Categorizing MediaWiki Articles

From Zanecorpwiki

MediaWiki has built in support for categorizing articles. In line with the wiki approach, categories are created as pages are included in them. In other words, categorization is a bottom up process that happens at the member level, the first page added to a category creates it and the last page removed from a category kills it (sort of).

To add a page to a category, simply add the wiki tag [[Category:Category Name]] somewhere on the page (where 'Category Name' is the name of the category like 'Science' or 'Biography'). You can include a page in multiple categories by adding multiple category tags.

By convention, these tags are placed at the end of the page. This is not so much because it makes the most sense (IMO, the tags make the most sense at the top) but for formatting reasons. For instance something like:

[[Category:Biography]]

Mr. Smith was born to an average middle class family, in an average mid-West town of average size...

Would cause the generated page to have to blank lines at the top. The category tag has special meaning and is always (with the default skin) rendered at the bottom of the page, but the spaces around it are treated as regular content. So put the tags at the bottom.