How do I....?

[Morrus]

I've been struggling with the best way to do this for a while. Figured I'd ask, since I'm not getting anywhere!

I have a couple of pages:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...e=d20:Skills+I
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...=d20:Skills+II

Lots of h1 headers for items on those pages. They're mostly too short to need their own page.

So I need an easy way to navigate to individual items. So I figured a dedicated navigation/list page would do the trick:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...tle=d20:Skills

Of course, those won't autolink to the individual items, only to entire pages; so I have to do it manually.

BUT! Then I had an idea - why not create a redirect for each item by name so that it goes straight to the right location. So I tried it with one of them:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...se&redirect=no

Doesn't work, though. Two problems:

1) It still doesn't autolink to the redirect page (these words show up a LOT, and I don't want to go through all those pages finding them all and doing it manually)

2) When I manually add a link to the redirect page, it redirects, but only to the top of the target page, not the sub-element.

So, where am I going wrong? I can't figure it out!

[pegasus]

1) Autolinks will only happen between pages with the same title prefix (namespace in VW3). If the autolink is outside the wiki, autolinks only go to the Default namespace (no title prefix).

2) Not redirecting to sections is a bug that is fixed in VW4.

Personally I would make those all separate pages, even if some of them are short. I would make books for d20:Skills I and II and add the pages for the current headlines as chapters of the book instead.

[Morrus]

They do have the same namespace; so should they be auto linking?

Do I need to upgrade to fix the bug?

I suppose I could give them than pages; I'm going to run into the same issue with some much longer lists of things though.

[Morrus]

Just a quick bump - should I upgrade to fix that bug? It's fairly critical.

[Morrus]

Not wanting to be a pain, but I have so much work to do and these hours of waiting are eating into that!

In addition to the above two questions:

3) Is there any plan to make linking directly to subheaders quicker/easier? Autolinking them perhaps, or allowing some kind of anchor tag to be defined?

4) Autolinks, as mentioned by above, are really random. I can't work out why some things within the same namespace autolink and others don't. I've figured out by now that redirect pages don't autolink (for whatever reason), but plenty of perfectly normal pages in the same namespaces don't autolink while those right next to them do. I can't discern a pattern to it. Is there something I'm missing?

[pegasus]

You can link to sub-headers via the wiki tag like so:

[wiki=Page#Heading]click here[/wiki]

There are fairly complex rules regarding what is valid for autolinking, but I can't really say whether there's a bug without knowing some specific terms that don't work.

Yes, you would have to upgrade to fix the bug mentioned above. Since you're on VW3 right now, you should do a few test upgrades and follow this blog: https://www.vaultwiki.org/blogs/55/

[Morrus]

Eeek. That upgrade process looks intimidating!

I just made a quick page where I listed a long list of pages I know exist in the same namespace. Some are autolinking, while others are not (there might be one or two naming mistakes there, as it's a long list, but the majority of them are correct):

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...st&redirect=no

That's a copy/paste of the first column on this page, where every one of those works fine when I add the linking tag, so you can see the pages all exist:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...nt&redirect=no

Similarly, the word "Strength" in the first table on this page:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...es&redirect=no

Should autolink to this (test) page:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...odern:Strength

It doesn't. However, the exact same word does on this page:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...:Basic+Classes

I can't discern the pattern!

[pegasus]

Some rules for autolinks...

Only auto-link a term if:

• The user has not already entered a valid link for that term in the same posting
• The term has not already been autolinked in the same posting

In the "Strength" example you provided, the word "Strength" is already linked elsewhere on the page.
Similarly, in the first "list" you provided, some of those terms appear multiple times throughout the page, and are linked in some of the other appearances. Whether there are still some terms that are not linked at all, I did not look exhaustively.

An option to allow the auto-linker to create duplicate links was added in VaultWiki 4. In VW3, it is not possible.

[Morrus]

So, again, I need to upgrade? Yikes. That intimidates me. But it does seem that doing so will solve most of my issues.

What will break? I saw your list of reasons not to upgrade; most don't apply to me. I'm not sure about the "parser functions on non-wiki pages" reason though - I suspect it doesn't apply to me; I use some wiki BB codes in CMS articles (headings, mainly).

[Morrus]

Similarly, in the first "list" you provided, some of those terms appear multiple times throughout the page, and are linked in some of the other appearances.

Which terms? They're mostly all unique. There may be one or two accidental repetitions (I see "Equipment" there twice, and it's not linked either time) but they're the exception.

Whether there are still some terms that are not linked at all, I did not look exhaustively..

Then please do; you asked for the examples, and I provided them as asked. In fact, just look at one. Just look at the *first* one, 'Dogfighter'.

[pegasus]

When I visit "d20 Modern:Equipment" which would be the auto-linked page, I get "There is no text in this page", so it is correct that it is not auto-linking.

"Dogfighter" is linked in the third "paragraph", at least for me.

[Morrus]

When I visit "d20 Modern:Equipment" which would be the auto-linked page, I get "There is no text in this page", so it is correct that it is not auto-linking.

I changed the page name since I posted, that's why. At the time, though, it wasn't autolinking.

"Dogfighter" is linked in the third "paragraph", at least for me.

Trust me to pick an example I had mistakenly entered twice.

There's dozens that aren't though.

d20 System Basics, for example.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwik...+System+Basics

It's weird that it seems to alternate. If you look down that list, every other item is linked. For example:

Legal Information - linked
d20 System Basics
Ability Scores - linked
Allegiances
Basic Classes - linked
The Strong Hero
The Fast Hero - linked
The Tough Hero
The Smart Hero - linked
The Dedicated Hero
The Charismatic Hero - linked

And I've removed the second occurence, and Dogfighter still isn't linking.

[pegasus]

With that observation, it's possible there may be a bug where the auto-links don't happen in a row without other text in between. Once your upgrade is complete, please let me know if it persists.