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SmallBusiness.com:Tutorial (SmallBusiness.com links)
| Introduction | Editing | Formatting | SmallBusiness.com links | Citing sources | Talk pages | Keep in mind | Registration | Wrap-up |
Linking SmallBusiness.com articles together is very important. These easily created links allow users to access information related to the article they are reading and greatly add to SmallBusiness.com's utility.
How to link
To make a link to another SmallBusiness.com page (called a wiki link), put it in double square brackets, like this:
- [[Sandbox]] = Sandbox
If you want to link to an article, but display some other text for the link, you can do so by adding the pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards) followed by the alternative name. For example:
- [[Target page|display text]] = display text
NOTE THAT THIS DOES NOT WORK UNLESS CAPITALIZATION AND UNDERSCORES CORRECTLY MATCH THE PAGE LINKED TO, EVEN IF THE SAME SYNTAX WORKS CORRECTLY WITHOUT THE ALTERNATIVE NAME.
You can make a link to a specific section of a page like so:
- [[How_to_create_a_logo#Refining|refining your logo concept]] = refining your logo concept
If you want the display text of the link to appear in italics or bold, nest the double square brackets for the link within the multiple apostrophes that delimit the italicized or bold text, like this:
- ''[[Marketing]]'' = Marketing
Please check your links to ensure they point to the correct article.
When to link
Adding links to an article makes it more useful, but too many links can be distracting. This is why you should only link the first occurrence of a word. Lead sections can have more links.
Categories
You can also put the article in a category with others in a related topic. Just type [[Category:]], and put the name of the category between the colon and the brackets.
It is very important to put in the correct categories so that other people can easily find your work. This is especially true on SmallBusiness.com, where we attempt to collect related articles into Hubs -- a name we have given to Categories.
The best way to find which categories to put in is to look at pages on similar subjects, and check which categories they use. For example if you write an entry about a Chamber of Commerce, you may look at an entry on another Chamber of Commerce to see which categories could be appropriate.
How to link to a category page (or Hub)
One of the great mysteries of using the MediaWiki software platform is linking to a Category page, or what we call a Hub. That's because, as you've just learned, if you link to the category using the instructions above, logic suggests it will look like this:
- [[Category:Category page]]
However, such a link will not take you to the category page. It will indicate that the page should be included in the Category page category.
So here is what you should do -- add a colon before the word Category, like this:
- [[:Category:Category page]]
