Manual:Category

What are categories?

Pages can be characterized with key words, so-called categories. This enables your user to find pages in your wiki more easily, and to display pages of the same category clustered on an automatically created category page.
Categories can be created manually (e.g. different topics in the wiki, or the names of departments within your organization). Furthermore, in special cases MediaWiki also assigns automatically created categories (e.g. for pages with broken page links). You can assign several categories to a page. Categories can be organized as top categories with subcategories. Therefore, it is possible to create a tree structure and thus to build a hierarchical structure.

Create and assign categories

What are categories?

There are two ways of creating a category, respectively of assigning a page to a category:

Classic

Open an article you want to assign to a category in edit mode. Now enter the following line of wiki-code (preferably at the end of the article):

[[Category:Name_of_the_desired_Category]]

Please note that

• any amount of categories may be created by all users. So before you start, it's best to make sure which categories already exist. This helps to avoid unnecessary duplications.
• there will be a category page created in the wiki for every category that hasn't been assigned before. This category page should also be filled with content (see below).
• a page can be assign to multiple categories.
• the exact line in the source, where the category is assigned, is technically completely irrelevant. However, it is usual to insert categories at the end of an article.
• the syntax of a category doesn't allow any blanks in the name. These will be marked with an underline (e.g. [[Category:New_pages]]).

After saving the article, the assigned categories will be displayed in the page header.

Using InsertCategory

You can also use the BlueSpice function InsertCategory to assign or create categories.
To do so, click on the button while in edit more, or choose Insert category from the context menu you can open in the upper right corner of the page.

More informationen about InsertCategory can be found here.

Display of all existing category pages

On the special page Special:Categories you can display a list of all existing categories in your wiki. Click on the category to get to the respective category page. If a page in the listing is still marked red, the category has been linked, but the associated category page has not been edited yet.

Display of all pages of a category

On the page Category:Name_of_the_desired_Category you will find all pages and files assigned to a particular category.

If you have opened a red link - a category page that has not yet been edited - you have the possibility to enter a short (or longer) description of the category, so that authors and readers in your wiki know how to use this category.

Please note: when working with mutated vowels in your wiki ("Umlaute"), articles using them will be placed at the end of each sorting of a category page (e.g. "Mädchen" after "Muh"). With the help of the variable {{DEFAULTSORT:sortkey}} you can assign an alternative title that will be used for the sorting (e.g. {{DEFAULTSORT:Maedchen}}).

You can learn more about Variables in the article about MagicWords.

Special: Multilevel category system

You can also create a multilevel category system. To do so, you just have to assign new categories to existing category pages, making them sub-categories of the assigned category. You can use any way already explained above.

The so-called category tree is a practical way to display all categories and sub-categories of your wiki. You can learn more about it here.

Linking to category pages

Linking to a category requires a colon in front of

Categories work like keywords or tags. Adding categories to a page makes it easier to find the page in the wiki. All pages of the same category are automatically shown on the corresponding category page. For each category that has not been assigned before, the wiki will automatically create a redlink. Once the page has been created by clicking on the redlink, all pages and subcategories are automatically listed on the cagegory page.

Categories are usually created by users. However, in special cases, MediaWiki also assigns auto-generated categories (for example, pages with broken links).

Characteristics

• Tagging
  : Categories tag pages.

• Multiple categories per page
  : A page can be assigned to several categories.

• Main categories
  : Categories can be organized under main categories.
• Independent of namespaces
  : Categories are not contained in namespaces, but are shared wiki-wide.

Create and assign categories

To create a category or assign a page to an existing category, there are multiple options:

1. In the title area (view mode)
2. Via the options menu in the visual editor (visual editing mode)
3. With Wikitext (source editing mode)
4. In the "Page Information" fyout of the quality management tools

In the title section of the page

The title section contains the category assignment field. Any user with edit rights can click on the edit link to add or remove categories from the page. To view all existing categories with subcategories, you can click on the tree icon. Once you are done, the categories are confirmed with the check mark.

Assigning categories to a page

With Visual Editor

In the page options menu of VisualEditor, you can access a Categories menu item. Here you can add and remove category assignments form the page and also add a sortkey to the category.

VisualEditor category menu

In Source code

To add a category in source code, the namespace Category is added before the page name.

[[Category:Sales]]

Note: On category pages, umlauts are generally sorted all the way to the back, e.g., "Märchen" after "Muh". You can therefore use the variable {{DEFAULTSORT:sortkey}} to specify an alternative title to be used for sorting (e.g., {{DEFAULTSORT:Maerchen}}).

Links to category pages

Links to a category require a colon before the namespace.

Example: [[:Categorycategory:Newnew_pagespage]]

If this colon is missing, the category page article will not be linked to the category page, but the article itself will be assigned to the respective corresponding category!

Case Study

.

Displays of categories

Issues with JavaScript

You can view a list of all wiki categories on the page Special:Categories.

On the page Category:category_name, you will find a list of all the pages and media associated with a particular category.

If you have accessed a previously unavailable (redlinked) category page, you can add a category description to the page. That way, users understand the purpose of the category.

Category manager

The easiest way to manage categories and sub-categories is with the Category manager page (Special:Category_manager). You can navigate to the Category manager via Global actions.

Related info

• Category Manager
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories