A "magic word" is a keyword or phrase recognized by MediaWiki software (which Wikia is built on), which triggers the software to do something special on the page. When editing in the visual editor, magic words on the page will show up as a green puzzle piece.

Step-by-Step

• To add a magic word, simply add the magic word to the content of the page somewhere. It will look like code, but after you save (or preview), it will work as intended.
  • Magic words can be added in either editor (source or visual), however, source mode must be used to edit a magic word. Alternatively, in the visual editor, you can simply remove the magic word you wish to change and add the new one.

Common Magic Words

Here are some of the magic words used most commonly at Wikia:

• __NOTOC__ hides the table of contents on a page.
• __TOC__ places the table of contents exactly where this is entered. It overrides the NOTOC switch.
• __NOWYSIWYG__, disables the rich text editor on a page.
• {{CURRENTDAYNAME}} produces the current day of the week.
• {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} shows the number of articles on your wiki.
• {{SITENAME}} produces the name of the wiki. ^[1]

Full list of Magic Words

For a full list of available magic words, see the Magic words help page on Media Wiki. ^[2]

Wikia-Specific Magic Words

Some extensions or features unique to Wikia also have magic words associated with them. Here is a comprehensive list:

Wiki Navigation

These magic words will fill in data for your wiki navigation bar. To utilize them, these must be placed on the MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation page:

• #categoryX# - where X is a number greater than 0. This gets the top 8 pages from the X biggest category on a wiki.
• #category-Foo# - Gets the top 8 pages from Category:Foo.
• #visited# - Populates a list of the top visited pages from MediaWiki:Most popular articles.
• #newlychanged# - Gets recently edited pages.
• #topusers# - Gets a list of the most active users.

Category Galleries

These magic words will apply to the Category Gallery feature when left on a Category page:

• __NOCATEGORYGALLERY__ - Hides a category gallery from being rendered on a category page.
• __FORCECATEGORYGALLERY__ - If the category gallery is enabled on a wiki, but it is not applied to all categories by default, this will add a category gallery to the category page.

Notes

1. ↑ {{SITENAME}} - like all others variables that give you meta information - is relative to the page you use it on. Since this is the Shared Help {{SITENAME}} will always say "Help Wiki" - no matter on which wiki you're viewing this page. You get the same effect if you use {{SITENAME}} in a template and transclude it from another wiki.
2. ↑ Some magic words may function differently, or not work, at Wikia.com. This occurs because the version of the mediawiki software used by Wikia is not always the same version as those of either MediaWiki.org or Wikipedia.org.

See also

• Editing
• Parser Functions

Further help and feedback

• Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
• Check Help:Wikia Community Central for sources of further help and support
• Check Help:Contacting Wikia for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article