Help:URL

Welcome!

Hello, URL, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions; I hope you like the place and decide to stay!

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URLs in external links

In external links, all symbols of the URL must be among: A-Z a-z 0-9 ._\/~%-+&#?!=()@. If a URL contains a different character it should be converted; for example, ^ has to be written %5e, the hexadecimal ASCII value with a percent sign in front. A blank space can also be converted into an underscore.

Conversion:

 "   #   $   %   &   '   *   ,   :   ;   <   >   [   ^   `   {   |   }
%22 %23 %24 %25 %26 %27 %2a %2c %3a %3b %3c %3e %5b %5e %60 %7b %7c %7d

For the other characters either the code or the character can be used in internal and external links, they are equivalent. The system does a conversion when needed. E.g.

[[%C3%80_propos_de_M%C3%A9ta]]

is rendered as À_propos_de_Méta, almost like À propos de Méta, which leads to this page on Meta with in the address bar the URL

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80_propos_de_M%C3%A9ta

while http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/À_propos_de_Méta leads to the same.

URLs of pages within the projects

See en:Wikipedia:URLs; everything works the same, except that the domain names vary:

www.wikipedia.org
meta.wikipedia.org
wiktionary.org
quote.wikipedia.org
wikibooks.org
sources.wikipedia.org
sep11.wikipedia.org
test.wikipedia.org
xx.wikipedia.org with xx the language code, see The provisional portal of Wikipedia

In projects outside Wikimedia the "w/" in URLs like http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=history is sometimes not used, sometimes different, e.g.:

The default is /wiki/wiki.phtml, with in DefaultSetting.php [1]:

$wgScriptPath = "/wiki";
$wgScript     = "{$wgScriptPath}/wiki.phtml";

There may be other variations, compare:

Old versions of pages

All old versions of all pages are numbered (with oldid) approximately in the order of becoming an old version, i.e. in chronological order of the next edit of the same page.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Help:Link&oldid=53587 - normal link to old page
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Help:Link&oldid=53588 - number and name do not correspond; correct name is given, but without prefix
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Help:Lin&oldid=53587 - non-existing page name; becomes link to edit page
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?oldid=53587 - no page name in the URL; correct name is given, but without prefix

New pages

New pages are numbered (with curid) chronologically.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=x&curid=9906 - gives the page with correct full name

Edit

Examples:

Edit the whole page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Help:URL&action=edit
Edit the 5th section: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Help:URL&action=edit&section=5
Add at the end: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Help:URL&action=edit&section=1000 (use large section number)
Ditto with "Post a comment" feature: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Help:URL&action=edit&section=new

URLs in external links

URLs of pages within the projects

Old versions of pages

New pages

Edit

See also