Template:Documentation

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{{doc}}

Not to be confused with Template:Documentation subpage.

This template is used on many pages and changes may be widely noticed. Test changes in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

This template uses Lua:

Module:Documentation

This is the {{Documentation}} template used on almost every template page to contain that template's documented instructions and information, including <templatedata>.

For detailed instructions on how and when to use this template, see Wikipedia:Template documentation

This template displays a green documentation box like you are seeing now and automatically loads the content from a /doc subpage. It can also load the content from other places if instructed to.

This template is intended for documenting templates and other pages that are transcluded onto other pages. It can be used in the template namespace and most other namespaces.

Use of this template allows templates to be protected where necessary, while allowing anyone to edit the documentation and categories.

Usage

Normally this template is used without any parameters, placed at the bottom of the template or page being documented, within a <noinclude>...</noinclude> container:

<!--Last line of your template code--><noinclude>
{{Documentation}}
<!-- Add categories to the /doc subpage, interwikis to Wikidata, not here -->
</noinclude>

Then this template automatically loads the content from the /doc subpage of the template it is used on.

This template can also load the content from any other page. Like this:

<!--Last line of your template code--><noinclude>
{{Documentation |Template:Other page/doc}}
</noinclude>

Note that when loading the documentation from a page other than the local /doc page it becomes tricky to handle the categories.

The content can also be fed directly as text. Like this:

<!--Last line of your template code--><noinclude>
{{Documentation
 | content =
(some documentation)
}}</noinclude>

When the |content= parameter is used, the doc box normally does not show the [edit] [purge] links in the top right corner. Note that if the /doc page exists, a link to it is still shown in the link box below the doc box.

Parameter |1= and the |content= parameter can also be combined, like this:

<!--Last line of your template code--><noinclude>
{{Documentation |1=Template:Any page/doc
| content =
{{Template:Any page/doc |parameters}}
}}</noinclude>

Then the pagename fed as parameter 1 is used for the [edit] [purge] links and for the /doc link in the link box below the doc box. But the content parameter is used for the content shown in the doc box. The above code means that the content is transcluded as {{Template:Any page/doc|parameters}}. In this example a parameter is also fed to the /doc page being loaded.

Place and tags

This code should be added at the bottom of the template code, with no space before <noinclude> (which would cause extra space on pages where the template is used):

<noinclude>
{{documentation}}
</noinclude>

To automatically insert the noinclude tags, the template call and the guiding comment, you can also use this substitution code shortcut:

{{subst:doc-code}}

Which results in:

<noinclude>
{{documentation}}
<!-- Add categories to the /doc subpage and interwikis in Wikidata, not here! -->
</noinclude>

Best practice

Categories that apply to the template itself should be added to the bottom of the /doc subpage, inside <noinclude>{{Sandbox other||...}}</noinclude>. Interwiki links that apply to the template should be listed at Wikidata (more at Wikipedia:Wikidata). For more complex cases, see Wikipedia:Template documentation.

If the documentation page contains <includeonly> or <noinclude> tags as part of the visible documentation text, replace the "<" with "<" or use Template:tag.

Heading

When in the Template namespace, this template shows this heading:

Template documentation

In most other namespaces, such as "Wikipedia:", it shows this heading:

Documentation

But when on File (image) pages it shows this heading:

Summary

The heading parameter can be used to set the heading to something else. Like this:

{{Documentation |heading=Infobox documentation}}

If the heading parameter is empty but defined, no heading is shown and no [edit] [purge] links are shown. Like this:

{{Documentation |heading=}}

The heading-style parameter can be fed optional CSS values. Without quotation marks " " but with the ending semicolons ;. For example:

heading-style=font-size:150%;color:red;

Link box

Below the big doc box is a small link box that shows some meta-data about the documentation. The link box shows different things depending on what parameters are fed to this template, and in which namespace it is used. In some cases the link box is not shown at all.

To hide the link box, add the parameter

|link box=off.

You can also insert customised text into the link box, by setting the |link box= parameter. For example:

  |link box=This documentation is automatically generated by [[Template:Country showdata]]

Subject namespaces vs. talk namespaces

Terminology: Subject namespaces are the opposite of talk namespaces. For instance "Template:" is the subject space of "Template talk:".

This template is usually placed in a subject namespace, within <noinclude> tags. But in some cases this template needs to be on the talk page:

In the Mediawiki namespace, since often does not work in system messages, and since the Mediawiki namespace needs to be kept clean for performance reasons.

When placed on talk pages, this template usually is placed near the top of the page and without <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags.

The /doc, /sandbox and /testcases pages should normally be in the subject namespace, except in the namespaces that do not have the MediaWiki subpage feature enabled: Main, File, Mediawiki and Category. (But currently we only show the /sandbox and /testcases links from User, User talk, Template and Template talk namespaces.) There are also a whole bunch of other technical reasons why the /doc page must be stored under the talk page for those (but only those) namespaces.

This template automatically points its [create] links for the /doc, /sandbox and /testcases to the right namespace.

Full syntax

{{Documentation}}

{{Documentation
 | content =
}}

{{Documentation
| [path to documentation page]
| heading-style = 
| heading = 
| link box = 
}}