A custom namespace is an extra community-specific namespace beyond the standard namespaces that exist on every wiki. Custom namespaces allow communities to divide their content into additional areas with unique, topic-themed titles and technical setups.
Custom namespaces can only be added by Fandom staff.
What restrictions are there on namespace creation?[]
- There must be an agreement in your community for the creation of the namespace.
- The namespace must not be the same as any of your wiki's custom interwiki links.
- There cannot be any pages that match the custom namespace name before it is created. This means you can't have any pages (including redirects) with a title of the form "Custom namespace name:Pagetitle". Any such pages would become inaccessible after the namespace addition. You should move these pages to a different namespace in order to retain them, and if you are unsure if any pages meet this criteria, you can search for them via Special:PrefixIndex/Custom namespace name:.
- Every namespace will have a talk namespace associated with it. This will usually be at "Custom namespace name talk:" unless you request otherwise.
How do I request a custom namespace?[]
Please decide on the following for your custom namespace:
- Should the new namespace be visible in search results by default?
- Unless you have an unusual setup, this answer would usually be "yes".
- Users can still search the namespace using the checkboxes, this choice is only about if the checkbox is checked by default.
- Should the new namespace have subpages?
- By default, we enable subpages for all new namespaces unless told not to. Please inform us if you have unique/specific intentions for the namespace.
- What should the talk namespace be called?
- If you request "Example", the talk pages will be "Example talk"
- This is often important in languages other than English.
Make your request by contacting Fandom Staff. To help us respond quickly, be sure to include all the answers to the above questions.
Note: if you want multiple custom namespaces (you can generally ask for a maximum of three), please request them together rather than in three separate requests.
Some common custom namespaces[]
While custom namespaces can be used to organize anything, there are some namespaces communities often request. While you are not limited to these, they illustrate some typical uses:
- Portal: A typical gaming namespace that functions as a point of access to similar information on the wiki.
- News: Communities that want to publish official press releases about their topic from game creators, movie studios, etc.
- Gallery: For pages meant to solely house an image gallery about a community's topic.
See also[]
- Help:Namespaces, for general information about what namespaces are and a list of the default namespaces wikis have.
- Help:Special pages, a guide about how some Special Pages can help you view and organize namespace pages.
Further help and feedback[]
- Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
- Check Fandom Community Central for sources of further help and support
- Check Contacting Fandom for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article