How can I make that the new pages of a Mediawiki would not be blank/empty?

Question

I'm using a mediawiki in my organisation. All our pages must have the same structure of titles and sections. Since the beginning we create a new page, copy the structure without content from another and then we start to edit the new info.

I would like that when we create a new page, it does not appear as blank or empty, but already have the basic structure of titles.

I don't know even if that is possible.

Answer 1

Mediawiki's manual page creating pages with preloaded text explains how to do this.

Answer 2

I would recommend creating a template and them using the substitution command. The process is as follows..

1. Create a template page that has the basic layout text that you want to appear on each page. Let's say that page is called "Template:Layout" (since it is a template, it will be in the template namespace).
2. Once that template as been created, when you go to create a new page, what you do is simple type {{subst:Layout}}. What that does is automatically copy the code from the layout template to the new page.

Now you may wonder why do that, you can just copy and past the code yourself. Well here is why. You can use parameters with substitution as well. Let me create a hypothetical. Say you are creating a new page for each employee at a company. You want each page to say "Hello and welcome to Persons name's page". You can copy and past that on to each new page, OR you could do the following:

1. Create the Template:Layout with the following text "Hello and welcome to {{{1}}}'s page".
2. Then when you create a new page for Bob Smith, simply type {{subst:Layout|Bob Smith}} and the text "Hello and welcome to Bob Smith's page" will be inserted at the top of the page.

I would also encourage you to look into the use of templates to stylize your pages. Substitution is similar but it doesn't dynamically change. So if you change the Layout template a week from now, pages where you used {{subst:Layout}} will not change.

Hope that helps.