The Kirby Encyclopedia:Navigation templates

This is a guide to correctly making and using navigation templates (or "nav templates" for short). As their name suggests, navigation templates are used for navigating between related pages, as an alternative to categories. Both navigation templates and categories are placed at the bottom of pages, but while categories must be clicked on in order to get to a list of related pages, navigation templates contain the links themselves, making the other pages directly accessible from the article that the reader is currently on. Also, while different levels of categories and subcategories must be used in order to organize different aspects of any one subject (i.e. the enemies, places or items found in a game), navigation templates can be divided up through the use of headers, subheaders and separated lists of links. Furthermore, nav templates can be color-coded for easy identification and use.

Keep in mind that the easiest way to learn how to make a proper template is by looking at other templates and repurposing their designs, and while this page itself does not discuss the coding specifics behind templates, it does list a number of examples that can be copied and investigated.

Types of templates
While the overall structure and use of navigation templates is constant, templates cover a range of subjects, and different material needs to be organized in different ways. Templates can be grouped into three basic classes: game-specific, series-wide and species templates (note that the last one includes various non-species-based templates, however species-based are the most numerous and this, along with historical usage, lends the class its name). These three types of templates are described in the following sections, followed by some more general instructions about template design.

Game-specific templates
These are the most fundamental templates. In theory, every game should have one, although many of the more minor, obscure and/or data deficient titles do not. Game-specific templates should include links to all articles pertaining to the game in question, including the characters, enemies, bosses, items, worlds and levels. Game-specific templates are color-coded based on the series that the game hails from: see the coloration instructions below.

The templates should be divided up by headers under which the links are filed. For example, enemies would go in an "Enemies" section, all the levels into a "Levels" section, etc. While the most common types of content are listed above, different games often require specialized header names or unique sections entirely. For instance, uses "Protagonists" to account for the fact that the antagonistic characters are grouped under the "Bosses" section, rather than going into a single "Characters" section.

Most of the time, every relevant article can fit into a navigation template. However, sometimes random items that do not easily fit into one of the sections are left out, or in the case of RPGs, the multitude of non-playable characters are omitted because they would make the template too large. In these cases, users must rely on categories to get to the unlisted pages. However, it should be noted that while the subjects are not part of the templates, the templates should still be present on their articles.

Another situation is when one or more of the subjects has been taken out of the main game template and given their own template. For example, is separate from the main  template. This partitioning should generally be avoided unless the grouping greatly increases size of template. These auxiliary game-specific templates only need to go on the articles of subjects that concern them (e.g. the Kirby and the Forgotten Land stage articles) and the game article itself. Auxiliary templates are color-coded after their main game-specific template.

Species templates
Species templates organize subjects based on what they are, rather than what game they come from. Most of these templates are built around a group of related species, listing all the species and characters within that group, as in. Generally, differentiating between the species and the characters is all the subdivision that is found in these templates. Species templates should instead be given colors befitting of their subject matter (e.g. a peach color for ).

The structure should also apply to most other miscellaneous navigation templates. For example, lists all the different locations found on the planet. is another example of a non-species "species" template. Generally, these templates should provide some level of organization, and templates that are merely categories in template form, without any subdivisions, will usually be deleted. However, sometimes major subjects (items or objects) will be granted templates in order to bring them more attention than categories alone would, effectively doing for them what proper species templates do for characters and enemies.

For the most part, however, major subjects that deserve templates have already been given templates, and users should carefully assess the situation before creating more. This applies to species as well as miscellaneous subjects: if a group of species only has a few members, a template might be excessive, especially if it is only a minor assortment of species and characters. Conversely, very loose (and often large) groupings such as fish or undead should be saved for categories, not templates, as the need for such templates is far less than for specific species groupings like, and creating too many overlapping templates can clutter up pages.

Template design
The basic layout of a template features a banner across the top of the template bearing a descriptive title, below which are the lists of links, organized into sections by headers. The number and types of sections are different from template to template (see the above sections for more information), and many templates require sub-headers to further subdivide their sections. However, while template length is quite variable, all templates should be given the same width of 100%.

No matter the size of the template, it must be completely collapsible - in other words, all the content must be hidden by default, with only the banner visible, until the "[show]" link is clicked on. It is much easier to find a specific template when only the headers have to be skimmed through, and not the lists of links as well, and collapsing the templates also saves on space. It is enabled by including  in the template's class (see below for more information on classes). Furthermore, if a page has 10 or more navigation templates, they should all be collapsed through the use of.

