Help:Subpages

From WikiStory

(Certain parts of this page, marked in its source, is/are in the public domain.)

Subpages introduce some hierarchical organization into wiki page names, with levels of the hierarchy separated by slashes (/).

The subpage feature can be used in the main (story) namespace, the Poem namespace, the Plot namespace, the Character namespace, the Review namespace, the Author namespace, and on Talk pages. In namespaces where the feature is not allowed, any slashes (/) within a page name are simply part of the page name and do nothing special.

Slashes within a page name

Slashes (/) within a page name break the page into 'parent' and subpages, recursively, eg:

Example page

Example page/Some sub-page

Example page/Some sub-page/Some sub-sub-page

A link back to parent will automatically appear at the top of each subpage. In the case of sub-sub-pages, a set of breadcrumb navigation links will automatically be presented. Note that these links do not appear if the parent page has not yet been created.

Using (and over-using) sub pages

There are various uses for the subpage mechanism. The main five intended uses are:

On a really long story, to break it into chapters or parts.
On a story where two groups of authors wish to take it in two different directions, they could put two versions of the story of different subpages.
On an author page, create subpages to organize author stories.
On an author page, create a subpage (or several) to use as a scratchpad editing space.
On a talk page, create a subpage (or several) for archiving old discussions

Subpages are very useful, but can be over-used. Remember that having a page name with a slash will generally make the name longer, harder to remember, and thus more difficult to link to.

How long is long?

The Story namespace in WikiStory is not just for short stories; you can write a novel in it too. Thus, pages may grow long. Long pages take longer to load. To speed up loading times, one might divide up a very long story into chapters, and put a certain number of chapters on sequentially labeled subpages. The parent page would then contain links to the subpage chapters, and perhaps the first chapter of the story.

If you have planned out a novel, in the Plot namespace for example, then you may create subpages right away. If you have enough of the plot planned, you will be able to guess where to break it up. If you have not already planned it, however, wait until the story grows long before breaking it up.

Still, there remains a question; how long is long? At what point does one break up a story? There is no set wordcount or kb limit, so use your judgement. Bring it up on the talk pages or look at the lengths of other divided stories. It is annoying to have a story broken up if it does not need to be.