If I understand what you are asking for, you can use the substitution ("subst")
syntax with a template.
For example, lets says you have Template:foo with the outline you talked about. When you
create a new article, you can put {{subst:foo}} in the edit box and press Show Preview.
This will display the content of Template:foo at the top, but still show
"{{subst:foo}}" in the edit box (but only temporarily, until you save). You can
either
- save, and then re-edit the article and customize the text (although this creates one
extra edit, no big deal) or
- copy the text from the previewed text into the edit box (which only works if there is no
formatting, as that will be lost).
This is more fully explained in the template help:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Template#subst
Michael Richards
-----Original Message-----
From: mediawiki-l-bounces(a)Wikimedia.org
[mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Craig Hartel
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 6:22 PM
To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Templates - not understanding a concept
Hello, all.
I have a question about templates. I understand that they are excellent for
building things that one might wish to repeat on many pages, so having the
template saves a lot of extra work. Not only that, if you need to update the
content, you need only update the template, and the changes show up everywhere.
That part I get, but here is what I'm wondering:
If I had a page structure that I wanted people to use, would that be
appropriately done with a template? For example, if I had a few sections, like
"Description", "Requirements", "Download" etc., would it
make sense to build a
template with those pre-built as section headings? Could I then create custom
stubs and include them in the template? The custom stub would be like "Add the
product description here, blah, blah, blah."
I have this in mind because there will be a lot of pages that we want to look
exactly alike, save for the actual content. How could I set this up so that they
use the template to start a new page from scratch?
Hmm...lots of questions in this one. Thank you in advance for your assistance in
clarifying my understanding of templates.
Craig Hartel
http://codex.wordpress.org/