• About Good Acts
  • Veterans Resources
  • From Pharms to Farms | A Veteran’s Road to Freedom
  • Petition to Educate the DEA on the Medical Benefits of Cannabis
Good Acts

The best road to progress is freedom's road. - JFK

Texas

This page is about various URLs of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia servers. For how to markup links, see Help:Link.
"WP:URL" redirects here. For the user rights log, see Special:Log/rights.

Like all pages on the World Wide Web, the pages delivered by Wikimedia's servers have URLs to identify them. These are the addresses that appear in your browser's address bar when you view a page. Wikipedia editors also have the ability to create hyperlinks to chosen URLs, pointing to pages either within Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, or elsewhere on the Web.

Contents

  • 1 Linking to URLs
    • 1.1 Fixing links with unsupported characters
  • 2 URLs of Wikipedia pages
    • 2.1 Shorter URL
  • 3 URLs on other Wikimedia projects
  • 4 Templates and programming
  • 5 See also

Linking to URLs

Linking and
page manipulation
Linking and diffs
  • URLs
  • Links
  • Orphans
  • Interlanguage links
  • Interwiki linking
  • Shortcuts
  • External links
    • External link icons
  • Link color
  • Colon trick
  • Pipe trick
  • Self links
  • What links here
  • Linksearch
  • Manual of Style on linking
  • Navigation templates
  • Hatnotes
  • Template index for links
  • Diffs
    • Simplest diff guide
    • Simple diff and link guide
    • Complete diff and link guide
Categorization
  • Category
  • Categorization guideline
  • Classification
  • Container category
  • FAQ for categorization
  • FAQ for categories
  • Categories, lists, and navigation templates
  • Categorization of people
    • By year
    • By ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality
  • Redirect categories
  • User categories
  • Overcategorization
    • User categories
  • Template index for categories
Moving and redirecting
  • How to move a page for beginners
  • Redirects
  • Moving a page
  • Requested moves
  • How to fix cut-and-paste moves
  • Moving files to Commons
  • Userfication
  • Template index for moving
  • Template index for redirects
Merging
  • Merging
  • Proposed article mergers
  • Requests for history merge
  • Merge and delete?
  • Merge what?
  • Delete or merge?
  • Template index for merging
  • WikiProject Merge
Splitting
  • Splitting
  • Template index for splitting
Importing and copying
  • How to import articles
  • Requests for page importation
  • Import
  • Export
  • Copying within Wikipedia
Protecting
  • Protection
  • Protection policy
  • High-risk templates
  • Requests for page protection
  • Rough guide to semi-protection
Additional
  • How to create a page
  • Article creation
  • Editing
  • Deletion process

When editing a page, hyperlinks to other pages within Wikipedia (or other Wikimedia projects) are normally made as wikilinks or interwikilinks, using the [[...]] syntax described at Help:Link. However if you want to link to an outside website, or to certain specially generated Wikimedia pages (such as a past version of an article), it is necessary to provide the full URL. This is done using external link syntax.

There are three forms of external link syntax:

  • If the URL is simply included in the wikitext, without square brackets, then it appears as written, and a hyperlink is created: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ produces https://meta.wikimedia.org/
  • If the URL is placed in square brackets, then a hyperlink is created with a serial number as its label: [https://meta.wikimedia.org/] gives [1]
  • If the URL is placed in square brackets followed by a space and some text, then that text is used as the label for the hyperlink: [https://meta.wikimedia.org/ Wikimedia] gives Wikimedia

Making a link to elsewhere on the same server as the wiki can be simplified by using {{SERVER}}. Example: [{{SERVER}}/relative/url].

To suppress the external link icon, place the external link between <span class="plainlinks">...</span> tags.

