Iron Chariots Wiki:Templates

Templates are reusable portions of text and/or wiki markup that can be "included" in other pages by using the "double-braces" wiki syntax:
 * Name of template

The name of the template can have spaces (you don't have to replace them by _underscores_); the first letter is case insensitive (it can be capital or lower-case), but subsequent letters are case sensitive.

The content of the template is stored in the same-named page in the Template: namespace, which would be linked to using the following "double-square-brackets" syntax:

The two forms differ in that the former results in the substitution (or "transclusion") of the contents of the template page at that point in the current page (where ... appears), whereas the latter simply links to the page.

Wiki markup for templates
A concrete example: The latter form, by the way, is how you can mark extremely short articles ("stubs") that need the attention of other editors.
 * results in the link:
 * Template:Stub
 * Stub &mdash; or, equivalently, stub &mdash; results in the contents of the "Stub" template being inserted into the current page:
 * This article is a stub. You can help out by  [ expanding it] .

On the other hand: Note that and Stub have nothing to do with each other.
 * links to the "article" Stub, which itself is a redirect to Category:Stubs

Transclusion of content from other namespaces
If you want to insert the contents of an article in the "main namespace" into another page (this should rarely be done in practice), add a colon immediately after the opening double-braces: Please note: Although this feature exists, it probably shouldn't be used in articles on this wiki.
 * would link to List of atheist websites
 * :List of atheist websites would insert the contents of List of atheist websites, not Template:List of atheist websites

If the text in braces starts with a namespace prefix, then the contents of that page will be transcluded instead of a page in the Template: namespace:
 * links to our custom interwiki map
 * Project:Interwiki map (custom) inserts our custom interwiki map into a page (this is done on the page Project:Interwiki map, for example)

See WikimediaMeta:Help:Template for more (much, much more) information.

Lists of templates
The following tables list the templates that are currently in use on this wiki, including brief descriptions and examples of usage.

See also the simple, alphabetical list of templates and Category:Templates.