wikiHow:Internal Links

EditWiki Link Mechanics

Understand wiki markup for internal links. It generally looks like:
- [[Title of the Article|text that appears in your article]]
- [[Design Your Own Home|design a house without an architect]].
Take note that a pipe, which is a small vertical line, separates the title of a linked article from the text that appears in your article.
- The character | is located above the Enter key on your keyboard.
- On the left of the pipe is the title of the linked article.
  - Do not use "How to" prior to the title as it will be automatically added.
  - Use exact capitalization, spelling and syntax in a code.
  - If in doubt, copy and paste the title of the linked article. Sometimes, page titles can have double or even triple spaces in them. Be sure to contact an administrator or a New Article Booster to move the titles of such pages.
  - MediaWiki's engine automatically capitalizes the first letter of a pagename. [[swim]] and [[Swim]] are the same thing. [[Prepare to Go Swimming]] and [[prepare to go swimming]] are not.
- On the right of the pipe is the word or phrase, that will appear in blue, in your article.
  - Add "How to" if appropriate.
  - Use any case for this text.
  - Embolden text with syntax, if desired.

Links should make sense within the context of the wording around the link.
Some questions to ask yourself when deciding what to link:
- Will it be helpful to them when they click it? If so, good.
- Does it give them more information to help them achieve the how-to task or learn more about the words highlighted? If so, good.
- Will the reader be able to approximately guess what article you are sending them to before you do it? If not, the link may be too out of context.
- Or is it a out of context and off topic link that will confuse them?
Consider the following examples:

This is a good [[Learn Cooking Basics|beginner cooking lesson]]
Exact wording links: [[Relax|Relax]], [[Smile|smile]] and [[Be Yourself|be yourself]]
Links directly related to the word being linked: Not all [[Be a Cheerleader|cheerleaders]] are [[Get Fit|fit]]

These links should be avoided:

Links that link to the same word, but with a different meaning.
- You can color the sun [[Eat an Orange|orange]]
Links that are completely out of context or off topic.
- The dishwasher is a good place to sanitize your [[Fill up a Buffet Plate|plate]]
- Hide the Easter [[Scramble Eggs|eggs]]