title| above |
|---|
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| image caption |
| image2 caption2 |
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| below |
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This is the infobox, one of the earliest and most used templates in all of Wikipedia. It is a meta-template meant to be recycled for topic-related infoboxes such as {{Infobox building}}, for example. These kinds of infoboxes are present in articles to inform readers of the various things associated with subject matter, and are also seen in some other pages such as WikiProject Transwiki.
Infobox has several content parameters. The title parameter clearly identifies the subject matter by naming it. "Above" is treated as space to fill in a brief definition of what the subject is or whatever's majorly related to it, as with the subheader, which is used similarly to the title and above parameters. The image one illustrates the topic via a file easily understandable to everyone, and the caption is a description of what happens in the image and/or something about the topic. Most of the remaining parts of the template belong to header/label/data, which lists the links to pages related to the topic the infobox is themed after. Below is merely a place to put additional information pertaining to the template's theme, let it be footnotes, see-also, et cetera.
As shown here, the template can also be customized quite easily through the presentation parameters. Coloring the style parameters with decorated code is sure to attract some attention. User style is a good possibility, and you can inject CSS code into the box for artful looks. I heavily customized the one you see here just for the potential, which is very large I think. The design found in this showcase is the same one used for this newsletter, the Bunbunmaru Shimbun: Wikipedia Edition, with the Courier font, radial and linear gradients, shadows, and colors utilized heavily for aesthetic reasons, namely for abstract wilderness.
Embedding the template can be done. It is possible to put an infobox inside an infobox. You can also make subboxes to put more data into the template. The "Template:Infobox" also has a section on "Controlling line-breaking in embedded bulletless lists", which reduces confusion for wrapped long entries and multiple entries.
Infoboxes were invented on August 11, 2004 by Netoholic, with an edit comment saying: "Base Infobox template. use {{subst:Infobox}} to copy this content into your template as a base.". The template looked primitive backed then, with basic HTML stylings of blocks and cells. The parameters were basic; you had subject_name in which users can insert the name of the subject just like with the title parameter, then after the subject name came the image and caption, followed by the first and second items, where editors put in items related to the topic. Later on, users including Netoholic improved on the template to look nicer and cleaner, turning subject_name into "name" (which is placed above the simplified blocks and cells), and replacing items with data (as in data1, data2, and data3), this was the case in 2006. Data parameters are defined in order for text to appear, therefore filling in the blanks is an expected oppurtunity. The definition of data2, if not filled in, would say "this text displayed if data2 not defined", and data3 is hidden if its empty or not defined. Footnotes also became possible, and eventually the default navbox style gained a new redesign.
Yes, it did gain a new redesign; "name" turned into "title", the appearance gained some light blue-colored bars, the lines defining the cells and blocks disappeared (a grey line that looked like scissor cut-out lines appeared though), the "above" and "below" parameters were inserted, and the data parameters can now be optionally replaced with header or label parameters. On one early 2008 revision of the template page, there's a text saying "( etc )", and you could replace it with some information. The row limits increased over time, and infoboxes later appeared in other wikis and similar sites such as Wikimedia Commons.
Later in 2008, the infobox gained another redesign, simplifying its stock aesthetics to something similar to the current look, but with the scissor cut-out lines making a more frequent appearance. Several talk page suggestions were implemented into the template over the years. The infobox continued to be redesigned, and many of the features discussed earlier in this page, including most changes, resulted in the current state of the template, which is as good as new.
This template came a long way, and still does its job well as "a basic template for new template editors" like Netoholic said. At this point, so many variants of the meta-template exist that as of October 3, 2020, it has appeared on "approximately 3,430,000 pages, or roughly 7% of all pages" according to the "Template:Infobox" page's template documention. It has a future, with unexplored potential waiting to be tapped.
