Help:External searches

Revision as of 09:03, 11 April 2011 by Jeanpierre (talk | contribs) (1 revision: Help Files)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
PD Important note: When you edit this page, you agree to release your contribution into the public domain. If you don't want this or can't do this because of license restrictions, please don't edit. This page is one of the Public Domain Help Pages, which can be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software; see Help:Contents for an overview of all pages. See Project:PD help/Copying for instructions. PD

It is possible to create an external searches of a topic using key words using a template.

For example, this is something that would work for Google:

<span style="border: 1px solid #CCD5DB;">[[Image:GoogleIcon.PNG]] [http://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q={{{1|Wiki}}} {{{1|Google}}}]</span>
<noinclude>
==Usage==
Allows to establish a link to a search query at the Google search engine:
<div style="display:table; width:auto;"><pre>
{{Google|Term1+Term2+Term3}}
</pre></div>
[[Category:Template|Google]]
</noinclude>

The usage is very simple and easy to use. {{Google|firstTerm+Second+etc}}

It is also possible to do phrases by using %22Term1+Term2+etc%22

  • External searches are useful where an article requires certain keywords to make an effective search.
  • For the editor it allows making searches of web more quickly and painlessly.

Other applications of the template include searching Forums, for bug reports of the same type for software development wikis where the wiki and forum work together.

Note: Wikipedia has an interwiki prefix with a similar effect, so you can link to google results with [[Google:firstTerm+Second+etc]], although templates are still useful for linking other search engines.

For a clear advantage of implementing a template over the default Google interwiki prefix, consider the following, modified example:

<span style="border: 1px solid #CCD5DB;">[[Image:GoogleIcon.PNG]] [http://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q={{urlencode:{{{1|Wiki}}}}} {{{1|Google}}}]</span>
<noinclude>
==Usage==
Allows to establish a link to a search query at the Google search engine:
* <code>{{Google|Term1 Term2 Term3}}</code>
* <code>{{Google|"a phrase"}}</code>
[[Category:Template|Google]]
</noinclude>

Note the application of MediaWiki magic word urlencode. This grants us the convenience and elegance of entering the query string in a Wikipedia article in the same literal form we would enter it in Google search box, including spaces and quotation marks instead of representing them indirectly with + and %20.

Language: English