Finally, be aware that every navigation template must include an [edit] button on left hand side of the banner, opposite the [show]/[hide] button. This must be manually added by placing in front of the title in the banner, in the form of , where "NAME" is the name of the template as it appears in the address bar.

Listing the links
The lists of links should be grouped in a way that makes finding entries simple; generally this means alphabetical order should be used, however worlds and levels should be sequential, and characters are usually arranged by descending order of importance (e.g. Kirby is listed first, followed by King Dedede, then Meta Knight, etc.). Locations can be organized alphabetically or sequentially, depending on how the game is structured. Bosses must be listed in sequential order. Longer lists tend to be better served by alphabetical order. If a high level of organization is needed, make use of subheaders, creating many small lists rather than a few big ones. Other templates use symbols to denote specific subjects in a list, such as 's use of asterisks to mark content exclusive to Kirby Super Star Ultra.

Headers
There are two types of headers that can be used in navigation templates: horizontal headers look like the title banner and are placed above their sections, while vertical headers are stacked along the left-hand side of the template, with their corresponding lists beside them. Horizontal headers and their lists are centered, and while vertical headers are also centered, their lists are justified left; alternating background colors are used to separate the sections of vertical-style templates, while the horizontal headers themselves divide up their templates, and so only one continuous background color is needed for them.

Both styles have their pros and cons when it comes to functionality, but while horizontal headers used to be the only method used by The Kirby Encyclopedia, vertical headers have become the more common choice. This is mainly because they take up less space than horizontal bars, resulting in more compact templates. Unlike horizontal headers, they also lend themselves to header-subheader formatting, with subheaders nested within the column of headers.

Horizontal headers generally only appear in complex templates that require an extra level of structure beyond the regular two-tier header-subheader system, such as, which uses one to separate the two different sets of pages it covers. Very large templates like can also use the show/hide function made possible with horizontal headers to collapse individual sections and makes the overall template more manageable. Finally, as seen in the aforementioned, horizontal headers can be repurposed to create unique footnote sections in which symbol legends or comments can be placed.

Coloration
With a few exceptions, all species templates should give banners the darkest coloration, followed by the headers and then the subheaders, with the background being significantly lighter. The default black text usually looks fine against the header and banner colors, but darker shades require the text to be white instead. The header font colors are automatically black, while the banner font colors are white by default, except for a few of the series/game-specific headers, which are black. If a species template's banner is too light for white font to be easily read,  can be used to turn the banner font black. Conversely, if the headers are dark and the font needs to be white in order to show up, this can be done manually using for the regular text and  for the links. Only black and white should be used for the banner and header font colors, and all background colors should be light enough so that plain, blue links can be used for the actual lists.

For templates that use a footnote bar, such as, the bar can be coded like the banner, but should be given a different color, darker than the headers, but lighter than the banner. The chart to the top right shows the existing footer colors; if a footer is added to a new class of templates, please alert an admin so that they can approve the color choice and add it to the chart. Remember to only use footers when it is absolutely necessary.

If no color is specified, the banner and headers will receive default grey tones. Please note that the code  will not override the default colors.

Order on pages
In most articles, species templates should come first, followed by game-specific templates, which are arranged in chronological order of release. Subject-based series-wide templates will be placed directly under the first game template from that series. Auxiliary game-specific templates should come after the main game template. Above the game- and series-based templates, any family templates (e.g. ) should come first, followed by navigation templates describing the subject, in order of decreasing importance. Usually, only the actual species template (or the equivalent item- or location-based template) will be present, similar to how the categorization system works.

Additionally, there are a number of specialized classes of pages, most of which have (or will eventually have) corresponding navigation templates. They are as follows:
 * Galleries should all contain
 * "List of ... quotes" pages should have
 * "List of ... glitches" pages should have
 * "List of ... media" pages should have
 * "List of ... in-game music" pages should have
 * "List of ... profiles and statistics" pages should have
 * "List of ... pre-release and unused content" pages should have
 * The references pages should all have
 * Staff pages should have

Only mainspace articles can have navigation templates. Categories, other templates, Help pages, Project pages, user pages, and talk pages should not have nav templates.

Categories
The only category that navigation templates should have is Category:Navigation templates, which must be included using the following coding, placed after the template coding itself:



Do not add any  categories