Help:Links

There are four kinds of links in MediaWiki: This wiki does not use the fourth type of link, since we handle multiple languages differently.
 * 1) internal links to other pages in the same wiki
 * 2) external links to other websites
 * 3) interwiki links to other websites specifically registered as possible link targets
 * 4) interlanguage links to other websites registered as other language versions of the same wiki

Internal links
An internal link (from a "source" page to a "target" page on the same wiki) is formed by enclosing the name of the desired target page in double square brackets. If it is awkward to use the actual page title at that point in the source page text, a piped link can be used (see examples below).

When the source page is previewed or saved, the new link will be visible. If the target page already exists on this wiki, it will appear blue (or purple, if the page has already been visited by the reader); if not, it will appear red. (Following a "redlink" will bring up the page editor in which the page can be created. For more information about editing and creating pages, please see the other Help pages.)

Note that "selflinks", in which the source and target pages are the same, are not shown as links but instead displayed in bold. To link to a particular place (i.e., a section heading) in the current page, use an "anchor" (see below), or use, which always links to the top of the page.

Note that the first letter of the target page is case-insensitive (it is automatically capitalized in page titles but can be upper- or lower-case in links), and that spaces can be represented as underscores (typing an underscore in a link is equivalent to typing a space, but is not recommended, except possibly in piped links, since the underscore will be visible to the reader).

Redlinks
Internal links to nonexistent pages show up as redlinks. These can be used to create a new page.

Links that lead to nowhere are not that useful, especially if they hang around for a long time. If there seems like a need for a link to a page that doesn't exist, consider creating the page!

If a page on a certain subject would be useful, but the editor doesn't have the time or resources to create it, consider adding it to the requested artlcles list, rather than making a redlink.

Mediawiki keeps track of redlinks here: Special:WantedPages.

External links to internal pages
Linking to a wiki page whose URL contains parameters (set off by  and  ) is most easily accomplished using an external link.

External link icons
If the link uses a special protocol or its target is a special kind of file (based on the file extension in the URL), it may be marked with a special icon (instead of the default showing an arrow).

Interwiki links
Interwiki links are internal-style links to external websites that have been registered in advance as useful targets for outgoing links. The most well known such site is the English Wikipedia.

Unlike other internal links, interwiki links do not rely on page existence detection, so an interwiki link will look the same whether the target page exists or not.

Interlanguage links
Interlanguage links (in which the target is a page in a different language hosted at an entirely different wiki) are not used on the Gentoo Linux wiki. Instead the Translate extension is used to maintain pages in languages other than English. Please see the Gentoo Wiki:FAQ for more information.

Whatlinkshere
For including a section of pages linking to the present page, use the   transclusion. This appears useful within noinclude tags for pages transcluded to others. What links here: