[Mediawiki-l] Extensions and methods available to insert page elements to all new articles consistently

[William van Zwanenberg]

As most of the regular contributors to the list will know by now, I am
total newbie to Mediawiki and having only just managed to successfully
install it, I am still finding my feet.

 

My question to all in this instance concerns that adding of page
elements such as formatted tables, page dividers, and boxes containing
specific links to given articles across one's entire wiki so that each
article page conforms to a consistent look and feel.

 

Looking around the Wikipedia website, I notice that there is
considerable consistency in terms of how content is displayed. Within a
given category page, there always seems to be a banner divider at the
bottom of the page and key facts are often contained in a separate
floating box. Within a biography page about a given person and persons,
key biographical data is contained again in a separate floating box.
It's these sorts of elements leading to a consistent look that I want to
include in my own wiki.

 

Now of course I could do all this by simply including raw XHTML code in
every new article. However, for reasons I'm sure you will not need
explaining to you, this is a far from ideal solution.  What I wondered
therefore is are there specific extensions available that provide the
necessary functionality to include these elements? I realise that
wikicode will provide some basic functionality but if I was say a
floating box included in an article, I don't want to have to repeatedly
include XHTML code.

 

Equally, I don't want to have to create specific templates for specific
categories unless there is no other options available. Rather, I'd
prefer to let editors choose what elements to include in a given article
page and how they appear (that is to say how they're formatted) but
restrict the choice to a number of pre-set elements so that one does end
up with a consistent look and feel.

 

I apologise again if this discussion includes some very elementary
questions but as I say, I'm just starting out.  What I really want to
know is how it is that the actual format as well as look of all pages
within Wikipedia is maintained.  There must surely be extensions in
place that enable content to be displayed in a particular way.