Template:Infobox/Doc

This is a template documentation page. It is transcluded into place.

Purpose

Template Quest by LionsPhil
Thread

This is the template for making a neat infobox for a quest, as shown on the right. Put it at the top of quest pages. It automatically adds the page to Category:Quests, to Category:Series Quests if it has multiple threads, and will add Template:Noauthor and Template:Nolink if appropriate. You'll still need to list Category:Running Quests and Category:Image Quests as appropriate.

Usage

Parameters (all are optional, although at least author and thread1 are expected):

Metadata

title

Title of the quest. Defaults to the current page name; normally you should leave it to do this.

author

Quest author; will be linked to as a wiki node, even if it has whitespace.

image

Quest image, without namespace. Will be thumbnailed to fit. Optional.

imageext

Post number on the board to take the image from. Use this or image, not both. You can override the board with imageextboard, but should never need to. Optional.

If neither image parameter is provided, the Infobox will fall back to using the OP image of the first thread by default.

Special cases

authorext

Extra authors; this is appended after the primary author, so if you need to use it you probably want something like and [[Dave]], or et. al.. Optional.

authoralias

Author alias; this is used if the author goes by a different name, for instance the infamous Silvermoon series. Optional.

dead

Set this to 1 to put the quest in Category:Dead Quests instead of Category:Quests and keep it off the main list. The rough metric for this is if a quest only had graveyard threads and never got off the ground.

mouseover

Allows you to set mouseover / title text for the infobox image. Optional, use sparingly.

Threads

All thread parameters must be numbered, starting from 1. For example, thread1=500|thread2=600….

threadN

Post numbers for the threads of the quest.

threadNname

Optional 'name' for the thread, e.g. "Chapters 1–2". If the first thread is named, a numbered list is used to automatically provide the thread numbers.

disthreadN

Post numbers for discussion threads.

disthreadNname

Optional name for discussion threads.

Specials

For example, 'April Fool' versions of quests.

specthreadN

Post numbers for any 'special' threads.

specthreadNboard

Board for corresponding 'special' thread; defaults to quest.

specthreadNname

Required name for corresponding special thread.

Other

prethreads

Value is spat out verbatim in the thread block, before thread 1. Avoid using this; it's for some very special cases where quests have some of their threads hosted externally. It is not for subheadings.

threadNpre

Place some markup before a thread entry, for example to do horizontal rules separating the list. You need to do a <nowiki></nowiki> trick to get a leading newline to separate it from a previous list element; see Bubble Bucket and Cutebold Slaughter Fest for examples. The matching threadN must be specified.

postthreads

Works like prethreads, but spits out information after the last thread instead of before thread 1. Useful only in special cases, say, when the final thread or epilogue material is hosted externally.

suppresscat

Set this to 1 to disable automatic categorisation. You probably don't want to use this.

suppressnum

Set this to 1 to disable automatic numbering of threads when using thread names.

suppressimg

Set this to 1 to disable automatic fallback to using the OP image of thread1. Has no effect if you manually specify an image with image or imageext.

caption

Adds a caption, centered under the infobox. Useful if you wish to add an asterisk and/or footnote off one of the threads.

Example

A quick reminder of MediaWiki template syntax; whitespace is reasonably flexible either side of the pipes, so do whatever is most readable:

{{Infobox
|author=TestPattern
|image=tozol_title.png
|thread1=79880
|thread2=94645
|disthread1=316424
|specthread1=156238|specthread1name=April Fool's Edition
}}

There are some more abstract examples on the development testing page, and you can find pages using this template.

Maintenance notes

• Depends on the automatic redirect from /quest/ to /questarch/ (or /graveyard/) for archived threads (semantically, the /quest/ version is considered its canonical URI). This allows the "current thread" to work without having to be flagged as special in any way.
• Automatic image fallback depends on the same redirects as Template:Fanart.
• Depends on the ParserFunctions extension to support optional parameters gracefully. This makes the code pretty hairy, so take care editing.
• The maximum number of threads is limited by the implementation repeating the definition for each number. Unfortunately this is a common MediaWiki paradigm as it has no set handling in templates.
• The width is set as a battle between a desired table width of 250px, which sets a softer maximum than a max-width, and a div strut in the title which may be matched by a 250px image, which acts as a min-width for the inner (content) boundary of the table.