Talk:Template repository

This is a great idea. But just to be clear on something. Can someone confirm (I've been trying to do so for a while) that a newly installed MediaWiki does not ship with any standard templates? (I ask the question because I was watching a Wikia instructional video on YouTube which mentioned (paraphrasing) that "wikis" come with ~200 standard templates. I believe the speaker must have been referring to Wikia's own mediawiki setup, not in general, but their wording was ambiguous. It seems that the existence of this Template Repository page implies that not much if anything ships template-wise, but just wanted to confirm that's what's happening.  Thanks! I now just noticed from one of the comments below a reference to Wikia consistent with what I was thinking, and also stating that MW's don't ship with templates, so I may have the answer in hand. --24.186.19.116 21:53, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

this is a great idea. I would love a basic icon package (like Warning, Info, Tip, Help... e.g.   )

Let me know if you find something and where I can get this and provide icons i created. Thanks Tilo 19:23, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Tilo, you can provide icons you created at Wikimedia Commons or http://openclipart.org/. --pfctdayelise 12:24, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I can't help with this, but it is a great idea. I've been trying to figure out templates for weeks. --Kelly Hughes

I'm currently trying to copy over the artist infobox template(s) from wikipedia, anybody have advice on how to speed this up or do it correctly? i feel like i'm just copy/pasting tonnes of material and i fear if i miss a single line of code that the whole thing will be messed up, and i'll have no idea how to fix it! One plus however, I only have one or two other templates active on my wiki, so i could possibly package it all together for upload. --Terrestri 03:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

push
Any updates?

Any work on this issue?

--62.128.18.198 13:40, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I also like this idea. There is too much work to be done just to get simple templates working on another wiki!
 * +1. This is a fantastic idea and would be a huge help to MediaWiki deployments everywhere. I think there's an added advantage if templates can be copied whole from Wikipedia, or at least keep the same names and parameter structure, so that user experience with Wikipedia will help them with other MediaWikis. 99.56.136.117 04:32, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Name conflict
I love this idea too. Ideally, the simple template system should use the same names as some of the existing templates, so that when you copy over help pages, these basic templates are sufficient to make them work. However, we don't want to conflict with the existing templates, and probably don't want to destroy them.

Perhaps another approach is to build the simple templates with unique, but reasonable names (e.g. Tag, NOT Simple_ambox). Further, we can edit the help pages on mediawiki to use these simple templates, rather than their more complicated cousins. This way, copying the help files and the templates produces a complete, working, default wiki.


 * Better yet, it could just work like files do when there's a shared repository (as Wikimedia does with commons). If there's a local template by the same name, the local version is used rather than the version on the shared repository. SB Johnny 13:44, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikia's templates wiki
Some readers may be interested in the Templates Wikia - http://templates.wikia.com. Not public domain, but CC-BY-SA, as is Wikipedia, so if your wiki is CC-BY-SA you can copy them with suitable acknowledgment, though some of the more complex ones are not entirely compatible with Wikipedia because of some Wikia divergences and extensions. The best of the templates are copied to the Wikia "starter pack" given to all new Wikia sites and often copied to older Wikia sites. Robin Patterson 05:17, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That wiki now has a parameter on its documentation template in which to specify whether a template is compatible with vanilla Mediawiki. Stephen Lafleur (talk) 05:32, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Its crazy
I don't know why Mediawiki does not come with any templates, its crazy.

Nothing happened...
So it seems like nothing has ever been done about this :-( Anyone working on this repo? --Thomas

That IS an awesome idea indeed!!! I think we can just start do add our favourite pieces of templates right here. I worked had to create as pretty infoboxes for Wiki of the 90th in Russia as Wikipedia has. I'll really try to contribute here!!

CSS Crop Image
I developed a CSS template for cropping images, I'm willing to make it public domain but I need to know where to put it --Mbartelsm (talk) 15:27, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Let's make this happen
This is embarrassing, how long this has been without resolution. I am working on Wikia's templates wiki (the first Google result for "templates wiki") and we have cleaned it up very much for Wikia users; we are willing to clearly demarcate templates that are vanilla Mediawiki compatible for use on externally-hosted wikis.

Some thoughts:
 * skip the public domain. Many templates will have to be derivatives of what already exists as CC-BY-SA, or just plainly copies of what exists as CC-BY-SA. We can't rollback those licenses. PD wiki users may have to be left for themselves.
 * Dependencies are OK, but note that Wikipedia's templates are designed without export to other wikis in mind, and so will have plenty more dependencies than is advisable. (Look at all those dependencies of Template:Documentation. Do we really want that?)
 * Do not rely on Instant Commons because we cannot assume Instant Commons will be in place on the user's wiki.
 * Note that our Template:Documentation is rather customized to insert installation instructions and interwiki links without their being copied to the end user's wiki.

I invite all discussion for how we can get this show on the road here, and I invite all discussion on Templates Wiki too. Stephen Lafleur (talk) 17:38, 29 January 2018 (UTC)