Fixing links with unsupported characters

Shortcut
  • WP:ENCODE
  • The URL must start with a supported URI scheme. http:// and https:// are always supported. gopher://, irc://, ircs://, ftp://, news://, nntp://, worldwind://, telnet://, svn://, git://, mms:// and mailto: will create a link and an icon but require an agent registered in the browser.
  • URLs containing certain characters will display and link incorrectly unless those characters are percent-encoded. For example, a space must be replaced by %20 (this can be done using the PATH option of the {{urlencode:}} parser function).
sp " ' , ; < > ? [ ] { | }
%20 %22 %27 %2C %3B %3C %3E %3F %5B %5D %7B %7C %7D
Single apostrophes do not need to be encoded; but unencoded multiples will be parsed as italic or bold markup
  • Titles containing certain characters will display and link incorrectly unless those characters are encoded with HTML character references.
newline [ ] |
space &#91; &#93; &#124;
  • Even though PHP's urlencode() automatically percent-encodes them, these characters do not get URL-encoded by wfUrlencode(). The ":" symbol is a partial exception – it is not encoded anywhere except for IIS 7.0.
; @ $ ! * ( ) , / ~ :
%3B %40 %24 %21 %2A %28 %29 %2C %2F %7E %3A

URLs of Wikipedia pages

Shortcut
  • WP:URLs

English Wikipedia's URLs begin https://en.wikipedia.org/. That address on its own is redirected to the Main Page.

  • The main form of a URL to a Wikipedia page:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_name (used in wikilinks, recommended when a URL has to be given)
  • An alternative form:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Page_name (allows more options by appending parameters to the URL, not indexed by search engines)

The page name may include a namespace prefix (such as "Help:" in this page). With some special pages it may also include a parameter, as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jimbo_Wales (but for most special page parameters, see below).

Other URLs associated with a page are constructed by adding a query string. The string can be added to either of the above forms (as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train?action=history ), but in this case the system defaults to the second form, i.e. it extends the index.php query string "title=Page_name".

Extended URLs are used:

  • To go to a redirect page without following the redirect: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Railway_train&redirect=no
  • To go to the edit page (or view the source of a protected page): . Other parameters can be added, such as section=5 or section=new to edit or add a page section. There are also parameters for preloading text into the edit box of a new page, as used by the inputbox extension (see mw:Extension:InputBox).
  • To access the edit history of a page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&action=history (or further parameters can be added, as in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&limit=5&offset=90&action=history, which displays edits 91–95).
  • To link to a particular version of a page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&oldid=1374279 (where oldid is the revision number), or use Template:Oldid. A permanent link to the present version of the page can be accessed by clicking "Permanent link" under "tools" on the left side of the page. The version ID is unique across all pages; the title parameter here has no effect, and can be omitted. Special:PermanentLink/1374279 is a wikilink to a page version.
  • To link to a diff between two versions of a page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&diff=1374279&oldid=1260056, where diff is the ID of the version to appear on the right. Set diff=0 to compare the current version; set diff=0 and oldid=0 to compare the two most recent versions. Again the title parameter has no real effect (you can in fact compare versions of two different pages). Special:Diff/1374279 is a wikilink to a diff (documentation).
  • To watch or unwatch a page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&action=watch (or action=unwatch).
  • To purge a page from the server cache (to have it rendered with the latest template versions etc.): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&action=purge (this is not the same as purging your browser cache).
  • To perform certain other defined actions, replacing purge in the above example with view, delete, revert, unprotect, info, markpatrolled, validate, render (most of these are available only to administrators).
  • To obtain the raw wikitext of a page without downloading the full HTML: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&action=raw
  • To display the page in printable version: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&printable=yes
  • To view a category listing starting from a specified point: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Disambiguation_pages&from=B
  • To specify parameters for a special page, as in: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&from=20030918220000 (in this case the "from" parameter is a timestamp, format yyyymmddhhmmss, UTC time, but many other types of parameter are possible, depending on the page).
  • To display a page in a particular skin: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&useskin=monobook. Wikipedia's skins as of 2014 are cologneblue, modern, monobook, vector. Registered users can set their skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering.
  • To display a page with a particular interface language: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&uselang=de (de is the language code for German). Registered users can set their language at Special:Preferences.
  • To display a page with a particular banner from a page linked at meta:Special:CentralNotice: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&banner=TranslatorSignup
  • The below withJS and withCSS rely on the English Wikipedia having code from mw:Snippets/Load JS and CSS by URL in MediaWiki:Common.js. Other wikis may not have this feature. Registered users can load pages at Special:Gadgets by enabling the corresponding gadget at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets.
  • To display a page with a script loaded from the MediaWiki namespace: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&withJS=MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock.js (loads MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock.js).
  • To display a page with a stylesheet loaded from the MediaWiki namespace: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&withCSS=MediaWiki:Gadget-JustifyParagraphs.css (loads MediaWiki:Gadget-JustifyParagraphs.css).
  • To display a page formatted for mobile devices, add .m after en https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train

