Manual:Creating pages with preloaded text

Preloading wikitext presents the user with a partially created page, possibly with inline instructions for content organization, rather than a blank page.

This technique is especially useful when the wiki contains one or more categories of articles, with lots of pro-forma text or the information that needs to be collected for such articles is a mix of structured data and free form text.

Creating pages with preloaded text is a three step process:


 * 1) Design the preload file and its supporting templates


 * 1) Create pages for the preload files and supporting templates


 * 1) Set up the trigger to load the preload file

Designing the preload file
The preload file is often an article with an embedded template. For example, if you wanted one article for each customer or marketing contact, you might want to preload text that looks something like the example below.

Naming and documenting the preload file
Some extensions have specific expectations as to where the preloaded text should be stored. Others leave that decision entirely up to the system administrator.

Naming and documenting the preload file takes some care, because preload files don't always show up on "What links here" and so are at risk for accidental deletion (no info/no links—hard to tell from an article that got created and abandoned). For template based preload files, the following naming conventions may help avoid accidental deletion:


 * place template in
 * place preload file in

Note: before the fixing of, preload templates could not contain documentation, categories, interlanguage links etc.—all content would affect the preload output. With bug 5210 fixed,  tags now work as expected.

Loading the preload file
Preloading can be done with a preload parameter in a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page?action=edit&section=new&preload=Template:Foo which links to the edit box of a new page, preloaded with Template:Foo. There are also a number of extensions available to trigger your preload file, see below.

The wikitext of the source page is preloaded into the editbox if the page or section does not exist yet. If the page or section to be edited already exists then only its wikitext is loaded, the preload command is ignored.

Thus there is neither a complete inclusion nor a regular transclusion. See also (since 2006-03-09).

If it is creating a new section, the initial content of the "Subject/headline" box can be provided with the parameter "preloadtitle"
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Meta:Sandbox&action=edit&section=new&preloadtitle=New_Header

If it is not creating a new section, the summary can be set with the summary parameter.
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Meta:Sandbox&action=edit&summary=Doing%20some%20changes

The minor edit checkbox can be set by adding minor parameter
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Meta:Sandbox&action=edit&minor=1

Using parameters
You can also specify parameters to the preload text with the  url parameter (When linking on wiki, you may want to escape the   to be  .) Each parameter specified replaces a ,  , ... variable.

Note:,  , ... variables are distinct from  ,  , ... variables. In order to use, it appears to be necessary for the template to use  ,  , ... variables instead of  ,  , ... variables. This documentation should be improved by explaining why these two distinct template parameter notations exist, and when it is possible or necessary to use each of the two notations.

For example:
 * http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&section=new&nosummary=true&preload=Manual:Creating_pages_with_preloaded_text/param_demo
 * vs
 * http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&section=new&nosummary=true&preload=Manual:Creating_pages_with_preloaded_text/param_demo&preloadparams%5b%5d=first%20value&preloadparams%5b%5d=second%20value

Extensions
Extensions that trigger a preload file include:

A few extensions also handle all three steps for you: All extensions related to page creation are in the Page creation extensions category.
 * (stable, last updated 2019-12-09)
 * (stable, last updated 2020-04-09)
 * (unmaintained, last updated 2016-05-18)
 * (unmaintained)
 * (stable) offers the most control over the loading process. It lets you place a button somewhere in an article, typically in a user help page or the category page corresponding to the article. You specify the name of the preload file as part of the button definition.
 * (stable)
 * (unmaintained)
 * (stable), can simply preload an article page, in addition to its form features.