Wikipedia:User page design guide/Menus and subpages

Many users split their user page up into multiple pages and store the extra pages as subpages of their user page (like this: pagename/subpagename). Either their user page has grown too big to be a single page, or they like to keep their subjects more sectionalized. This creates a navigation problem, for typing the entire page name into the search box every time you want to go to a subpage is cumbersome, so one solution is to link the family of pages together with a common menu. The menu is stored in a subpage of its own, and is transcluded onto each page just like a template (that is, you just enclose the pagename inside of double curly brackets, {{like this}}. This affords the opportunity to add the talk page and special pages to the mix (like displaying the user's contributions and other display commands from Wikipedia's "special" menu). Some menus look just like navigation bars, others have icons, some are integrated into the page's border, and others are vertical lists (usually boxed).

Some examples are provided below.

To use one of these, press edit above, and copy the name of the menu you want to use (but without the curly brackets) and paste it into the search box to the left and press "Go". Then press edit again and select and copy the whole page (using ctrl-C). Then create a new page called User:USERNAME/Menu, and paste what you copied to there. Edit it to customize it to your purposes, and save. Then transcribe your menu page to your user and talk page (and/or to any of your other user subpages) by including it in curly brackets, like this: {{User:insert name here/Menu}}. Have fun.

Incident Management	Problem Management	Change Management	Release Management	Configuration Management

Me

Home

Talk

Awards

Sandbox

Toolbox

Subpages

Español

Home (en · es)	Talk	To do	Interests	Research	Contribs	I,Robot

User Talk Contribs Awards Email Elections

User Page	Talk	Contributions

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User Page	Talk Page	Workshop	Site Map	Monobook.js	Contributions	Email

Main

Talk

Userboxes

Awards

Links

Main

Talk

Userboxes

Awards

Bookmarks

Globetrotting

Archives

My Images

Email

Home	Talk	About me	Awards	eMail	Subpages	Contributions	All edits	Guest Book	Workshop

User

Talk

Contributions

Email

Archives

Awards

Gallery

Edit count

User page

Talk

Contributions

Photo gallery

Links

The menu is located at the absolute top of this page, next to your user name.

Source

(do it, done, doable)
(don't do it, not done, postponed, for later)

There are many primary types of VERY good images, compared Here. Looking for a superconglomerate (but outdated)? Try This guy's icon page.

A subpage is a page "under" another page. Your userpage may be the parent page for as many subpages as you need.

1. Start with your userpage.

   For example, User:Example User

2. Add a forward slash (/) and text at the end of the name.

   For example User:Example User/Subpage

3. Either link to it on your userpage or transclude it
   1. To link to it, type [[User:Example User/Subpage]]
   2. To transclude it (like a template) type {{User:Example User/Subpage}}

      The reason you would want to transclude it is if you want to put a header on every page, all you would need to put is {{User:Example User/Header}}, and you wouldn't need to put the code on each time.

• Also see Wikipedia:Subpages

Here are some typical names for subpages of user pages:

• Talk page
  • also known as
    • Forum
  • Archives
• Work page
  • also known as
    • Office
    • Sandbox
    • Workshop
• Toolbox
  • also known as
    • Tool shed
    • Tool cabinet
    • Utility room
    • Armory
• Control room
  • also known as
    • Command console
    • Command center
  • Controls
    • Edit counter
    • Edit buttons
    • Purge buttons
    • Task buttons
    • Nav aids
    • Info boxes (templates)
• Contacts
  • also known as
    • Hall of fame
    • Users
    • User list
    • Users I admire
  • Format
    • Simple links
    • Edit counters
    • Link arrays
• Menu
  • Format
    • List
    • Icons
    • Icons with Click
  • Samples
    • ElAmericano

Note that subpages can have subpages under them as well, and so on. Like this: User:user name/subpage level one/subpage level two/etc.

You can create subpages in userspace as private 'sandboxes'. You can use this space to experiment with Wiki syntax, or to work on articles without worrying about whether the article is ready to go public. Remember that:

1. When moving articles to and from userspace it is easy to inadvertently break the terms of the GFDL by forgetting to leave a trail back to where the content came from. If you cut and paste content from an article into your userspace, remember to leave an edit summary such as "Content taken from Article", and do the same if you want to move content back into the main article.
2. User subpages should not be included in any categories meant for articlespace. If you copy and paste an article containing categories, you can:
   1. Remove them
   2. Put <nowiki></nowiki> tags around them: <nowiki>[[Category:Australians]]</nowiki> produces [[Category:Australians]]
   3. Comment them out with <!-- -->: <!-- [[Category:Australians]]--> produces absolutely nothing
   4. Put [[:Category:Australians]] instead of [[Category:Australians]] (note the extra colon): this produces Category:Australians.

   Be especially aware of templates that include categories, such as {{POV}} or {{stub}}. Again, you can remove the template, nowiki it, comment it out, or subst it with {{subst:POV}} instead of {{POV}} to convert the template into its raw code, then remove the category manually as above (you will need to replace the template on moving it back into articlespace).

3. User subpages can be stumbled across by users unfamiliar with Wikipedia via Google (though not by Wikipedia's built-in search unless the searcher chooses to search in userspace). To avoid people mistaking your work in progress as an actual article, add {{Userspace draft}} or the magic word __NOINDEX__ to the top of your userpage.