If constructing URLs for Wikipedia pages, remember to convert spaces into underscores, and to percent-code special characters where necessary, as described in the previous section. (For how to do this in template code, see Templates and programming below.)

Various kinds of error message may appear if an invalid URL, or one to which you do not have access, is submitted. In other cases the URL may redirect to a valid one (for example, page titles are converted to their canonical form as they are when they appear in wikilinks).

Shorter URL

Wikipedia:URLShortener gives a way to make short URLs to Wikipedia pages.

An unofficial redirect site mentioned at User:Tl-lomas/enwp.org also offers shorter URLs.

  • https://enwp.org/fullpagename
  • https://enwp.org?curid=pageid

enwp.org is not controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation, so it could stop working or change purpose at any time.

The second form can make a long page name into a short code. It uses pageid, which remains accurate even if the page is moved. Pageid has up to 8 digits, shown by clicking "Page information" under "Tools" on the left side of the page.

URLs on other Wikimedia projects

Other projects use similar URLs to those of English Wikipedia, except that the domain names vary: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ (Meta), https://fr.wikipedia.org/ (French Wikipedia), https://de.wiktionary.org/ (German Wiktionary), etc.

Note that https://www.wikipedia.org leads to an international Wikipedia portal page, but other URLs beginning with that prefix redirect to English Wikipedia.

Other projects may also use different strings in place of "/w/" and "/wiki/" in URLs. For details, see the URL help page on Meta.

Templates and programming

For use in templates, correct URLs can be constructed using certain magic words and parser functions such as fullurl, urlencode and others. Details of these can be found at mw:Help:Magic words.

Most programmatic interaction with Wikipedia can be performed most efficiently using the API, for which URLs beginning https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php are used. For details, see mw:API.

See also

  • Parameters to index.php at the MediaWiki manual
  • WP:URLShortener
  • Help:External link icons
  • URL help page at Meta
  • Category:External link templates
Wikipedia help pages
  • Visit the Teahouse or the Help desk for an interactive Q & A forum.

