Help:VisualEditor/User guide/Links

Link is one of the most basic elements used on wikis. It links text to another page, website or resource.

How to create a link is detailed on the visual editor main documentation. The following documentation details how to create all types of links.

Link types

There are few types of link available to use on MediaWiki.

Internal link

This hyperlink is the most basic type of link. It links to another page on the same wiki.

You can insert this link by :

pasting page's name inside double square brackets in the editor: [[MediaWiki]].
typing two opening square brackets
press "Link" option in the menu
hit ctrl + K

For the last 3 cases, a small window will pop up in which you can search for the page you want to create a link to.

For advanced usage, read Help:Links.

External link

External links link to the outside of the wiki. To create this type of link, you have few options:

In the Link popup open External link tab, then type the URL for the link. You can add a label for this link by clicking on that link again, clicking Edit, and Add label.
Specify URL just inside the content of the page: https://wikipedia.org.
For more options, see Help:Links

Interwiki link

Sometimes also called interproject link, it is similar to an internal link, but leads to another wiki, for example from MediaWiki to Meta Wikimedia.

To create such a link, insert syntax of the internal link in the Link popup, but prefixed with the interwiki: wikinews:Soyuz rocket launches GIOVE-B satellite.

List of interwiki prefixes can be found here.

Interlanguage link

Example of how to create a link to Polish Wikipedia article about "Saturn".

This is a link that leads to a page in the current wiki (or to another wiki), but in a different language.

To create an interlanguage link from any project in a certain language to the same project in another language, type language code, followed by colon, followed by the pagename in Link popup: pl:Saturn.

Interlanguage and interwiki link combined

If you want to link to any interwiki page to another project in other language, type at the beginning of the link:

the interwiki prefix followed by a colon
the language prefix followed by a colon
the page title

Example: wikipedia:pl:Saturn.

Resource link types

There are few types of links that lead to specific resources, not pages nor external entities.

Category link

To create a link to certain category, type the category name prefixed by Category keyword and colon in the Link popup: Category:Manual.

Wikitext users may notice that the colon required by wikitext is not required on the visual editor. The visual editor automatically adds the colon to the wikitext.

File link

To create a link to a certain file, type the full file name (including the File: prefix and the extension) as follows: File:Wiki.png.