Portal:
and Portal talk:
namespaces combined, the latter is suggested: the whole days of July 18, 17, and 16 have just 367 edits between them (roughly 122 per day). Compare this to
mainspace — where 500 edits goes back just 6 minutes. Or
Wikipedia:
(2 hours), or
Template:
(4 hours 7 minutes).The highest award for any piece of content on Wikipedia is recognition is "Featured" status. These are the
articles,
lists,
topics,
pictures, and
portals that represent the best Wikipedia has to offer, and are thus meticulously written, referenced, and maintained to shine brightly as our best work.
[1] In this Dispatch we will focus on Featured portals—what they are, what makes them tick, and how, with some work, you can get your own coveted
today!
Portals are content centers, pages intended to serve as local hubs for their respective topics or areas of reference. They are usually associated with one or more Wikipedia:WikiProjects, which often take up maintaining their topical portals; however, unlike WikiProjects, they are meant to serve both our community of editors and our readers, and thus, as Wikipedia:Portal describes, "should promote content and encourage contribution." Portals themselves originated on the German and Polish Wikipedias; early in 2005, both WikiProjects and Portals were introduced onto the English Wikipedia, and later in that year a special namespace (the namespace "Portal:") was established for them.
Featured portals were first proposed by CJ in late 2005; by mid 2006 the current guideline had been established, and by late 2006, 40 portals had already attained the status. Since that time the number of portals has slowly built up, and as of writing there is a total of 1100 portals on Wikipedia. Featured portal nominations has seen a steady stream of submissions, and as of now 157 portals have attained Featured status, the highest percentage of all the Featured processes—one in six being "Wikipedia's best content." [2]
Although there is no committed standard for portal design, by and large the majority of portals use the {{ box portal skeleton}} template as their base. The reason for this is simple: it is a simple, compartmentalized, ergonomic, and easy-to-access design, the wide acceptance of which lends a common visual identity to the otherwise unstructured portal namespace. Most portals are created by first substituting {{ box portal skeleton}}; the instructions for creating and designing a portal can be found at Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions.
According to the Portal guidelines, the requirements for a portal are an Introduction ("A short summary of the topic. If possible, this should contain an attractive image emblematic of the topic."), Categories ("Links to the most important categories related to the topic."), Subportals or Related Portals, and Topics ("Links to the most important articles related to the topic.")
Portals' visual bases and mostly governed by Portal:PORTALNAME/box-header, where all of the colors and styles of the boxes are defined. In addition to this, many editors chose to add a padded border to their portals, giving a further visual identity to their work with a non-white background. The Introduction is generally given the full width of the page, and then the remainder of the page is divided into two columns of content; the bottom of the page, which contains all of the Categorization, Related projects, and related sections, is also usually given the full width of the page. It is also not unusual to separate a Portal into subpages—for an example of this, see Portal:Arctic.
A featured portal is:
The most important part of a portal, for both reviewers and readers, is the content, and no featured portal is complete without a choice display of high-quality articles and media. The most common content elements are:
thumb
), and their caption should describe the picture in question, indicating how it is related to the portal. If it has been on the main page, often you can use its
TFP caption; otherwise, you can write one yourself.These are not, by any means, the only possible sections; Portal:History, for instance, contains a non-standard "Featured portal" section, as well as "On this day" from the main page. Content is rotated in one of two ways: either on a monthly schedule, or on a random selection that rotates every time the page is loaded or purged. Most portals use the second method, as it exposes all of the content at the same time, and requires little to no maintenance. [3]
The first step to setting a content section up is creating a Layout template, at Portal:TOPIC/SECTION/Layout. Layouts generally have many common elements, so it helps to look at the implementation of an existing featured portal when designing your own. Once you have a layout template, start creating numbers subpages containing the content; for instance, Portal:TOPIC/Selected article/1, Portal:TOPIC/Selected article/2, and so on, using your layout template to make the job easier. Once you have accumulated a sufficient amount of content (20 is considered the benchmark, but upwards of 50 pieces is not unheard of), you should create the topical subpage (Portal:TOPIC/Selected article). This page should in turn have instructions on using the layout template to implement new sections (and updating the section's max=
parameter on the main page, as well as a list of content, often using {{
numbered subpages}}. It may or may not contain a "Nominations" section as well, for nominating potential topics which do not quite meet requirements. With everything ready, you can go to the portal page and create a section for it using {{
Random portal component}}, save the page, and viola, your portal section is ready!
