Help:Categories

The information at the bottom of the page is provided automatically by Wikia. These instructions supplement Wikia's help.

Adding categories
When you are adding a category to a page, it is recommended to click on Add category at the bottom of the edit window rather than typing in the category by hand (as described in "Using Wikitext source mode"). Using the Add category button will allow the wiki to suggest existing categories which can save you time.

For example, if you want to add the category "Images from A Hard Day's Knight", you would only need to type Images from A and then wait for the category suggestions to appear. You can then click on the full category name and it will be completed for you.

This is especially useful for longer categories like "Images from Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together". Using this method also prevents duplicate categories from being created if you misspell a category. Example: typing "Images from Toy To The World" instead of "Images from Toy to the World". The duplicate categories would have to manually be cleaned up by an administrator.

Namespaces
When editing some pages outside the main namespace, it may be necessary to manually type in any categories as the Add category button may not appear at the bottom of the edit window. Pages outside the main namespace have a prefix such as "Help:", "Category:" and "Template:".

Category layout
All wikis have the Category Tree page so that you can see which categories are a part of another category. As of July 2010, the categories on the Phineas and Ferb Wiki have been organized so that they all flow down from the main Browse category.

To see how the categories relate to each other, go to Browse category page and click on the  [+]  next to them. The number in parentheses shows how many subcategories a parent category has. Each category's page provides a description of what that category is for.

There are some organizational categories like Category:Episode images that contains all of the "Images from" categories. These parent categories were created to overcome a limitation of the wiki software. The wiki will display the first 200 items in a given category and will only display subcategories that are a part of those 200 items. If a subcategory is not listed that you know exists, you may need to click on "next 200" or "previous 200" to see more items and more subcategories.

Missing categories
To see a list of categories that have been linked to on a page but have not yet been created, check the Wanted categories page.

To see a list of categories that have been created but do not have any pages or subcategories added to them, check the Unused categories page.

Both of these pages are updated by the wiki software every few days. Any updates to the categories listed on them will not change the list until the next time the wiki software performs its maintenance.

For both the wanted and the unused categories, a decision should be made as to whether it is worthwhile to have that category. The Wanted categories page will list the number of "members" (how many pages link to the category). If neither would be used much, the category or the link to that category should be deleted.

Categories inside of templates
When creating a template, special steps must be taken for any categories associated with that template. By default, categories in a template will be applied to any page that the template appears on. This is called "transclusion".

For example, if a template had the Songs category and the Users who support Ginger category on it and the template was placed on a user's page, that user's page would be added to both categories. The Songs category would not be correct because it is a personal page and not a song page.

To prevent a category from being applied to pages where the template will be used, wrap it in the NOINCLUDE command. Example:


 *  

Updating category data
Even after a category in a template has been fixed, any pages that are a part of that category will not automatically be updated. They will continue to be a part of that category until the next time they are edited.

If there are a large number of pages that need to have their category data refreshed, contact an administrator with the request. A bot can be employed to automate the update.

As stated below in the "Can I redirect a category to another category?" section of Wikia's help, redirecting one category to another will not affect any pages in that category. Contact an administrator so that a bot can be used to properly update the category for those pages. The old category will be deleted after the changes have been made.