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Links are used to reference pages within MediaWiki, other wikis, or external websites.
There are five types of hypertext links in MediaWiki:
Please note that this list does not includecategory links andfile links, which are used to place pages into categories and display images or other media files, respectively.
Tocreate 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 renderedlike 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 linkcategory 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 (soHow to contribute andhow to contribute are equivalent).However, the case of everysubsequent letter must match the target page exactly (soHow to contribute andHow To Contribute arenot equivalent).Spaces in the page title may be represented as underscores (soHow to contribute andHow_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 resultHelp:Links).If you're trying to create a wikilink to the current page, you probably want to link to a specificsection or to ananchor within the page; see the examples below.
MediaWiki uses thepagelinks table to keep track of internal wikilinks.
Unlike external links, internal links do not support the use of URL query parameters.The addition of HTML attributes is not supported by either internal or external links.
| Name/Description | Syntax | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Internal link | [[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 alsoHelp:Piped link. | |
| Pipe trick | [[Manual:Extensions|]][[User:John Doe|]][[Extension:DynamicPageList (Wikimedia)|]][[Extension:DynamicPageList (disambiguation)|]] The transformation done by the pipe trick can result in the same text for different link targets, as seen in the DynamicPageList examples. | |
| Word-ending links | [[Help]]s[[Help]]ing[[Help]]ers[[Help]]almostanylettersyoulikehere[[Help]]BUTnotalways Follows so-called "linktrail rules"localised pereach language. | 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 onsection headings and to thetop ( | #See also |
| Setting an anchor for incoming links | <divid="Unique anchor name 1">optional text</div><spanid="Unique anchor name 2">optional text</span> Renderedblock-level and inline, respectively.Doing this would allow for Setting an anchor in a section heading ==<spanid="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 alsoHelp:Magic words#Page names | Discussion |
| Link to a subpage | [[/example]] Shortcut for | /example |
| Link to a subpage without the leading slash | [[/example/]] Shortcut for | example |
| Link to a subpage of parent page for current page. Can only be used on subpages. | [[../example2]] Shortcut for | 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 alsoHelp:Categories. | Category:Help |
| Visible link to an image or media file | [[:File:Example.jpg]][[:File:Example.jpg|file label]][[Media:Example.jpg]][[Media:Example.jpg|file label]] Without the leading colon on the "File:" examples, the images would actually be displayed.See alsoHelp:Images. The | |
| Link to a page specific to each reader (user page, etc.) | [[Special:MyPage]][[Special:MyTalk]][[Special:Preferences]] | |
| Internal link to a specific revision | [[Special:PermanentLink/2393992]] Revision numbers can be found in each page'sedit 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. | |
| Redirect | #REDIRECT [[Main Page]] Should be the first line on the page.SeeHelp:Redirects. | .svg){kind=icon} Main Page |
Tocreate 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 " | 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 | |
| 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}} | 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] |
Email links usemailto: before the address.They're written like this:[mailto:anyone@example.org address name] (resulting inaddress name).If there's no name, the address is automatically numbered, like this:[mailto:anyone@example.org] becomes[2].
Addresses without square brackets won't be linked, e.g., anyone@example.com.
You can also add a CC using[mailto:anyone@example.org?cc=anyone2@example.org address name] (resulting inaddress name).
To add a subject, use:[mailto:anyone@example.com?subject=Subject]
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 alsoHelp:Magic_words#URL_data andExternal links above. | |
| External link to the current page's edit page, and styled to look like an internal link | <spanclass="plainlinks">[https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Links&action=edit Edit this page]</span> Theplainlinks 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 |
Some skins add an arrow icon
after each external link by default.However, this can be avoided by using/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Plainlinks" title="Special:MyLanguage/Plainlinks">plainlinks".For instance:
Special:Linksearch is a built-in tool that helps find pages linked to a specific URL.By using theexternallinks table, it generates a comprehensive list of page names where the link originates, along with the complete target link for each source page.You can search in all namespaces or just one.It supports wildcard (*) use, so you can search bytop-level domain (e.g.[3]),second-level domain (e.g.[4]), etc. or refine your search by specifying parts of the URL e.g.[5].
index.php. It may not find alternative URLs even if they lead to the same target. Therefore, when creating an external link, it's best to use the canonical form of the URL. If the address bar displays a modified URL after following a link, update the URL in the link accordingly for optimal use of Linksearch.Z anda.Normally, internal links within a project are easy to spot and useful for finding related pages.But when there's a mix of internal and external links, it can be tricky to track backlinks, it necessitates the use of both "Help:What links here" and "Linksearch".However, for links to specific sections or anchors, it's possible to include both an internal link and, with CSS styling usingdisplay=none an external link to provide backlink.
External links are better than interwiki links.With Linksearch, you can even find backlinks to specific sections or anchors.So, combining both internal and external links while hiding the external ones<span>http://...</span> gives us the best of both worlds.
