Jump to content

User:Cpiral/refactor Help:Special Pages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Cpiral (talk | contribs) at 17:02, 4 September 2009 (log out page is Special Page to). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Redirect5

Namespaces
Subject namespaces Talk namespaces
0 (Main/Article) Talk 1
2 User User talk 3
4 Wikipedia Wikipedia talk 5
6 File File talk 7
8 MediaWiki MediaWiki talk 9
10 Template Template talk 11
12 Help Help talk 13
14 Category Category talk 15
100 Portal Portal talk 101
118 Draft Draft talk 119
126 MOS MOS talk 127
710 TimedText TimedText talk 711
828 Module Module talk 829
1728 Event Event talk 1729
Former namespaces
108 Book Book talk 109
442 Course Course talk 443
444 Institution Institution talk 445
446 Education Program Education Program talk 447
2300 Gadget Gadget talk 2301
2302 Gadget definition Gadget definition talk 2303
2600 Topic 2601
Virtual namespaces
-1 Special
-2 Media
Current list

Special is a namespace What is special about Special pages is that they are not your usual wikitext to be rendered, but instead are pages generated by PHP scripts, and then rendered. In either case a page is dynamically generated when you request it.

Notice your web browser's address bar displays Special: for your

  • my talk
  • my watchlist, and
  • my contributions
  • log out completed page

pages, but not for your a titlectivate your user notice your browser's address bar and the web page

For example, did you ever notice the special page title on your Recent Changes report page?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&days=3&limit=10

Two of the parameters days=3&limit=10 in this example come from the user preferences. Here is another example of the contents of a Special page.

[[Special:Log/block]]

The parameter is block.

A Special page is not permitted to accept a redirect. They are categorized in a namespace called "Special:", but it is a virtual namespace, really, and it is not permitted to create your usual pages beginning with the "Special:" prefix.

Special pages are not the only script driven pages on Wikipedia. So are the toolserver reports. But toolserver projects are not "Special" pages because See WP:Database reports.