Help:Links

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There are five types of hypertext links in MediaWiki:

  1. Internal links to other pages in the same wiki (commonly called "wikilinks")
  2. External links to pages at other websites
  3. External links to internal pages in the same wiki
  4. Interwiki links to other websites using special prefixes registered in advance
  5. Interlanguage links to other wikis registered as different language versions of the current wiki

Please note that this list does not include category links and file links, which are used to place pages into categories and display images or other media files, respectively.

Internal links

To create a so-called internal link to a page on the same wiki (a "wikilink"), use double square brackets wiki markup, [[like this]]. When you preview or save your changes, you will see a link that can be followed to the target page. If the page exists the link is displayed in blue (like the word "create" in the first sentence of this paragraph); if the page does not exist, the link appears red (so the [[like this]] link is actually rendered like this). Note that the colors could be different if the color scheme of the wiki has been changed from the default. Following such a "redlink" to a missing page (whether or not it is actually red) will usually enable the user to create the page.

To markup any arbitrary string of text (not necessarily a page title) as a link, use a "vertical bar" or "pipe" character, like this: [[Help:Categories|category links]] results in the link category links.

The first letter of the link target is usually not case-sensitive (unless the wiki is configured otherwise), meaning links can be capitalized or not (so How to contribute and how to contribute are equivalent). However, the case of every subsequent letter must match the target page exactly (so How to contribute and How To Contribute are not equivalent). Spaces in the page title may be represented as underscores (so How to contribute and How_to_contribute are again equivalent), but using underscores in links will make them visible in the page text (but this can be prevented by using a "pipe").

If the page title you are linking to is that of the page you are editing, the result is not a hyperlink at all but simply bold text (for example, on this page the markup [[Help:Links]] gives the result Help:Links). If you're trying to create a wikilink to the current page, you probably want to link to a specific section or to an anchor within the page; see the examples below.

MediaWiki uses the pagelinks table to keep track of internal wikilinks.

Name/Description Syntax Result
Internal link
[[Main Page]]

[[Help:Contents]]

[[Extension:DynamicPageList (Wikimedia)]]

Main Page

Help:Contents

Extension:DynamicPageList (Wikimedia)

Piped link
[[Help:Editing pages|editing help]]

Links to a section/anchor within the target page.

[[Help:Editing pages#Preview|previewing]]

Piped link to an anchor on the same page

[[#See also|different text]]

See also meta:Help:Piped link.

editing help

previewing

different text

Pipe trick
[[Manual:Extensions|]]

[[User:John Doe|]]

[[Extension:DynamicPageList (Wikimedia)|]]

[[Extension:DynamicPageList (third-party)|]]

The transformation done by the pipe trick can result in the same text for different link targets, as seen in the DynamicPageList examples.

Extensions

John Doe

DynamicPageList

DynamicPageList

Word-ending links
[[Help]]s

[[Help]]ing

[[Help]]ers

[[Help]]almostanylettersyoulikehere

[[Help]]BUTnotalways

Follows so-called "linktrail rules" localised per each language.

Helps

Helping

Helpers

Helpalmostanylettersyoulikehere

HelpBUTnotalways

Avoiding word-ending links
[[Help]]<nowiki />ful advice

[[wikipedia:GNU General Public License|GPL]]<nowiki />v3

Helpful advice

GPLv3

Link to an anchor on the same page
[[#See also]]

Anchors are provided automatically on section headings and to the top ([[#top]]) of the page.

#See also
Setting an anchor for incoming links
<div id="Unique anchor name 1">optional text</div>

<span id="Unique anchor name 2">optional text</span>

Rendered block-level and inline, respectively. Doing this would allow for [[#Unique anchor name 1]] on the same page or [[Help:Links#Unique anchor name 1]] on a different page. Omit the "optional text" for an invisible anchor.

Setting an anchor in a section heading

==<span id="Alternate Section Title"></span>Section heading==

Note the placement. This must be a "span" tag, not a "div". (Such anchors allow sections to be retitled without breaking incoming links.)

optional text

optional text

Section heading
Link to an anchor at another page
[[Help:Images#Supported media types for images]]
Help:Images#Supported media types for images
Link to the current page's talk page
[[{{TALKPAGENAME}}|Discussion]]

See also Help:Magic words#Page names

Discussion
Link to a subpage
[[/example]]

Shortcut for [[Help:Links/example|/example]]. See also Help:Subpages .

/example
Link to a subpage without the leading slash
[[/example/]]

Shortcut for [[Help:Links/example|example]].

example
Link to a subpage of parent page for current page. Can only be used on subpages.
[[../example2]]

Shortcut for [[Help:Links/example2|example2]] if you post the link on [[Help:Links/example|example]] page.

example2
Visible link to a category page
[[:Category:Help]]

Without the leading colon the link would not be visible and the page would instead be placed into the category; this is a very common mistake. See also Help:Categories .

Category:Help
Visible link to an image or media file

File:Example.jpg

file label

Media:Example.jpg

file label

Link to a page specific to each reader (user page, etc.)
[[Special:MyPage]]

[[Special:MyTalk]]

[[Special:Preferences]]

Special:MyPage

Special:MyTalk

Special:Preferences

Internal link to a specific revision
[[Special:PermanentLink/2393992]]

Revision numbers can be found in each page's edit history. (It is very common to see links to specific revisions implemented as external links because it's easy to cut-and-paste an entire URL to form an external link.)

