Help with Linking

As wikis are intended to grow dynamic content, using links to other pages is one of the most important things to remember when editing a wiki.

For pages inside the wiki, use brackets with quotes. For pages outside the wiki, use brackets without quotes. Example: [http://forums.somethingawful.com/]

If you enclose the name of another page in square brackets and double quotes ["like this"], it will make a link to that page. To have it display with alternative text, write it ["like this" with the display stuff here].

First you must set an 'anchor'. So, say you're on the coffee section of a page. You place an anchor here with the label coffee by putting [[Anchor(coffee)]] by that area. Then you can create a link to that section by putting [#coffee Text for the link here] wherever you'd like on the page. Clicking on the link will take you directly to that section. For example: There has been an anchor with the label end placed at the very end of this page. If I write [#end the end of the page!] it displays as: the end of the page! Go ahead and click on it :)

There are several ways to insert external references¹ into the text:

• URLs (website addresses) written as part of the text
  

• URLs in [brackets].
  

• Email addresses
  

If the URL ends in an image extension (".gif", ".jpg" or ".png"), the wiki will display that image instead of a link to that image.

If you enter URLs into normal text, the wiki might have a hard time telling what's part of your URL and what isn't. There are three ways to force the ending of an URL:

• put a space after the URL
  

• put a new line after the URL
  

• use the bracketed URL syntax
  

Of these, the bracketed URLs are generally preferred, as it will be easier for other editors to identify and you can use alternate text to make it prettier.

The supported URL protocols are: `http`, `https`, `ftp`, `nntp`, `news`, `mailto`, `telnet`, and `file`.

  http://wikispot.org
  [http://wikispot.org]
  [http://wikispot.org Wikispot - The best spot on the Internet]
  http://daviswiki.org/Whole_Earth_Festival?sendfile=true&file=TieDye.jpg
  [http://daviswiki.org/Whole_Earth_Festival?sendfile=true&file=TieDye.jpg]
  [http://daviswiki.org/Whole_Earth_Festival?sendfile=true&file=TieDye.jpg pretty shirts]
  ["A Page In The Wiki"]
  ["A Page In The Wiki" blah blah]
  bob@example.com
  [#anchorname Anchor Link]
  ["Broken Link"]

http://wikispot.org


http://wikispot.org


Wiki Spot - The best spot on the Internet








pretty shirts


A Page In The Wiki


blah blah


bob@example.com


Anchor


Broken Link

Link to a (non-existent) page only when you think it would be a good page to have on the wiki. Links should be made to places where useful information could go. It's okay to have links to nowhere, but links should be kept reasonable.

So, when you make a page, say Central Park, you should do a search to see what pages refer to "central park". Then add links to your new page, appropriately and reasonably. You might need to fix links to say, "Downtown Central Park", to point to your page. You don't have to link a page every time it appears in the text — once is usually enough. And not every page that mentions Central Park needs to include a link to it; use your discretion to decide where a link would be useful.

Interwiki links are an easy and elegant way to link to other wikis. It gives you a cool community icon for each wiki, and leads people to other wiki community projects.

To keep connected with other wikis within the Wiki Spot project, it's fairly easy to use interwiki links. Start the link with [wiki:, type the name of the wiki you want, another colon (:), and the wiki page name in quotes as usual.

For example, [wiki:davis:"Central Park"] will link to Central Park on Davis Wiki.

If you want to know more, including how to link to non-Wiki Spot wikis, head over to the Interwiki Links page.

To have a page redirect to another page, simply put the line:

#redirect A Page In The Wiki

as the first line of the page you want to redirect to A Page In The Wiki. So putting that line in any page, at the top, will make that page redirect to A Page In The Wiki.

Unless you've got a really good reason, it may be a good idea to keep redirects around even if they're not being linked to. This is important because it makes it easier for people in the future to link to pages within the wiki, as well as keeps links from other websites working well into the future.

When you rename a page, it automatically creates a redirect with the old name.

If another site in the Interwiki Community does a really good job on a page, you might just want to redirect to that site. Just modify the redirect line much the same as in interwiki links:

#redirect wiki:wiki_name:"A Page in the Wiki"

This could be very useful for a wiki with closely related wikis, such as those that are geographically close to each other. However, a subject may be important in a different context to different communites, so you may want to have the page on both wikis.