Sorry, I hit the wrong button!
2008/9/3 Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com:
METHOD 2
Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ExpandTemplates and in the "Input text:" box, put an example of the template call as you would like to use it. e.g. "{{see also|test}}" If you just put "{{see also}}" it will expand to an error message! Probably you will want to do this but also look at the source of the template to try and get a feel for how it worked.
Note: if you want your templates to look the same as Wikipedia's, you will almost certainly need to add some CSS to your wiki. In this example with [[template:see also]], it has "<span class="boilerplate seealso">", so I need to find the definitions for boilerplate and seealso. The splace to look are * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.css (Monobook is the default skin) * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Catalogue_of_CSS_classes (looks very useful but is probably out of date)
...Having said that, I just had a look and I couldn't find boilerplate or seealso, so... I give up :) Maybe they are relics that are now having no effect. The Firefox add-on Firebug can be extremely useful in locating CSS definitions.
Hope this helps, Brianna