Template:Archives/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Archives
It contains usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template employs intricate features of template syntax.

You are encouraged to familiarize yourself with its setup and parser functions before editing the template. If your edit causes unexpected problems, please undo it quickly. Remember that you can conduct experiments, and should test all improvements, in either the general template sandbox or your user space before changing anything here.

This template is called by Template:Archive box. Please ensure that any changes do not break the legacy functionality of archive box.

The {{archives}} template may be used to add a box containing page links to archived discussions. It will automatically detect archived pages by default if they are named appropriately, eliminating the need to manually update the box each time a new archive page is created.

Usage

{{archives
 |archivelist= /archivelist
 |auto=        <short|long|no>
 |index=       /Archive index
 |search=      <yes|no>
 |list=        
 |collapsible= <yes|no>
 |collapsed=   <yes|no>
 |style=       
 |title=       
 |image=       
 |alt=         
 |link=        
 |bot=         
 |age=         
}}

Parameters

archivelist: Specifies a link to a subpage, such as "/archivelist" that contains the archive list. See the "Archive list" and "Additional notes" sections below for further important details.
auto= <short|long|no>: Specifies the format of the auto-generated archive list. If left unspecified, the default is "long"; any other word (except "no") will result in "short" and "no" disables auto-detection.
index: Adds an "Index" link in the title to a specified subpage, such as "/Archive index" that should be the subject index page for all archived discussions.
list: Inline list of archives. This is not needed if the pages are named "Archive 1", "Archive 2" and so on, in which case automatic archiving works, but can be used in addition to automatic archiving if additional pages with other names are available.
collapsible: If yes, makes the list collapsible.
collapsed: If yes, makes the list collapsed.
style: An arbitrary string of CSS can be applied to the box (use with care).
title: An alternate title, defaults to a bolded "Archives".
image: An alternate image to be used, defaults to "Replacement filing cabinet.svg".
link: Link for the image. This normally defaults to empty, which means no link. However, if alt is nonempty, it defaults to the image's file page.
alt: Alt text for the image, for visually impaired readers. This defaults to empty. If a nonempty value is specified for link, alt should be nonempty too, and should indicate what will happen if the user clicks on the image.

Search

search: If yes, adds a search box to the template.
root: Specify a different base than {{FULLPAGENAME}}/. Use prefix if the additional of a trailing slash is not desired.
search-break: Default:no
search-width: Default:22
searchbuttonlabel: Default: Search

Bot archive notice

bot: If specified, a note about automatic archiving will be shown.
age: If specified, the archiving delay will be provided.

Archive list

By default (with no explicit parameters), the archive list presented in the box is determined automatically. If a subpage called "{{PAGENAME}}/archivelist" exists, it will be used as the central content of the box.

If no archivelist subpage is detected, numbered archive subpages will be listed in long format. Such pages must be named as "/Archive #" because other naming styles will not be detected. If no subpages are found, the archivebox will contain only the "About" and "Edit" links, with the Edit link targeted at "{{PAGENAME}}/archivelist", which can then be used to begin manually populating the list, if desired.

If the "auto" parameter is specified, the "Edit" link is removed. The "long" auto format (the default) indicates "Archive 1", "Archive 2", and so on. The "short" auto format indicates only the archive number. See more examples below.

If an archive list is specified, the name of the subpage is changed; otherwise, the behavior is the same.

An archive list can also be passed in the first unnamed parameter avoiding the need for a subpage.

Using "auto=no" will disable archive auto-detection. Manually specified archives will still be shown.

Additional notes

The "auto" and "archivelist" parameters are not intended to be used together. (Doing so removes the edit link, but will still use the specified archive list page if it exists.)

The auto-generated archive list requires subpages to use the common naming convention. That is, "{{PAGENAME}}/Archive 1", "{{PAGENAME}}/Archive 2", and so on. The letter "A" must be capitalized, there must be a single space between the word "Archive" and the number, and there must be no leading zeros. If archive subpages do not conform to this convention, they can be renamed to conform, or a manual list can be maintained.

Specifying "auto" with any right-hand-side value other than "long" or "no" results in the short-format list; the use of "short" as the value just makes things more obvious to others.

The short and long auto lists are generated by {{archive list}} and {{archive list long}}, respectively. They are limited to a maximum of 100 and 36 subpages, respectively. Beyond those limits, additional subpages will not be listed. In such cases, a manually generated archive list subpage would need to be created and maintained.

Examples

Default

{{archives}}