Special:PermanentLink/2393992
Internal link to a "diff"
[[Special:Diff/2393992]]

[[Special:Diff/2390639/2393992]]

The default (in the first example above) is to show the changes from the previous revision. See also the comments in the previous item.

Special:Diff/2393992

Special:Diff/2390639/2393992

Redirect
#REDIRECT [[Main Page]]

Should be the first and only line on the page. See Help:Redirects .

 Main Page

External links

To create an external link, usually to a page at a different website, enclose the URL followed by space and the link text in single square brackets (see examples below). When you save or preview the page, you will see a link rendered slightly differently than an internal wikilink. It may be a different color and/or be followed by an arrow icon to show that it may lead to another site.

Description You type You get
External link with specified link text
[https://mediawiki.org MediaWiki]
MediaWiki
Numbered external link
[https://mediawiki.org]

This is what happens if you omit the link text. Multiple links of this type on the same page are numbered sequentially.

[1]
Bare external link
https://mediawiki.org

URLs beginning with "http://" and "https://" are automatically linked, even when no brackets are used.

https://mediawiki.org
Avoiding auto-linked URLs
<nowiki>https://mediawiki.org</nowiki>
https://mediawiki.org
Protocol-relative external link
[//en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia]

[//en.wikipedia.org //en.wikipedia.org]

The link will be HTTP or HTTPS depending on the protocol of the page currently being viewed (which could be different for different users). This is only supported inside of square brackets [ ]. Using "//en.wikipedia.org" by itself does not result in a link.

Wikipedia

//en.wikipedia.org

External link to the current server
https://{{SERVERNAME}}/pagename
https://www.mediawiki.org/pagename
External link to other host passing the pagename
https://google.com/search?q={{PAGENAMEE}}

See also: URL encoded page names, Manual:PAGENAMEE encoding

https://google.com/search?q=Links
Mailto link
[mailto:info@example.org email me]
email me
Mailto named with subject line and body
[mailto:info@example.org?Subject=URL%20Encoded%20Subject&body=Body%20Text info]
info
Custom URI
[skype:echo123 call me]

Any URI you wish to add needs to be first declared through $wgUrlProtocols . (This example is not enabled on mediawiki.org)

[skype:echo123 call me]

External links to internal pages

To add a link to a page on the same wiki using URL query parameters, you may need to use external link syntax.

Description You type You get
External link to the current page's edit page
[https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Links&action=edit Edit this page]

[{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} Edit this page]

See also Help:Magic_words#URL_data and External links above.

Edit this page

Edit this page

External link to the current page's edit page, and styled to look like an internal link
<span class="plainlinks">[https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Links&action=edit Edit this page]</span>

The plainlinks class can be used in cases where you want an external link to look like an internal one, by suppressing the icon that normally appears after it.

Edit this page

Limitations

  1. External links doesn't support Word-ending links.
  2. External links doesn't count toward Special:WhatLinksHere (What links here).

Interwiki links

Interwiki links are internal-style links to other websites (which do not have to be wikis, despite the name). For example, you can link to the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower by typing [[wikipedia:Sunflower]] or, on this wiki, the shorter [[w:Sunflower]]. Both will result in a link wikipedia:Sunflower. This works because by default MediaWiki configures wikipedia: as an "interwiki prefix" that turns into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ when used inside [[ ]]. (It may not work if the admin of your wiki has changed the setting.) Unlike internal links, interwiki links do not use page existence detection, so an interwiki link will appear blue even if the page does not exist on the remote wiki.

Similar to internal page links, you can create piped links, with alternate link label, e.g. [[wikipedia:Sunflower|big yellow flower]] is the link big yellow flower and [[wikipedia:Sunflower|]] is the link Sunflower.

Basically, interwiki links are abbreviations for commonly-used longer external links. A very similar link could be created as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower big yellow flower].

More details are at Manual:Interwiki and m:Help:Interwiki linking. Your wiki may have a Special:Interwiki page listing the interwiki prefixes it supports; here is the default interwiki list. You can edit the interwiki table on your site.

Interlanguage links

If your wiki has other language versions, you may find interlanguage links in the sidebar, just below toolbox in a section titled “in other languages.”

In wiki markup an interlanguage link looks very much like an interwiki link, but behaves similarly to a category link in that it is rendered in a special way. While category links appear in a special list at the bottom of the page (usually), interlanguage links appear in a special list in the sidebar of the page (or elsewhere, depending on the wiki's configuration and the skin used).

The purpose of interlanguage links is to link pages on the same topics in different languages. To create an interlanguage link, type [[language prefix:page name]] anywhere in the page (preferably at the bottom, like category links); the language prefix is the prefix specified at your wiki for the other language version (typically the ISO 639-1 language code). The interlanguage link is unilateral, it does not point back from that page in the other language. For that purpose, an equivalent back-link needs to be placed there as well. It does not work like the "Edit links" in the languages section of Wikipedia-language versions. But it can be used across all name spaces, including 'User:' to point to ones other profiles in other languages.

If you want to make the interlanguage link appear at a specific place in the content of the page rather than in the sidebar, add a colon before the language prefix:

[[:en:Sunflower]]en:Sunflower

When a link is both interwiki and interlanguage, the order is wikipedia:en:Sunflower.

For more information, see m:Help:Interwiki linking#Interlanguage links.

Limits

An internal wiki link is limited by maximum page title size.

See also