Help talk:External searches

Discuss Help:External searches here:

Just links to google
This is a bit confusing because it's really not doing anything very clever, and you could almost sum it up by saying "Mediawiki allows you to link to any URL, so this means you can link to a google query".

If people read this expecting it to do something like actually display search results in the page, or integrate the wiki search box with an external google search somehow ...then they will be disappointed.

It's really just an example of using a template. I do something similar in my wiki, for linking to wikipedia actually (with a box float:right with little 'W' icon)

I would argue that it doesn't belong in Project:PD help because..

"The idea [ofProject:PD help] is to provide a set of pages which can be copied into a fresh wiki installation, or included in the mediawiki distribution. This will include basic user information and other Meta information, in a reasonably concise form. The basic concept is to create a compressed user guide"

Although the external search template is something any wiki user could do (not just administrators), it is really a rather quirky little user tip. If it stays in it should be tucked away in a sub-section somewhere rather than being linked alongside the other items on Help:Contents

-- Harry Wood 16:23, 22 October 2007 (UTC)