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 articlehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower by typing[[wikipedia:Sunflower]] or, on this wiki, the shorter[[w:Sunflower]].Both will result in a linkwikipedia:Sunflower.This works because by default MediaWiki configureswikipedia: 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 createpiped links, with alternate link label, e.g.[[wikipedia:Sunflower|big yellow flower]] is the linkbig yellow flower and[[wikipedia:Sunflower|]] is the linkSunflower.
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 atManual:Interwiki.Your wiki may have aSpecial:Interwiki page listing the interwiki prefixes it supports;here is the default interwiki list.You can edit theinterwiki table on your site.
If your wiki has other language versions, you may findinterlanguage links in thesidebar, just belowtoolbox in a section titled “in other languages.”
In wiki markup an interlanguage link looks very much like an interwiki link, but behaves similarly to acategory 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 thesidebar of the page (or elsewhere, depending on the wiki's configuration and theskin 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 theISO 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 theEdit links in the languages section of Wikipedia-language versions.But it can be used across all namespaces, includingUser: 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:SunflowerWhen a link is both interwiki and interlanguage, the order iswikipedia:en:Sunflower.
For more information, seeInterlanguage links.
Apiped link is an internallink orinterwiki link where the 'target page name' of the link and its 'label' are both specified.This is useful in cases where the user wants values of 'target page name' and 'label' to be different.This also enables linking a contextually relevant word or phrase within the text of a page rather than using the generic value "see also".The wording does not need to match the name of the target page.Depending on thepreferences set for the current user and a supported browser, you can still see the link target: when you hover your cursor over the link, the name shows up in a pop-up window and is also shown in the status bar.
For example:
[[coffeehouse setup|Get Piping Hot Coffee Here!]]
will show:Get Piping Hot Coffee Here!
Let's take another example: [[help:Piped link|piped link]] will be displayed aspiped link. This can be done when context makes it clear that the page being linked to is in the help namespace.The piped link is a better way of doing this, rather than mistakenly linking topiped link which might be a disambiguation page or not exist.
Fun Fact: The termpiped refers to the use of the pipe character "|", which in this context is used to separate the more descriptive description from the actual name of the linked page.The Pipe character was named after an alternative use of it; seePipe (computing).
An alternative way is to useredirect pages.To createGet Piping Hot Coffee Here!, use [[Get Piping Hot Coffee Here!]] and make it redirect tocoffeehouse setup (please note: unlike above, what pops up when you point at the link, depending on your browser's support, is the text that is already shown).
It is convenient if the redirect is already there or will also be of use elsewhere. However, there are a few drawbacks.
Using a piped link and a redirect together, it is possible to provide information in the hover box that is not the name of the linked page, for example, the value of a unit in terms of other units.In that case, it is possible to make a page whose page name is the information that you'd like in the link title, and which redirects to the page with a more appropriate name.For example, the pagew:30.48 cm redirects tow:Foot (unit).
If the part after the| in a piped link is left empty, it isconverted to an abbreviated form of the page name on the left, based on the following rules:
[[Help:Piped_link#Pipe_trick|]] outputs [[Help:Piped_link#Pipe_trick|]].Similar to using the three or four tildes when signing on Talk pages, and using 'subst', in a preview, the result shows up in the preview itself, but the conversion in the edit box is not shown yet. Click on theShow changes option to see the change in the wikitext.
[[Help:Template|]] is converted to [[Help:Template|Template]], which is shown asTemplate[[Music: My life|]] is converted to [[Music: My life| My life]], which is shown as My life - although "Music:" itself is not a namespace (therefore the space after the colon character is not automatically removed), however, the shortcut works anyway[[w:en:Pipe (computing)|]] is converted to [[w:en:Pipe (computing)|en:Pipe]], which is shown asen:Pipe.[[commons:Boston, Massachusetts|]] is converted to [[commons:Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]], which is shown asBoston.[[w:{{{1}}}|]]does not give [[w:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]], and calling the template with a value of parameter 1 gives a working link, but in the case of substitution only.[[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]does not give [[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}]] and[[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]does not give [[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{FULLPAGENAME}}]][[Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Pipe trick|]] is not converted, so it does not give a working link.| This wikitext | Produces |
*[[project:a (b)|]]*[[w:project:a (b)|]]*[[:de:project:a (b)|]]*[[wiktionary:project:a (b)|]]*[[wiktionary:de:project:a (b)|]]*[[wikibooks:project:a (b)|]]*[[wikiquote:project:a (b)|]]*[[wikisource:project:a (b)|]]*[[wikisource:project:a (b)#c|]]*[[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]][[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]*[[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]][[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{FULLPAGENAME}}]] | *a*project:a*project:a*project:a*de:project:a*project:a*project:a*project:a* [[wikisource:project:a (b)#c|]]* [[w:en:Help:Links|]]en:Help:Links* [[m:Help:Links|]]Help:Links |
Since the sortkey syntax of the category is similar to a piped link, the pipe trick also works for category tags, even though technically, it is not useful there.
On page "A (c)", [[|b]] is converted to [[b (c)|b]] automatically.
Similarly, on page "A, c", [[|b]] is converted to [[b, c|b]] automatically.
Links in the format[[#anchor_name]] will direct to the first matching anchor on the page, typically corresponding to the first identical section heading.
