View source for User talk:Msmall92/test template

==Comments & hints==
Hi, what you did so far is the documentation. The template code is still missing.
Read [[MW:Help:Templates]] or [[Wikipedia:Help:Template]] for an introduction.
Look at {{tl|user}} and {{tl|information}} how parameters get passed. The {{tl|user}} template is very simple and uses only one parameter. For the {{tl|information}} template check the edit history and look at the initial version... and how it was "improved".

For a final "person template" you need not only to pass the values through parameters, but you would also need to check the existence of the values (to ignore certain empty paramaters) and the contents of the values (to handle conditional output, e.g. handle language/country specific cases). Finally you will also need some parameter clauses to define what should be transcluded (i.e. the template code) and what not (e.g. documentation, template category, etc.). Maybe creating a "OST detail" template would be an easier task. ;-)

I will give you a hint and will do the first step for you... the passing of the paramaters. I will also put the documentation parts in "noinclude" clauses. So, the docs are included only on the template page but not on pages that use the template. --<b>[[User:MoerkJ|<font color="green">MoerkJ</font>]]&nbsp;<sup><small>[[User talk:MoerkJ|<font color="red">talk</font>]]</small></sup></b> 20:12, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

:Hello! Thank you for doing the first step and for giving me helpful links to better understand how to set-up templates. I really appreciate it.

:I hope you don't mind me deviating from your template code, but I was able to create my own code which was simply copied and pasted from [http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Actor here]. Then, I made some changes to the infobox that better suited to DramaWiki's style. But there's one thing that I'm stumped on - is there a code that omits any parameters left blank? For example, [[User:Msmall92/Sandbox|my test page]] has the following parameters left blank: ''also known as''; ''nicknames''; ''family''. I checked the Help page links you provided, but I couldn't find anything.

:And if you have any suggestions for the template (such as the text size/color, background color, adding parameters, etc.), please let me know. --[[User:Msmall92|Msmall92]] ([[User talk:Msmall92|talk]]) 01:48, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

::With the [[MW:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions|ParserFunction]] <code>#if</code> you can check [[MW:Help:Parser functions in templates|''if'' certain parameter values were passed]]. See {{tl|cast subpage}} or {{tl|jidaigeki}} as examples. You can also programm the output depending on ''which'' value was passed, see {{tl|LANGUAGE}} or {{tl|MONTHNUMBER}} for example. You may also need [[MW:Help:Magic words#Formatting|Magic words for formatting]] or text transformations.
::Test if your template works for Japanese and Chinese persons or artists with different professions to see if you need more parameters. I have seen Chinese artist pages with two different name romanizations (which I can't assign to any standards). For Japanese names you can have two forms (kana/hiragana) and one romanization. It may be wise to split some parameters from the beginning in order to get one simple value passed to each parameter. Because later you cannot reuse complex values like enumerations of individual values. For example you could use a "country" parameter in combination with "profession1", "profession2", etc. and use them for page categorization like in that [http://www.dramawiki.pl/index.php?title=Szablon:Profil polish wiki]. Some advanced features can be implemented later but some things need to be considered early.

::Btw, the "gradient" styles you used seem to have some error (background fades from black to black). Thus, I see a black box with black text in Firefox. Maybe it would have been better to do the fancy design stuff later. Besides using a right aligned box on DramaWiki artist pages isn't a good idea, IMHO. On [[Special:ShortPages|short pages]] it would look very strange having a rather small box on the right side leaving the rest of the page half empty. Perhaps it isn't a good idea to use a completely new/different design from the beginning. The different designs could be confusing for the readers. I think a template which we would deploy on all artist pages should still use the old formatting (bullet list). Later, after the template is widely used the design could be changed to whatever we want. This exactly is the charm of using templates: you "programm" the functionality (using parameters) and you can change the design details later.
::Another advise... it might be better - especially for more complex templates - to separate the design (i.e. html styles) from the template code. It can be achieved by programming a table or div using its own style class which can be defined in your user-specific [[Wikipedia:WP:CSS|style sheet]] ([[Special:Mypage/common.css]]) and later site-wide in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]]. Btw, the original [http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Infobox_Cast cast infobox on Lostpedia] uses a wikitable and looks much different. Wikipedia made it even better, IMHO. They defined a global [[Wikipedia:Template:Infobox|infobox meta-template]] which handles all the design aspects. And several [[Wikipedia:WP:IB|specific infobox templates]] pass their own parameters to that meta-template. This way some complexity is simply delegated to another template. --<b>[[User:MoerkJ|<font color="green">MoerkJ</font>]]&nbsp;<sup><small>[[User talk:MoerkJ|<font color="red">talk</font>]]</small></sup></b> 07:23, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

:::You know what, after thinking things through, it is best to go with your suggestion of creating a template using the current bullet point list format. After all, it'll be easier to just focus on making the template and inputting the template into all artist pages rather than making a complicated template. I do hope that we can make some changes to it someday. It doesn't have to be right now, but like you said, the template can be changed to however we want when it is widely used. :) --[[User:Msmall92|Msmall92]] ([[User talk:Msmall92|talk]]) 04:13, 9 December 2014 (UTC)