Help:Subpages

This help page describes the creation and usage of subpages.

The subpage

The average featured project on Wikiversity consists of 1 main page and 96 subpages (as of July 2008). That's 96 subpages for every 1 main page. Don't worry if you're just starting out with a new learning resource for Wikiversity - you don't have to create 96 subpages all in one go. On the other hand, even small Wikiversity projects are usually multi-page entities, which means that one of the first things you need to get to grips with is the subpage.

Subpages are pretty well banned on Wikipedia, because articles are single-page entities over there. Sometimes the more experienced people at Wikiversity forget that newcomers to Wikiversity may not have a clue what a subpage is, or may be reluctant to create them because of what they have learnt about good editing elsewhere. The subpage, however, is critical to multi-page entities on a wiki, and is one of the first things a new editor on Wikiversity needs to know about.

The subpage looks and works rather like a "sub-directory" of pages on a normal website. Here's an example of some page titles in a learning project:

My project
My project/Lesson 1
My project/Lesson 2
My project/Lesson 3
My project/Participants
My project/Timetable
My project/Quiz

If you look at this, you'll see that the learning project has a main page (the top item), and six further subpages which look rather as if they were in a sub-directory. It isn't really a sub-directory - it's just a naming convention. But it's a very useful naming convention, because it keeps the learning project neat and tidy. Everyone can tell which project the subpages belong to. The title of the subpage is something like "My project/lesson 3" (with a slash in it). You can always tell when you're on a subpage, because there's a slash in the page title at the top of the page.

One of the really useful things about subpages is that they automatically contain a link back to the main page at the very top. The MediaWiki software does this for you.

The leading slash

The leading slash is the key to creating a subpage.

If you've edited a wiki before, you'll know that something like this creates a link to a new page:

[[Name of new page]]

Many wiki editors create new pages first by creating a link as above, and then clicking on the link to enter an editor for the new page. Creating a subpage is just as easy.

[[/Name of new subpage]]

The following will still create a subpage, but will look like a normal link once created. Notice there is a slash before and after the page name.

[[/Name of new subpage/]]

Note the leading slash before the page name (coloured red just above). This will create a subpage connected to the current page.

Breadcrumbs is the technical name given to the useful small font hyperlinks across the top of the page which lead back up the hierarchy to the main page of your project. If you use subpages, then a "breadcrumb trail" will be automatically created across the top of all of your pages!