Learn links

**Galleries** **Customization** **Index**hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh**Menu**

Page4 of 7
Adding **links** to your page is a helpful way to connect pages together, expand content, and help readers move through your wiki.

## Step by step

### Using visual mode

 File:Link dialog .png
To create a link, you must be in edit mode.

* Begin by highlighting the text you want to link.
* Then click on the File:Link button.png button on the toolbar. (If you don't see this button, there are other options. See below.)
* A window will pop up that gives you two options for linking: an internal link or an external link. Internal links are pages within the wiki (or to another wiki). External links are to pages outside of FANDOM. Select which one you need.
* Enter the target of the link. For an Internal link, enter the name of the page (see Types of internal links below for more detail). For an external link, enter the full URL (including the "http://" part).
* Make sure the text that should display for the link looks correct (it should be displaying the text you highlighted earlier).
* Click "OK". Your link will appear!

### Using source mode

*See here for more information about this approach.*
In source mode, you will need to write links using wikitext. (Note: writing the following in the visual editor will also make a link once the page is published.)

* Start by typing double opening square brackets where you want the link to go (`[[`)
* If the page you want to link to is part of the main content of the wiki, just start writing its name. If it is in another namespace, such as the Talk or Help namespaces, write the name of the namespace and a colon before the name of the page, (e.g. `Help:Links`). If you are ever unsure about what to write, go to the page you want to link to and copy the part in the page's URL after `/wiki/`. This will be the exact text you need for your link.
* Close the link using double closing square brackets (`]]`). You should finish with a link which looks like this: `[[Help:Links]]`
* If you want to change the text which is displayed when the link is shown, before the closing brackets put a pipe and the text you want, so for example, `[[Help:Common mistakes|things people often do wrong]]` looks like: things people often do wrong. Tip: if you are linking to a page that is not in the main namespace and you don't want the namespace to show, place a single pipe before the closing brackets. This will make `[[Help:Infobox|]]` look like this: Infobox.

#### Linking to an external page

Write a single opening square bracket, then the URL of the page (including the http:// part) followed by a space, the text you want displayed, and a single closing square bracket. So, for example, `[http://google.com Google]` will look like this: Google.

## Types of internal links

An **internal link** is a link that goes from one page on a wiki to another, and can be in any of the following forms:

1. To link to an **article page**, just enter the name of the article in the link field.
	* Example: *Season One*
2. To link to a **page in a namespace**, enter the name both the namespace and the page in the link field, with a colon (":") between them. This should match how the same text appears at the end of that page's URL.
	* Example: *Characters:Joe\_Smith*

## Interwiki links

To link to a **page on a different community**, enter "w:c:" followed by the domain of that wiki, followed by the page's name.

* Example: *w:c:community:Special:Forum (*this links to the Community Central Forums).
* Community Central can be linked by just "w:" followed by the namespace and pagename.
* Example: *w:Help:Spam (*this links to the Spam help page)
* In Community Central, you can enter "c:" instead of "w:c" in order to link to a page on a different community. Example: *c:dev and w:c:dev* result to c:dev and w:c:dev, respectively. Both links work, but only the second one works in all wikis.

You can also link to Wikipedia and MediaWiki using interwiki links. To do this, enter "wikipedia:" (for Wikipedia) or "mw:" (for MediaWiki), then enter the exact same name of a specific page from Wikipedia or MediaWiki.

* Example: *wikipedia:Main Page* (this links to the main page of Wikipedia), or *mw:Main Page* (this links to the main page of MediaWiki).

More information about interwiki links can be found here.

## Advanced linking

### Linking to a category or image

When linking to a category for demonstrative purposes rather than for categorizing a page, or if you want to link to an image file page without the actual image showing, put a colon after the double opening square brackets, like this: `[[:Category:Browse]]` which will look like this: Category:Browse, and `[[:File:Wiki-wordmark.png]]` will look like this: File:Wiki-wordmark.png.

### Linking to a page section

If you want to link to a section of a page, make sure the page section is marked by a header. Then, at the end of your regular link, put a hash (`#`) followed by the section name. As an example, if you want to link to this section of this page, write `[[Help:Links#Linking to a page section]]` which will link as Help:Links#Linking to a page section.

### Linking from an image

If you want to link to a page from an image, add a parameter to the image which says `link=Page name`. So, for example, `[[File:Wiki-wordmark.png|80px|link=Help:Contents]]` makes  (← click the image)

### Changing the color of an individual link

If you want to change the color of one individual link (as opposed to every link on that wiki), you will need to use span tags and CSS on the pipe side of your link.

Using source mode, this means that if you were to, for example, make a link to Help:Contents green, you would write `[[Help:Contents|<span style="color:green;">Help:Contents</span>]]` which will look like: Help:Contents.

### The pipe trick

When using wikitext, the 'pipe trick' can be used to help write links more quickly. By placing a pipe (|) after certain strings of text, one can eliminate the need to type huge amounts of replacement text. For example, when typed on Game of Thrones Wiki, `[[Pyke (island)|]]` can be typed instead of `[[Pyke (island)|Pyke]]` to remove last parentheses.

### Link suggestions

When editing in source mode, a link suggestion feature will suggest the names of existing pages and files based on what you type. This is helpful if you cannot remember a precise name to create a link.

When you start typing a "`[[`" or "`{{`" and then some text, a popup will suggest items. So, for example, if you type "`[[File:S`" or `"{{s"` and then some text, it will suggest existing files or templates on your wiki that start with the letter S.

You can dismiss the link suggestions box by pressing the "Esc" key, and you can disable it entirely from the Editing tab of Special:Preferences by checking the "*Do not show link suggest in Source mode*" option.

## Remember

* Preview your changes, and Save when you are sure that you are finished.
* If your new link is red in the Preview, either that destination does not exist, or you typed it incorrectly. If you click on the red link, you will be asked to create the page.

## Next steps

* How to create a new article
* How to use profile pages
* How to sign up for a username
* See Help:Interwiki link for more advanced linking details
* See Help:Links/Wikitext for a source-only approach to linking

## Further help and feedback

* Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
* Check FANDOM Community Central for sources of further help and support
* Check Contacting FANDOM for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article
* Learn how to use FANDOM in FANDOM University: short how-to videos for all levels of experience

**More help pages**

**Help Contents** •
**FANDOM Basics** •
**Contributing** •
**Designing Your Community**

**Managing Your Community** •
**Managing Your Account** •
**Getting Technical**