Aide:Starting a new page

New pages can be created by following a link to a nonexistent page ("red link") or by editing the last part of the URL of another page in the same project. It is useful to create a page by following a link, or create links to the new page right after creating the page, to avoid the new page being isolated.

(For general editing matters, in particular the of the wikitext, see Help:Editing.)

General principles

• Search to see whether someone has written a similar page before you start one yourself.
• Review conventions of the project you are working in regarding e.g.:
  • the naming; see also Help:Page name.
  • whether a separate page is justified; perhaps it is better to add the text to a related page (especially if the text is not very long); that page can always be split later, after it has grown.

Starting a page from an existing link, after creating one, or after a search

To start a new page, you can start from a link to the title of the new page.

Internal links to non-existing pages are typically created in preparation of creating the page, and/or to encourage other people to do so. Typically they are called "red links" after the default settings.

Such a link is to the edit mode of the non-existing page, which allows creating it, just like editing a blank page.

Before following the edit link, decide whether you want to give the new page the suggested name. If not, first edit the link on the referring page.

Of course you can also create the link yourself, in a related page or index page. However, it may be better to wait with creating links until after creating the new page, especially if the link would replace one to an existing page. In that case you can create the link but just press Preview, not Save (a previewed link also works) or create the link first only on your user page.

Note that links on related pages are not only convenient for navigation, but also make people aware of the new page.

Starting a page through the URL

Entering the URL for a page that has not been created will still display a regular page.

The page at that URL will display the default 'no article' message. The new page will still have the usual edit link, which will allow anyone to begin adding content.

So a "broken link" from within or outside the project is, in a way, not really broken, as long as the first part of it is correct.

Editing the last part of the URL of an existing page (in the same project) is an easy way to create the URL for a new page.

An interwiki link to a non-existent page gives the same result, but is not recommended.

To get access to a MediaWiki project with all the links at the edges, but without superfluous loading of any page, you can bookmark a non-existing page.

Creating an empty page

Occasionally it is useful to create an empty page. How?? For example a template can be made such that, depending on a parameter, it produces either just a standard text or also an additional text. This is done by having it call another template, of which the name is a parameter; one version of the other template contains the additional text, the other version is blank. See optional text.

A blank page cannot be created directly; first create a non-blank page, e.g. with just one character, then edit the page to blank it.

From some other editing environment

Although pasting existing text into the wiki is often the simplest way to start, you may want to try converting from Word or HTML to wiki markup.

Protecting a page from being created

It is not really possible to protect a page from being created, but one can create a page with a standard text such as in w:en:Template:Deletedpage and protect that page. Note that sometimes a terminology like "This page should not be created." is used even though for the system the page exists. Therefore it is not suitable for demonstrating a link to a non-existing page.