Help:Shared templates

Puzzle globe-1 — Templates are one of the pieces that build a wiki.

Shared templates are templates that can be used across Wikia. These templates originate on Community Central.

Step by step

First, identify which template you're going to use by visiting it on 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 {{wikia:templatename}} or {{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 {{wikia:adoption}} or {{w:adoption}}

It will display on that community like this:

This Fandom wiki is currently inactive. You can adopt this wiki and revive it.

Usage notes

General notes

Benefits: One advantage of having shared templates on Help:Wikia 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 out of the template namespace, but instead of using {{wikia:Template name}} you must use {{wikia::Full page name}}, {{w::Full page name}}, {{:w:Full page name}} or {{:wikia:Full page name}}. There are three (or two) colons in these cases; one arranges to look for a full page name instead of a template name, another terminates the interwiki prefix wikia: or its shorthand w:, and the third colon terminates the namespace in a full page name such as Help:Shared templates.
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 stylesheets in place, 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.
Translations: Translations are welcome, either at the native name for the template, or as a subpage of the English name, using [[w:Template:Name/lang code]] format. For example, the Russian version of Template:Wikipedia could go at Template:Википедия or at Template:Wikipedia/ru.

Limitations

Parameters: Parameters cannot be used with shared templates.
Update speed: If a template is edited on Community Central, pages on other communities using it should automatically update. However, this can sometimes take a short while to occur, and can be overridden by editing the destination page.
Noinclude: <noinclude> is not currently passed through. For example, Template:Other free used as {{wikia:Other free}} on another community still shows the documentation section.
Categories: Community Central pages used as shared template do not affect the categories of the page where the shared template is used. For example, {{w::User:WikiaBot}} works as expected, but does not set Category:Wikia script accounts.

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