  • FAQs (?)
  • Reference desks (?)
  • Noticeboards (?)
  • Cheatsheet (?)
  • Directories (?)
About Wikipedia (?)
  • Administration
    • Purpose
    • Principles
  • Policies and guidelines
  • What Wikipedia is not
  • Disclaimer (parental advice)
  • Making requests
  • Who writes Wikipedia?
Help for readers (?)
  • FAQ
  • Books
  • Copyright
  • Glossary
  • Mobile access
  • Navigation
  • Other languages
  • Searching
  • Students
  • Viewing media
Contributing
to Wikipedia
 (?)
  • Advice for young editors
  • Avoiding common mistakes
  • Etiquette
  • Simplified Manual of Style
  • Simplified rule-set
    • "Ignore all rules"
    • "The rules are principles"
  • Style-tips
  • Tip of the day
  • Your first article (article wizard)
Getting started (?)
  • Why create an account?
  • Introductions by topic
  • The Wikipedia Adventure
  • Graphics tutorials
    • Picture tutorial
    • IRC (live chat) tutorial
  • VisualEditor user guide
Dos and don'ts (?)
  • Accessibility
  • Biographies
  • Biographies (living)
  • Categorization
  • Consensus
  • Discussions
  • Disambiguation
  • Images
  • Leads
  • Links
  • Lists
  • References
  • Tables
  • Titles (of articles)
How-to pages and
information pages (?)
  • Appealing blocks
  • Article deletion
  • Categories
  • Citations/references
    • Referencing for beginners
    • Citation Style 1
    • Cite errors
    • References and page numbers
  • Convert
  • Diff
  • Editing
    • Minor edit
    • toolbar
    • edit conflict
  • Find sources
  • Files
  • Footnotes
  • Image deletion
  • Infoboxes
  • Linking (link color)
  • Logging in
  • Merging
  • Page name
    • Renaming pages
  • Redirect
  • Passwords
    • Email confirmation
  • Reverting
    • Simple vandalism cleanup
  • Talk pages (archiving)
  • User contributions
  • WP search protocol
Coding (?)
  • Wiki markup
  • Barcharts
  • Calculations
  • Characters
  • Columns
  • Hidden text
  • HTML
  • Lists
  • Magic words
  • Music symbols
  • Sections
  • Sounds
  • Tables
  • Templates
  • Transclusion
  • URL
  • Visual files
Directories (?)
  • Abbreviations
  • Contents (Encyclopedia proper)
  • Departments
  • Editor's index
  • Essays
  • FAQs
  • Glossary
  • Guidelines
  • Manual of Style
  • Policies
  • Tasks
  • Tips
  • Tools
Missing Manual
Ask for help on your talk page (?)
Wikipedia technical help
Get personal technical help at the Teahouse, Help desk, Village pump (technical), talk pages or IRC.
General technical
help
  • Browser notes
    • Bypass cache
    • Keyboard shortcuts
    • Troubleshooting
  • Editing
    • CharInsert
    • Edit conflict
    • Edit toolbar
    • Reverting
  • How to create a page
  • IRC
    • Tutorial
  • Mobile access
  • Multilingual support
  • Page history
  • Page information
  • Page name
    • Help
  • Printing
  • Software notices
    • Editnotice
  • Special Characters
    • Entering
  • User access levels
  • VisualEditor
    • User guide
Special page-related
  • Special page help
  • Edit filter
  • Emailing users
  • Logging in
    • Reset passwords
  • Logs
  • Moving a page
    • Fixing cut-and-paste moves
  • Notifications/Echo
    • FAQ
  • Page Curation
  • Page import
  • Pending changes
  • Random pages
  • Recent changes
  • Related changes
  • Searching
    • Linksearch
  • Tags
  • User contributions
  • Watchlist
  • What links here
Wikitext
  • Wikitext
    • Cheatsheet
  • Columns
  • Line-break handling
  • Lists
  • Magic words
    • For beginners
    • Conditional expressions
    • Switch parser function
    • Time function
  • Redirects
  • Sections and TOCs
  • Tables
    • Introduction
    • Basics
    • Advanced table formatting
    • Collapsing
    • Conditional tables
    • Sorting
  • Using colours
Links and diffs
  • Links
    • Interlanguage
    • Interwiki
    • Permanent
  • Diffs
    • Simplest diff guide
    • Simple diff and link guide
    • Complete diff and link guide
  • Colon trick
  • Link color
  • Magic links
  • Pipe trick
  • URLs
Media files: images,
videos and sounds
  • Media help
  • Files
    • Creation and usage
    • Moving files to Commons
  • Images
    • Introduction to images
    • Picture tutorial
    • Preparing images for upload
    • Uploading images
    • Options to hide an image
    • Extended image syntax
    • SVG help
  • Gallery tag
  • Graphics tutorials
    • Basic bitmap image editing
    • How to improve image quality
    • Graphics Lab resources
  • Sound file markup
  • Visual file markup
Other graphics
  • Family trees
  • Graphs and charts
    • How to create
    • Barcharts
    • To scale charts
  • Math formulas
    • Math symbols
    • LaTeX symbols
    • Rendering math
  • Musical scores
    • Musical symbols
  • Timeline
    • EasyTimeline syntax
  • WikiHiero syntax
Templates and
Lua modules
  • Templates
  • Advanced template coding
  • Template documentation
  • Template index
  • Template limits
  • Template sandbox and test cases
  • Citation templates
  • Lua help
  • Lua project
    • Resources
    • To do
  • Substitution
  • Purge
    • Job queue
  • Transclusion
    • Labeled section
  • Guide to Scribbling
Data structure
  • Namespaces
  • Main/Article
  • Category
  • Draft
  • File
    • File description page
  • Help
  • Portal
  • Project/Wikipedia
  • Talk
    • Archiving
  • Template
  • User
    • User page design
  • MediaWiki
    • Bug reports and feature requests
    • System message
    • TimedMediaHandler extension
  • Module
  • Special
HTML and CSS
  • Cascading Style Sheets
  • HTML in wikitext
  • Catalogue of CSS classes
  • Common.js and common.css
  • User CSS for monospaced coding font
  • Classes in Ambox
  • Classes in microformats
  • Markup validation
  • Span tags
  • Useful styles
Customisation and tools
  • Preferences
  • Gadgets
  • Skins
  • Citation tools
  • Cleaning up vandalism tools
  • Customizing watchlists
    • Hide pages
  • IRC Scripts
  • User scripts
    • Guide
    • Techniques
  • User style
  • Tools
    • Alternative browsing
    • Browser tools
    • Editing tools
    • Navigation shortcuts
    • Optimum tool set
  • Wikimedia Cloud Services
  • Beta Features at MediaWiki
Automated editing
  • AfC helper script
  • AutoWikiBrowser
  • Bots
    • Creating
  • HotCat
  • Huggle
  • Navigation popups
  • RedWarn
  • Twinkle
  • WPCleaner
  • Inactive
    • igloo
    • STiki
  • See also: Category:Wikipedia how-to
  • Category:Wikipedia information pages
    Further navigation at: Help pages
    • Administrators
  • Accessibility
  • Accounts
  • Bots
  • Referencing
    • Citation metadata
  • Templates
  • User scripts
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:URL
  • This page was last edited on 19 February 2021, at 13:34 (UTC).
  • Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
  • Privacy policy
  • About Wikipedia
  • Disclaimers
  • Contact Wikipedia
  • Mobile view
  • Developers
  • Statistics
  • Cookie statement
  • Wikimedia Foundation
  • Powered by MediaWiki