Finally there are the categorization and miscellaneous that is relegated to the bottom of the portal, or, in some cases, to a subpage or subpages (accessible with tabs for navigation):
Portal:
and Portal talk:
namespaces combined, the latter is suggested: the whole days of July 18, 17, and 16 have just 367 edits between them (roughly 122 per day). Compare this to
mainspace — where 500 edits goes back just 6 minutes. Or
Wikipedia:
(2 hours), or
Template:
(4 hours 7 minutes).The highest award for any piece of content on Wikipedia is recognition is "Featured" status. These are the
articles,
lists,
topics,
pictures, and
portals that represent the best Wikipedia has to offer, and are thus meticulously written, referenced, and maintained to shine brightly as our best work.
[1] In this Dispatch we will focus on Featured portals—what they are, what makes them tick, and how, with some work, you can get your own coveted
today!
Portals are content centers, pages intended to serve as local hubs for their respective topics or areas of reference. They are usually associated with one or more Wikipedia:WikiProjects, which often take up maintaining their topical portals; however, unlike WikiProjects, they are meant to serve both our community of editors and our readers, and thus, as Wikipedia:Portal describes, "should promote content and encourage contribution." Portals themselves originated on the German and Polish Wikipedias; early in 2005, both WikiProjects and Portals were introduced onto the English Wikipedia, and later in that year a special namespace (the namespace "Portal:") was established for them.
Featured portals were first proposed by CJ in late 2005; by mid 2006 the current guideline had been established, and by late 2006, 40 portals had already attained the status. Since that time the number of portals has slowly built up, and as of writing there is a total of 1100 portals on Wikipedia. Featured portal nominations has seen a steady stream of submissions, and as of now 157 portals have attained Featured status, the highest percentage of all the Featured processes—one in six being "Wikipedia's best content." [2]
Although there is no committed standard for portal design, by and large the majority of portals use the {{ box portal skeleton}} template as their base. The reason for this is simple: it is a simple, compartmentalized, ergonomic, and easy-to-access design, the wide acceptance of which lends a common visual identity to the otherwise unstructured portal namespace. Most portals are created by first substituting {{ box portal skeleton}}; the instructions for creating and designing a portal can be found at Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions.
According to the Portal guidelines, the requirements for a portal are an Introduction ("A short summary of the topic. If possible, this should contain an attractive image emblematic of the topic."), Categories ("Links to the most important categories related to the topic."), Subportals or Related Portals, and Topics ("Links to the most important articles related to the topic.")
Portals' visual bases and mostly governed by Portal:PORTALNAME/box-header, where all of the colors and styles of the boxes are defined. In addition to this, many editors chose to add a padded border to their portals, giving a further visual identity to their work with a non-white background. The Introduction is generally given the full width of the page, and then the remainder of the page is divided into two columns of content; the bottom of the page, which contains all of the Categorization, Related projects, and related sections, is also usually given the full width of the page. It is also not unusual to separate a Portal into subpages—for an example of this, see Portal:Arctic.
A featured portal is:
The most important part of a portal, for both reviewers and readers, is the content, and no featured portal is complete without a choice display of high-quality articles and media. The most common content elements are:
thumb
), and their caption should describe the picture in question, indicating how it is related to the portal. If it has been on the main page, often you can use its
TFP caption; otherwise, you can write one yourself.These are not, by any means, the only possible sections; Portal:History, for instance, contains a non-standard "Featured portal" section, as well as "On this day" from the main page. Content is rotated in one of two ways: either on a monthly schedule, or on a random selection that rotates every time the page is loaded or purged. Most portals use the second method, as it exposes all of the content at the same time, and requires little to no maintenance. [3]
The first step to setting a content section up is creating a Layout template, at Portal:TOPIC/SECTION/Layout. Layouts generally have many common elements, so it helps to look at the implementation of an existing featured portal when designing your own. Once you have a layout template, start creating numbers subpages containing the content; for instance, Portal:TOPIC/Selected article/1, Portal:TOPIC/Selected article/2, and so on, using your layout template to make the job easier. Once you have accumulated a sufficient amount of content (20 is considered the benchmark, but upwards of 50 pieces is not unheard of), you should create the topical subpage (Portal:TOPIC/Selected article). This page should in turn have instructions on using the layout template to implement new sections (and updating the section's max=
parameter on the main page, as well as a list of content, often using {{
numbered subpages}}. It may or may not contain a "Nominations" section as well, for nominating potential topics which do not quite meet requirements. With everything ready, you can go to the portal page and create a section for it using {{
Random portal component}}, save the page, and viola, your portal section is ready!
Finally there are the categorization and miscellaneous that is relegated to the bottom of the portal, or, in some cases, to a subpage or subpages (accessible with tabs for navigation):