Help talk:Categories

moving advanced information to talk page for now:

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.

Is there a way to suppress a page from appearance on a category page?
For example sandbox pages which are testing category templates. Madned (talk) 19:35, August 15, 2012 (UTC)

redirecting categories
"Can I redirect a category to another category?" "No"

This is a very large confusing lie. Yes, you can. You can redirect a category the exact same way as redirecting any other page, or any place you can edit text, even Image: pages can be redirects too.

What it does not do is redirect the category entries into a different category, and does not at all stop people from adding pages to the category with redirect.

--Uberfuzzy 10:06, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, it doesn't do what users expect, and they shouldn't do it. Yes, technically it can be done. No, they shouldn't do it. Kirkburn (talk) 14:47, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * So we should encourage people to use Template:Category redirect, which gives a link to the right place and makes it less likely that others will blithely and ignorantly go on putting pages in the deprecated category. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 23:30, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Not sure what you mean by that template? If it's one that tells people category articles should move, I think that's something that should be wiki-specific and shouldn't be part of any default set. I wouldn't want to encourage any needless extra categories - I believe it's better to have wrong red link categories than wrong blue linked ones because at least they're more readily identifiable on an article. Kirkburn (talk) 15:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Category_redirect is an example adapted from the Wikipedia standard. Could easily be generalised, removing the sentence about bots so that anyone putting a page in a wrong category will see that it's wrong as soon as they look at it and will see what's right. If they are the sort of people who don't bother to look at categories, the fact that it is red on their article may not be enough to inspire them to look. Eventually someone interested in the article and in categories will follow the link; if it is red, they may (as I said above) blithely waste time creating a fresh wrong category page. The backup, if nobody looks at the wrong category, is that "maintenance" people can check the tracking category to find non-empty category redirects (which is surely more efficient than looking at every single page to see if it has a red cat link?). — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair, but still not something I would suggest for the starter wiki - templates.wikia perhaps? Kirkburn (talk) 15:13, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

CategorySelect
I think the page Help:CategorySelect should either be added to the "See also" section, or it should get a small section on its own, like the Category Tree extension. --Justme2 13:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Added as a quick link, thanks. Yep, the page needs an update as CS is now live sitewide. Kirkburn (talk) 14:51, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Supplemental information
I have updated the Phineas and Ferb Wiki's help page to include some information that I have learned about using categories. I would like to submit it for inclusion on this main help page. The "Category layout" section is specific to our wiki, but the other sections should apply to all wikis.

Also, in the automated text "This text is stored on Wikia Help. Suggest changes here.", the Suggest changes here link goes to Help talk:Categories and needs to be updated to go to Help talk:Category. - RRabbit42 ( leave a message ) 16:03, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

Unable to delete a Category
I am the admin of my site, and it seems when I add a category to a article it becomes permanent, and there is no option to delete it.

How can this be solved?
 * Hello, I still wonder how you remove/delete categories. I would very much appreciate the help.--ExcelCore 18:30, June 21, 2011 (UTC)


 * Please help me with the removal of unwanted categories from the Smurfs Wikia. (VicGeorge2K9 20:45, July 7, 2011 (UTC))


 * Hello I have the same issue here with my wiki (Backyard Sports Wiki) as well. I been trying to delete catergories but nothing has helped. Is anyway that this issue would be revolved? --DarkQueen110 23:02, July 7, 2011 (UTC)DarkQueen110


 * I too am trying to figure out a way to remove a category from a wiki page. I have a wiki that will have over a hundred pages when it's complete, and I'd like to be able to have a "draft" category for the pages that are incomplete. I haven't actually created the category yet since I can't figure out how to remove the pages from that category once they are complete. Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Capi3101 17:57, August 22, 2011 (UTC)
 * Never mind. I figured it out.

For the sake of everyone who's asked about this, there's a set of instructions at http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Remove_categories_from_articles. Basically, it boils down to hitting the little "x" button on the category you wish to remove when you've got the page open for editing (with the CategorySelect tool; the link I've got has instructions for those who don't use that tool). What happened in my case (and what I suspect happened to y'all, though I have no way of verifying this) is that I created the category, then expected to be able to fully use it right away. It took a day or so for wikia to register the category's existence, at which time I got full functionality out of it. So, only advice I can give here is be patient... Capi3101 18:56, August 22, 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't exactly delete a category on the main page on my wiki. They crammed everything at the top and i cant delete a spam category tag from the main page!

Not working
Can someone help me, it's not working on this page

[Link was here]

It turns out the gallery end tag hadn't been added.

Omni314 17:20, March 7, 2012 (UTC)

Controlling scroll-index for categories?
Checking my category list it says: Here is the code line when I edit it:
 * Popular pages
 * Characters
 * Male Characters
 * Female Character


 * visited#|TopContent
 * category1#
 * category2#
 * category3#
 * portal-url|Community
 * blogs-recent-url|blogs-recent-url-text
 * forum-url|Forum

adding a #catergory[number]# gives me another category in the menu, now here are my questions:

1. If I want to add say Category2 and Category3 so they show up as choices in the scroll menu of category1, what is the code for this?

2. How do I edit/change what pages are displayed in the scroll menue categories?ExcelCore 20:22, June 9, 2012 (UTC)

Linking to Category Pages
Attempting to do Category:X in double brackets, with or without the 'pipe trick' only adds the page to the category. I could link to a page that has the same content, but it would be nicer to redirect that page (still requiring the knowledge of how to link) to the category. Arlo James Barnes 20:31, September 29, 2012 (UTC)


 * Never mind, a little additional Googling yielded the answer, showing official pages telling you how to do and ones from individual wikis like http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/RuneScape:Categories#How_to_link_to_a_category. Simply put a colon before the word 'Category'.

Arlo James Barnes 20:37, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

ToU Breach?
I don't think using CSS to hide category galleries is against the ToU as Wikia are perfectly happy for them to be disabled. It's just quicker to use CSS. http://images.wikia.com/central/images/a/ac/Lachlan5963.png  13:26, January 20, 2013 (UTC)

Templates and Categories
Are Templates automatically included in the category:templates? Because I created an badges edit track for pages in that category (do badge edit tracks track pages in sub-catergories of said catergory?). If not I want to add a template I made into Category:Templates but I can't there's no box at the bottom of the page to add it to and when I edit it I can't add it to a category either.

Category Troubleshooting
I tried to add catergoies to the Shooting Star Page  on the Team Umizoomi Wiki, but every time I do, the categories dissapear again and the page remains uncategorized. What's the problem and what do I do?

Little Miss Cute (talk) 18:37, May 30, 2013 (UTC)
 * You had an unclosed  tag. Looks like you've gotten it fixed. =)
 * Questions like this might be better on the forums. Elecbullet (talk) 18:56, May 30, 2013 (UTC)

Deleted Pages
Whenever I delete a page, it still shows up on the category page.

--Dr.Mark 17:11, July 27, 2013 (UTC)

Clarifying a point
Under the "How to Delete Categories" section, the following would help clarify how to "delete" a category whose page doesn't exist yet.


 * A category page that has not been created will display "This page needs content. You can help by adding a sentence or a photo!". In this case, the category can be deleted by removing the category tag from all pages it was on. This will remove the category from the list of categories (Special:Categories).

Any objections to adding it? —RRabbit42 ( leave a message ) 17:27, August 25, 2013 (UTC)
 * This adds nothing but more text.--PedroM 18:32, August 27, 2013 (UTC)


 * Not necessarily. I have seen cases where someone will go to an un-created category and then create its page just to put the Delete template on it because they don't understand that they can get rid of the category at the article level. Once they do that, it takes an administrator to fully remove the category, and in the meantime, it's an active category for the wiki to auto-suggest when someone is adding categories to a page. —RRabbit42 ( leave a message ) 01:15, August 28, 2013 (UTC)