 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
A template is a Wikipedia page created to be included in other pages. Templates usually contain repetitive material that might need to show up on a larger number of articles or pages. They are commonly used for boilerplate messages, standardized warnings or notices, infoboxes, navigational boxes, and similar purposes. Templates can have parameters so that the same page generates different text on multiple pages that include it.
The most common method of inclusion is called transclusion, where the wiki source of the target page contains a reference to the template, using the {{Template name}} syntax. Another method is substitution, where the content of the template is copied into the wiki source of the target page, just once, when it is saved.
Help:A quick guide to templates gives a brief introduction to the subject. There is further help from MediaWiki and Wikimedia at mw:Help:Templates, m:Help:Template, and m:Help:Advanced templates.