TenthFleet:Dynamic page lists

Editor's Handbook

A guided path — read the sections in order

Start here

1. Contributor's guide
2. Introduction
3. Be bold
4. Editing basics

Style & layout

5. Manual of Style
6. Guide to layout
7. Naming conventions
8. Namespaces
9. Citing sources

Building content

10. Peerage page
11. Award page
12. Ship page
13. Echelon page
14. Documenting an order
15. Posting news

Templates

16. Template guide

Deep dives

17. Styling & theme
18. Infoboxes
19. Navboxes
20. Dynamic lists (DPL)
21. Supersession
22. Categories

This page explains how the wiki builds lists that update themselves. When you post a news item and it appears on the Main Page without anyone editing the Main Page, that is a dynamic list at work.

The wiki uses the DynamicPageList extension. A dynamic list is a query: you describe the pages you want, and the software fills in the list every time the page loads.

How it works, using the news feed

The news feed is the clearest example. It rests on three pieces:

1. The {{News}} template puts every news article into the category Fleet news.
2. The Main Page runs a query that asks for the four most recent pages in that category.
3. The query prints each one as a headline. Nobody edits the list by hand.

The query on the Main Page reads like this:

{{#dpl:
|category=Fleet news
|notnamespace=User
|notnamespace=Sandbox
|count=4
|ordermethod=sortkey
|order=descending
}}

Read plainly: take pages in the Fleet news category, skip anything in the User or Sandbox namespaces, take the four newest by sort date, and list them.

The common settings

Setting	What it does
category=	Only include pages in this category.
notnamespace=	Leave out a namespace. Repeat it to exclude several.
count=	Limit how many results appear.
ordermethod= and order=	How to sort, and in which direction.

Why the namespace filters matter
Without notnamespace=User and notnamespace=Sandbox, a draft news item written on a personal or sandbox page would leak into the public feed. The filters keep drafts out.

Making your own list

1. Decide which category marks the pages you want. Add that category to those pages if it is not there already.
2. Add a {{#dpl: ... }} block where you want the list, with a category= line.
3. Preview. If nothing shows, check that pages really carry the category and that the spelling matches.

Lists can be cached
A dynamic list may not update the instant you change a source page. If it looks stale, purge the page (add ?action=purge to its address) to force a refresh.