Help:Categories

A category is a software feature of MediaWiki that provides automatic indexes, that are useful as table of contents. Together with links and templates they can structure a project and aid navigation.

How can I categorize pages?
Any page can be put in a category by editing the page and adding a link to the category. Just type [[Category:]], and put the name of the category between the colon and the brackets.

Pages can belong to more than one category, by putting multiple category tags.

All categories will appear at the bottom of an article page, in a "Categories" box. Clicking the category name will take you to a Category description page which will list all articles and subcategories contained within that category. You may click "edit" on a category description page to add additional text or images to the top of the page above the subcategory lists, and to place the category in another category.

Clicking the word "categories" in that box will take you to Special:Categories, a list of all categories in the wiki.

How do I create subcategories?
A category becomes a subcategory when you edit the category description page to add a Category tag for a "higher level" category. There is no limit to the number of subcategories a category may contain, or to the number of levels of categories. It is possible (though rarely desirable) to create category "loops".

The root category on most wikis is called Category:Browse. It is good practice to build a complete Category Tree, ensuring that all categories on your wiki have a place as subcategories of Category:Browse or its descendants.

How do I link to a category page?
To create an internal link to a category page without placing the edited page into the category itself, you must put a colon before the word "Category":

Can I redirect a category to another category?
No - attempting to redirect a category will not work correctly. What you can do is add a notice (such as Wikia:Template:Category redirect) to ask users to change to another category anything that is or might be in the category concerned. (See Wikipedia:Template talk:Category redirect for discussion.)

Where can I see the currently used categories?
You can see a list of all currently used categories for each Wikia at Special:Categories. This list also displays how many pages are within each category.

Can I move a page into or out of a category article?
Ideally, no. The software won't allow you to use Special:Movepage to move a page into or out of a category, due to the way they are designed, but there is a way around that in a simple 4 step process.


 * 1) Goto Special:Export. Enter the name of the article or category you want to move in the bigger box. Uncheck the Include only the current revision, not the full history box in order to retain the full editing history. Click Export and save the file somewhere convenient, like your desktop.
 * 2) Open the file, preferably with Notepad++, which can read XML files. Otherwise, opening the file with Notepad will be messier, but still workable. Locate and change the contents within to the destination location. Save the file.
 * 3) IMPORTANT: Make sure the destination page does not exist, delete it first if so. Then navigate to Special:Import and upload the file.
 * 4) Move the talk page to the new location and delete the appropriate redirects, where applicable.

Please note, category page articles are not designed to carry general content - they do not get counted in page counts and will not be found via many Special pages.

What is the Category Tree extension?
Special:CategoryTree is an alternate way to display the contents of a category. It can be transcluded in other pages. See mw:Extension:CategoryTree for details.

The extension also adds the ability to expand subcategories on a category page, allowing you to see further subcategories.