Interwiki links

Interwiki links are external links that behave like internal links. Essentially, they are shortcuts to other mediawiki projects. For example the link to the wikipedia main page could be written using the external link notation

[http://en.wikipedia.org/Main_Page wikipedia] 

which results in this link to wikipedia or using the interwiki link notation

[[w:Main Page|wikipedia]]

which results in this link to wikipedia. The interwiki link method is shorter and more convenient once you are familiar with the notation.

Key Point

Add a prefix to the internal link notation to create an interwiki link. The prefix for wikipedia is wikipedia or w as shown below: [[w:Main Page|wikipedia]]

The following table gives examples of the interwiki prefixes that are available on WikiEducator:

prefix	destination URL	usage example	interwiki link example
commons	http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/	[[commons:MediaWiki]]	commons:MediaWiki
mediazilla	http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/	[[mediazilla:1209]]	mediazilla:1209
wikibooks	http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/	[[wikibooks:Main Page]]	wikibooks:Main Page
wikimedia	http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/	[[wikimedia:Main Page]]	wikimedia:Main Page
wikinews	http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/	[[wikinews:Main Page]]	wikinews:Main Page
wikiquote	http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/	[[wikiquote:Main Page]]	wikiquote:Main Page
wikisource	http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/	[[wikisource:Main Page]]	wikisource:Main Page
wikispecies	http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/	[[wikispecies:Main Page]]	wikispecies:Main Page
wiktionary	http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/	[[wiktionary:Main Page]] or [[wikt:Main Page]]	wiktionary:Main Page or wikt:Main Page
wikipedia	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/	[[wikipedia:Main Page]] or [[w:Main Page]]	wikipedia:Main Page or w:Main Page

Activity

Have a go at entering interwiki links on your user page sandbox. Step 1: Click on the link to your user page (remember it's located in the top right of the screen) and open your sandbox page (For example My sandbox).   The previous link only takes you to your sandbox if its name is My sandbox. You can also try this My Sandbox or Sandbox which are other common pages for practising. Step 2: Use the syntax descriptions above to add interwiki links to your favourite mediawiki project into your sandbox.

|