Manual:Extension/BlueSpicePageTemplates

What is PageTemplates?

PageTemplates offer the possibility to select from predefined content structures (templates, eg content directory, blocks, layout, content elements) when creating a new page, thus creating uniformity for certain page types.

How to create PageTemplates as an administrator?

If you have admin rights in the wiki, you can choose the page "Page Templates" in the user sidebar in the left hand navigation menu under "Admin". You will then be forwarded to the administration page. This allows you to define existing pages as templates in your wiki.

Go to the management page PageTemplates via the Admin tab. You can see all the templates which already exist. You can edit or delete these.
The button lets you add new templates. 

In the new window, you need to enter the following information:

• Name: Enter a name for your template.
• Description: A short description of your template.
• Namespace: In which namespaces the new template is to be used.
• Namespace of the template: The namespace of the page which you want to be used as the template.
• Template: The page you want to use at the template (filtered by the namespace of the template).

After clicking "Ok" you will get:

Create template article, insert content you want to appear on the pages using this template. If, for example, an infobox is integrated, you will need to enter the wikicode view to enter the data.

Save the article to see how your PageTemplate with all the content in it looks like:

How to use PageTemplates?

If you are an author in the wiki creating a new article you will see the template view. You can choose a fitting template from those which already exist. 

The selection of page templates you have available as a user depends on various factors.

• The page template "empty page" is always available
• Page templates for particular namespaces are only available when creating a new page in that namespace
• Page templates for all namespaces are available for all new pages

Templates can contain a list of contents, blocks, a particular layout or specific elements of content.

After choosing the template your new page will be preloaded with the contents of Template:Standard Article page.

Tips for working with page templates

• PageTemplates are particularly good for designing structures for minutes and logs, but they are also excellent for typical business or product data for marketing, sales and product management.
• If you use the BlueSpice package [bookmaker] to create online manuals, page templates can safe a lot of time for you. Create a page template for articles in a manual including the fitting "Bookshelf-tag". So you don't have to copy the chapter navigation into every single article.

Classical PageTemplates with MediaWiki

PageTemplates can also be manually embedded in wikis without page template manager. The prerequisite is that the wiki has the extension PageTemplates.

See also

Our reference page.