Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-35831419-20191214213056/@comment-9605025-20191214225456

Templates are just pages that are intended to be used on other pages. The type of content you can put on a template is no different from the type of content you can put on a regular page. The one slight difference is that regular pages don't typically use parameters; although they could if you wanted them to. Likewise, templates don't have to use parameters. The main purpose of creating a template is to easily include the same content and/or content formatting accross multiple pages.

Are you planning on making a portable infobox or something that is not a portable infobox?

If you are making something that is not a portable infobox, imagine what you want the content to look like on regular pages. If you had to put it directly on a regular page, what would you put? Start by putting that on the template page. Then, if you want page-specific changes to the content, use parameters in place of fixed content. You can use parameters either to directly provide the page-specific content or in combination with parser fucntions to switch between showing/hiding certain fixed content on the template.

If you are making a portable infobox, you will need to use the portable infobox markup. If you create the portable infobox like any other template, use the special markup as the template content. However, you can avoid dealing directly with the markup by using InfoboxBuilder to create/edit the page. How do you get to InfoboxBuilder? Here are a few ways.
 * 1) Create the template like any other template but leave it blank and classify it as an "Infobox" when asked to select the type. Save it. The next time you click the "Edit" button, you should be taken to the InfoboxBuilder.
 * 2) Go to "Special:InfoboxBuilder" directly. Be sure to set the name before saving. To do this, look at the bar at the top of the editor; the one with the back arrow and the "Publish" button. You should see "Editing: template: Untitled Infobox Template". Click "Untitled Infobox Template" and a box will pop-up allowing you to set the name. When setting the name this way, you do not include "Template:".
 * 3) Go to "Special:InfoboxBuilder/Name" where "Name" is the name of the template page without the preceeding "Template:". This will do the same thing as #2 but the name will already be completed.

I hope this helps. If you need a step-by-step, please provide more information on what youo are trying to create.