You can add an[[#anchor_name]] to a link, directing it to the first matching section heading (or anchor) on thenamed page:
[[Help:Editing#Advanced editing]]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing#Advanced_editing
Section headings serve as anchors, using the heading text as the anchor name.If there are multiple sections with identical headings, each subsequent occurrence is appended with "_2", "_3", etc.
The anchor#toc links to the page's table of contents (TOC), except when there's a section already titled "toc".
Manually-set anchors are beneficial for linking to "unlinkable" elements such as tables (titles or cells) or sections of plain text.For instance, in theExternal links to internal pages section above, although the column text "Description" resembles a (minor) heading, it is not.
There are several methods to set an anchor at any position:
<span>some text</span> with optional text for visible anchors. For hidden anchors, omit the text. To point to the anchor use[[#anchor_name]].<h2>Editing Instructions</h2>. This text serves as an anchor_name.border="1"[[#top]].See alsoHelp:Section#Linking sections using an arbitrary ID.
As mentioned above, if external link style is used, e.g.[6], we can useSpecial:Linksearch:[7].
When using Linksearch, it's helpful to add leading zeros to numerical anchor names to prevent unintended matches.For example, instead of searching for "1", use "01" to avoid including "10".This practice is seen inTemplate:Current events header.Similarly, if there are anchors like "a" and "ab", using "_a" can distinguish them in search results.
The#anchorencode parser function encodes input to use as an anchor.For example, to external link to#Using linksearch anchors above, you would usehttps://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Links#{{anchorencode:Using Linksearch anchors}}, which resolves tohttps://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Links#Using_Linksearch_anchors
MediaWiki has asubpage feature that may or may not be active depending on the project and namespace.If it's activated, the following rules apply; otherwise, "A/b" is simply a standalone page with that name.
A page'stree structure is formed using forward slashes in page names: A/b is considered a subpage of A, making A the parent of A/b; additionally, A/b/c is a subpage of A/b; meanwhile, A/a, A/b, and A/c are categorized as sibling pages.
The subpage body automatically displays links to all parent pages without needing specific wikitext.These links appear even if the parent page doesn't exist.However, if any ancestor page in the sequence is missing, the chain of links will stop before that point.Additionally, the capitalization of letters after the forward slash in the page name matters, meaning "/subpage" and "/Subpage" refer to different pages.
The functions,What links here andHelp:Related changes do not consider these automatically generated links.
When the subpage feature is enabled within a namespace, any forward slash in a page's name automatically creates a subpage structure, regardless of whether it was intended or not.
You can find a list of subpages usingSpecial:PrefixIndex.
When utilizing the subpage feature within namespace A on page A:B/c/d, {{BASEPAGENAME}} shows B/c while {{SUBPAGENAME}} shows d.
Within a subpage hierarchy, you can utilize the following relative links:
Relative links remain functional even when all pages within a hierarchy are renamed to reflect a change in the root's name, even if the root becomes a child of a new parent.Users with the appropriate permissions, such as administrators and those with themove-subpages right, have the option to move both the main page and its subpages during a renaming process.
Learn more about subpages atSubpages.See examples atHelp:Links/example andHelp:Links/example/example2
This feature is only enabled in namespaces specified in the$wgNamespacesWithSubpages configuration setting, either itsdefault namespaces, or any additional namespaces set inLocalSettings.php
The guidelines outlined inManual:Page naming state that in wiki and interwiki links, conversions are made tonon-literal characters automatically.For example,"[[Manual:Page%20naming]]" will display as "Manual:Page naming".Conversely, external links operate oppositely; literal characters are transformed into non-literal characters.For example, browsers typically convert ".../wiki/!" to ".../wiki/%21".
Applying a code like %70 to a redirect deactivates it, even though the link remains accessible from the redirect page.To ensure a successful redirect, the redirect page displays the canonical form of the target, unlike the preview page which shows the link in its regular format.
What links here feature.In certain web browsers, when you place the cursor over a link, a tooltip may appear, displaying the content of the link's HTML title attribute.MediaWiki assigns different values to this attribute depending on the type of link: for internal wikilinks, it displays thepage name and (page does not exist), if the page does not exist; for interwiki links, it displays the page name with a prefix; and for external links, it displays the URL.
The browser might also display similar information in its status bar, possibly showing which section it belongs to.
Using aLinks, even if it isn't clicked, can help clarify acronyms (like displaying "neutral point of view" asNPOV) or adding annotations.Hover boxes can also be created without links, you can customize the hover box content using markup like[[Link title|<span title="hoverbox">Display text</span>]].
You cannot include a title attribute directly within the href element forexternal links.Nevertheless, you can achieve a similar outcome by using a span element instead, like this:[http://www.example.com <span title="hover text on external link">www.example.com web site</span>] :
www.example.com web site
TheMediaWiki API allows users to retrieve all links from a page. For example, you can utilize the API query calledAPI:Links to achieve this.
You can utilize images to direct users to other pages.For further details, refer to the guidance onutilizing an image to link to a specific page in the help section.
An internal wiki link is limited by maximumpage title size.