The extension InterWikiLinks allows creating abbreviations for various external wikis. The full URL only needs to be known when the interwiki link is defined and not every time it is used. You can find the interwiki links manager in the Global actions menu under Administration > Interwiki links.
Interwiki links manager
Interwiki links are managed from the page Special:InterwikiLinks. It can be loaded from the navigation item Global actions > Administration > Interwiki links.
Interwiki link syntax
Admins can create and delete Interwikilinks with the Interwiki links manager.
Existing links can be edited by clicking the "pen" icon when the link is selected or deleted by clicking the "trash" icon.
The syntax for interwiki links is:
http://URL_OF_THE_WIKI/$1
$1 is the placeholder for the article title of the other wiki.
Using interwiki links on a page
In edit mode, links to other wikis are added just like links to local wiki pages, but with the interwiki prefix at the beginning.
For example:
The URL to the Wikipedia article "Tree house" is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_house
Wikipedia is a default entry in the Interwiki link manager:
prefix: wikipedia, url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1
As a result, a link to any wikipedia page can be inserted by using the wikipedia prefix.
[[wikipedia:Tree_house|Wikipedia article about tree houses]]
Special use case: multilingual wikis
If you want to maintain multiple language versions of your wiki content in separate wiki instances, you can use interwiki links to cross-reference related pages.
A language switcher is automatically inserted when the interwiki links with language abbreviations are set.
Linking the language versions:
- Create interwiki links for the required languages and configure them in the Interwiki link manager (see above) of all language sites. The prefix must always be an ISO-3166 country code, e.g. de, en, fr.
Interwiki links for the German and English BlueSpice helpdesk - Add the interwiki links at the bottom of the related pages to create the language switch. Example: In the English article "Tree", insert the following interwiki links:
[[de:Baum]]
[[fr:Arbre]]
Special page "WithoutInterwiki"
To view a list of all pages on a wiki that don't have interwiki links, an administator can review the page Special:WithoutInterwiki.
