This template creates a formatted external link. It formats the appearance ofdisplayed URLs, while making themmachine-readable as part of emittedmicroformat meta-data, inside templates such as infoboxes.
Note: If you wish to display text instead of the URL (e.g.website instead ofexample.com), pleasedo not use this template. Instead, consider using normalwiki markup orTemplate:Official website. Displaying text instead of the url will render the microformat data invalid.
The first parameter is parsed to decide whether it is a complete URL. If it doesn't start with a URI scheme (such as "http:", "https:", or "ftp:"), the prefix "http://" is prepended to the specified generated target URL of the link.
Parameter 2 ({{URL|url name|optional display text}}) isdeprecated. Seenote above for more information and alternative templates.
URL with = character should use numbered parameters
If the URL contains an equals sign, as is common in a query string, the parameter|1= should be used for the URL ({{URL|1=example.com}}). This applies when the value of the URL is unknown, for example, when this template is used in another template specifying the effective URL as a variable value
The template attempts to handle simple cases where a URL containing an equals sign is specified without the necessary|1=, but it is still better practice to pass it in.
Thedeprecated second parameter for the displayed text, if present in legacy uses,must also be explicitly numbered if the first parameter is explicitly numbered ({{URL|1=url name|2=optional display text}}); otherwise it will override the value of the first parameter:
The template wraps thedisplayed URL with aclass="url" so that it is included in any parentmicroformat which takes a URL parameter – seeour microformats project.