Please consider signing this Petition to Educate the DEA and UN on the medical benefits of Cannabis.

State Resources

  • Texas

    Texas

    January 22, 2018
  • Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation | rTMS | Depression Therapy for Veterans at the Waco, Tx. VA

    Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation | rTMS | Depression Therapy for Veterans at the Waco, Tx. VA

    February 22, 2019
  • San Diego Vet Centers

    San Diego Vet Centers

    January 22, 2018

Resources

  • VA Administration Sets National Policy Allowing Robotic Prosthetics

    VA Administration Sets National Policy Allowing Robotic Prosthetics

    December 26, 2015
  • VA benefits for Veterans of the Armed Forces of the United States of America

    VA benefits for Veterans of the Armed Forces of the United States of America

    March 18, 2016
  • Human Tissue Regeneration with Pigs Bladder Powder

    Human Tissue Regeneration with Pigs Bladder Powder

    March 18, 2016

Latest Posts

  • The American Legion Urge the Drug Enforcement Agency to License Privately-Funded Medical Marijuana Production Operations in the United States

    The American Legion Urge the Drug Enforcement Agency to License Privately-Funded Medical Marijuana Production Operations in the United States

    September 11, 2016
  • Compassionate Care Act of 2015 in Texas Discriminates Against Veterans

    Compassionate Care Act of 2015 in Texas Discriminates Against Veterans

    March 27, 2016
  • National Second Opinion Day 4/20/16 - All Veterans Ask VA for Second Opinion

    National Second Opinion Day 4/20/16 – All Veterans Ask VA for Second Opinion

    March 18, 2019

FOIA Contacts

  • Veterans Affairs | Veteran Claims File Request

  • Postal Inspection Service

  • USPS Field Office

Copyright © 2021 Good Acts.

Omega WordPress Theme by ThemeHall