How to Create an Infobox

What are Infoboxes?
Infoboxes are nothing more than a table saved as a template. Infoboxes are usually in the upper right hand corner of an article. May contain information on leadership, meeting times and it's goals.

How to create an Infobox
Again an infobox is a table. If you know how to create tables in Wikitext or HTML, it is not difficult. If you do not know Wikitext or HTLM, you will probably need someone who does to help you. If you would like to learn these two programs, see Wikitext or HTML Programming. Neither of these programming languages are difficult.

Step One - Create the table
We are going to assume you know a little Wikitext and HTML in this tutorial. We will begin by creating a simple table. The coding will be displayed in both Wikitext and HTML side by side so can see the difference. It is recommended that you create infobox tables in HTML as there few problems as you will see.

We will be creating an infobox as shown above. Wikitext and HTML will be displayed side by side so you can see the difference between them. So let us create a infobox for an organization:

Now pay close attention to the table tags. You should notice this coding: class="infobox" in the table tag. This code tells the browser that a infobox is being created and to place it in the upper right hand corner of the article.

As it stands, the HTML coding is ok at this point, but the Wikitext has a problem. Normally the Wikitext as is will work for any table, however, we are going to be installing parameters which require us to replace the |'s in the Wikitext with. The reason is a bit beyond the scope of this article but if you are interested click here The Wikitext looks a bit messy right now, but the substitution of the for the | will save a lot of headaches later. Notice that nothing had to be done to the HTML coding. Even though it looks like the Wikitext has less programming, it is a lot trickier to program infoboxes than in HTLM. That's why it is recommended to program infoboxes in HTML rather than Wikitext.

Step Two - More Coding
Next step is to add parameters which are formated like so:. We will add them to the table below. Notice that there are three opening and closing curly brackets around each one. Notice all we have done is enclose the parameter we want to place information with opening and closing. That is all. It will be in the parameters where we put the information that we see in the infobox.

Step Three - Placing the Infobox
To place this infobox which again is nothing more than a template with the class of "infobox," we type the usual coding in which our example is. However, it will be displayed as such:

Step Three - Limiting Parameters
Some infoboxes can get very long. If you list all the attributes of an organization can possibly there can be quit a few items listed. What if you placing an infobox for a small organization, but are using the infobox for a large organizations with many offices you could end up with an infobox taking up a lot of room on the page with little information in it. Maybe the organization does even have a phone number. Well it is possible to code the infobox so that the item "phone" does not appear if there is none. It is done simply by adding this coding to the parameter.