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Templates are one of the pieces that build a wiki.

Shared templates are templates that can be used across Fandom wiki. Stored on English Community Central, they can be called on every other Fandom wiki.

Step by step[]

  • First, identify which template you're going to use by visiting it on English Community Central. You can browse for a specific template at Special:AllPages. You can also create a new one from scratch.
  • Then, go to the page you wish to display the template on at another wiki, and open that page for editing.
  • On the page, enter {{w:templatename}}. You can also use a redirected template, e.g., {{w:lorem}} for {{w:lorem ipsum}}.
For example, if you wanted to display Template:Adoption on another community, you would edit a page there and enter {{w:adoption}}
It will display on that community like this:
This Fandom wiki is currently inactive. You can adopt this wiki and revive it.


A deeper dive[]

General notes[]

  • Benefits: One advantage of having shared templates on Fandom Community Central is that they are watched by a large community, and can be quickly fixed in cases of vandalism.
  • Non-template pages: You can also include pages that are not in the template namespace, but there's a slightly different syntax. For pages in the main namespace, you must use {{w::Full page name}}, or {{:w:Full page name}}. If you want to grab a page from any other namespace, you'll need to remember to include that namespace's name. For instance, {{:w:User blog:Whomever/Blog name}} or {{w::User blog:Whomever/Blog name}} will both put the English Community Central blog on your local wiki.
  • Editing: Major changes that could have negative effects on other communities should not be made to any shared templates. However, corrections and improvements that won't prevent the templates from functioning in the way they were originally used are welcome.
  • Styling: Since these templates will be used on communities with a wide variety of designs, be careful not to add unnecessary styling and formatting to the templates, since this might conflict with the style of the communities they are used on. Also, note that styling seen on English Community Central which is controlled by the CSS pages on Central will not transfer to your local wiki. Central's blog pages look particularly different on other wikis.

Limitations[]

  • Parameters: Parameters cannot be used with shared templates. This may be fixed by using the {{raw:w:}} instead of the normal {{w:}}.
  • Update speed: If a shared page is edited on English Community Central, pages on other communities using it automatically update — but they probably won't immediately do so. If you want to speed up your local update, you might have luck performing a small or null edit on your local page.
  • Noinclude: <noinclude> doesn't work on the local wiki. The most common consequence is that documentation for a template displays locally, which is usually not desired. For instance, Template:Other free used as {{w:Other free}} on another community still shows the documentation section.
  • Categories: Any categories on a shared page don't show up on the target wiki. For example, {{w::User:FandomBot}} works as expected, but it does not set Category:Fandom script accounts. Ultimately, this is probably more beneficial than not, since local admins typically want creative control over their category structure.

See also[]

Further help and feedback[]