Help:Templates

A template is a special type of page that is has been designed to be included in one or more other pages. Since a given template can be included in many pages, templates can help reduce duplication and promote a uniform style between pages.

Templates are usually located in the [     namespace], which means any page name beginning with , such as  , however it is possible for any page to act as a template.

Referencing templates
The content of a template can be added to a page by referencing it using the wiki markup:. This references the template and includes its output at the point of insertion. Articles will be updated automatically when referenced templates are changed. A page that references templates cannot be edited to change the content of a referenced template, although a list of referenced templates will be displayed at the bottom of the page for convenience while editing it.

Substituting templates
A different way to use a template is to substitute its content into a page. This is done by inserting  immediately after the opening braces:. Once the page is saved, the link to the template is removed and the template output is substituted in its place. Any updates to the template will not affect the content that was substituted into the page.

Benefits of templates
Templates are used to add recurring messages to pages in a consistent way, to add boilerplate messages, to create infoboxes and navigational boxes, and to provide cross-language portability of texts.

Templates can also make it much easier for new and casual editors to use advanced designs, features and extensions by hiding confusing code.

Creating a template
In short, create the text you want to have copied onto the target pages on a page in the Template namespace. Creating Template:Templatename will allow users to insert into a page to display your text.

See Help:Creating templates for details.

For an overview, see the quick guide to templates on Wikimedia's Meta-Wiki.

Creating an advanced template
To learn how to change the output of the template based on what the user inputs, see Help:Template parameters and Help:Parser functions.

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