Categories

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MediaWiki allows you to categorize pages and files by appending one or more Category tags to the content text. Adding these tags creates links at the bottom of the page that take you to the list of all pages in that category, which makes it easy to browse related articles.

Add a page to a category

To add a page or uploaded file to a category, simply edit the page and add the following text (where NAME is the name of the category you want to add it to).

[[Category:NAME]]

Any number of Category tags may be added to the page and the page will be listed in all of them. Category tags can be added wherever you like in the editing text, but they are usually added at the very bottom for the convenience of other editors.

Adding Category tags to categories will make them subcategories. It is a good idea to organize all your categories into a hierarchy with a single top level category.

Spaces and line breaks before categories are ignored, thus

* A list item
[[Category:Some category]] Some text

will be rendered the same as

* A list item Some text

You will need to manually add a <br /> tag or a line break after the category.

Sort key

A sort key specifies where the page will appear in the category list, and under which letter heading. (By default, the page is sorted under the first letter of its full name including its namespace.) You can add a sort key to a page by adding it inside the Category tag. For example, the tag below will add the page under the heading "S".

[[Category:NAME|SORT]]

Sort keys are case-sensitive, and a space is also valid. The order of the sections within a category follows the Unicode sort order. The sort key does not change the page title displayed in the category.

Create a category

Before creating a new category, check whether an appropriate category already exists, and carefully plan what, if any, categories the new category will be a sub-category of. Take care to avoid redundancy. (The software is capitalization-sensitive, so "Surname projects", "Surname Projects", and "Surname DNA projects" would be listed as three separate categories, independent of each other.) It is not possible to rename (move) a category, unlike other wiki pages. Rather, it would be necessary to create a new category and change the Category tag on every page. The new category would lose the older category's page history, which is undesirable if there are many revisions.

In the navigation bar on the left of each page in the wiki is a link to Browse categories. A list in a different format can be found in Category tree:All Categories.

A new category can be created by inserting a line of text at the bottom of any Wiki page with the format: "[[Category:New Category]]". When the edit is saved, a link to "Category:New Category" will appear in red font at the bottom of the Wiki page.

The link will remain in red font until a Category Page is created for the new category. One way to create the Category Page is simply to click on the red link. This will open the Category Page for editing. The only text required to be entered on this Category Page (assuming the new category is not a sub-category) is the "[[Category:All Categories]]" tag. Alternatively, if the new category is a sub-category of an existing category, enter a tag to the existing category in the format "[[Category:Existing Category]]". Once this is done, Wiki pages containing the tag for the new category will automatically be listed on this Category Page, and the new category will be properly listed either directly on the "All Categories" page, or as a sub-category of another category.

A Category Page can be created in the same ways as other wiki pages (See Help:Starting a new page); just add "Category:" before the page title, and add the appropriate tag as described above.

A Category (all pages containing the tag for the specific category) exists even if the Category Page is not created, but these categories do not aid in organization or navigation.

Hidden categories

The categories that a page is in are normally listed at the bottom of the page. A category can be hidden from these lists by adding "__HIDDENCAT__" magic word to the category page. (Each user can choose to see them in a separate "Hidden categories" list, by checking "Show hidden categories" in the "Appearance" section of Special:Preferences.)

Hidden categories are automatically added to Category:Hidden categories (specified by MediaWiki:Hidden-category-category).

Hidden categories are not hidden on category pages (bug 15550)

Linking to a category

To create a link to a category, use a leading colon before the category name. (Without this colon, it will add the current page to the category.) To change the link text, write the text inside the link tag after a pipe.

[[:Category:NAME]]
[[:Category:NAME|TEXT]]

For example, to link to "Category:Help", write "[[:Category:Help]]", which will result in Category:Help.

Redirect pages (to categories) must also use the colon, otherwise it will be added to the category instead of redirecting.

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