Linker  

ZAM Network Wikibase™ Dictionary

A Linker template is a template that is designed to be used rather than the normal way of linking to a page. This can be very useful for adding extra functionality to the wikibase, such as colorizing item links or adding additional information that you want displayed with the link in a standardized format.

There are, however, dangers to their over-use. Specifically, quest linkers such as AionQuest should not be used on Quest Series pages, as they can easily result in a page that exceeds the maximum number of templates on a page. Remember, the max template count is not just the templates you call explicitly, but also any template that template calls, and so on. A handful of linkers on a page is ok, but you cannot build a large page with them.

So, need an example? ok.

In Free Realms, we use linkers a great deal. Here is one:

{{FRMob|mob_name}} is used instead of [[FR Mob:mob_name]]

Why, you ask? Because the linker made it possible to put mob links in the pages without creating redlinks ahead of the time that we created the FR Mob template and started populating the mob pages. That way, when the mob page IS created, the name of the mob magically becomes a link to the mob page everywhere it appears without the need to go back and edit every single page in the wiki.

Likewise, in the Aion wiki we use {{AionSkill|skill_name}} everywhere that we refer to a skill because, since we are not using a db there, and skills number in the thousands, we are not going to create a page for every single skill. If someone does create the skill page, the linker sees that the page exists and makes a real link to it, otherwise it just displays the name of the skill without redlinking it.