I'm still undecided about putting the quotes into their own separate namespace or not.  Right now getting new namespaces is a messy process via Wikia, and considering how hard it is for the Wikia server maintainers to mess with the wiki code to put in new namespaces, I want to get the idea nailed down before I commit to a major independent namespace for something like this.  I did see a MediaWiki extension that would allow bureaucrats to manipulate namespaces directly, but it is only in the early alpha testing stage right now.  In theory, projects can have from 50 to as many as about 100 private namespaces (depending on how you organize it) but Wikia has a current policy limiting it to just three... due to the manual manipulation involved.


 * BTW, if there is a better idea "out there", I would still like to see other suggestions for this problem. --Robert Horning 12:52, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * hmmmm... template:
 * quote: |trans=
 * transcluding page: |trans=~
 * should work? I don't think that'll be any better than the noinclude idea though -- Sixorish 13:42, 24 January 2009 (UTC)