Help:Page status indicators

Page status indicators are icons (or short text snippets) displayed outside of the main content that provide quick information about the status of the article (for example whether the page is protected or whether it is a featured article).

They are also variously called top icons, page icons, heading icons or title icons.

This functionality was added to MediaWiki 1.25 in Gerrit change 162609 to solve task T25796 and replace the numerous ad-hoc solutions to this problem, such as the English Wikipedia's ‘top icon’ template.

Viewing page status indicators

Vector skin screenshot with indicator area marked.

Page status indicators are usually displayed in the top-right corner of the page, outside of the main content, or right before page title. Their exact location depends on the skin .

Adding page status indicators

Use the following syntax to add indicators to a page, changing the name attribute and contents of the tag to suit your tastes.

It is strongly recommended to create a template for each indicator type you're going to need, instead of including the tag syntax directly in articles.

Wikitext syntax:

<indicator name="foo">[[File:Foo.svg|20px]]</indicator>

Lua module syntax:

mw.getCurrentFrame():extensionTag {
	name = "indicator",
	content = '[[File:Foo.svg|20px]]',
	args = {
		name = "foo"
	}
}

Note that:

• When using a caption on the image, the caption automatically becomes a title attribute with the contents of the caption.
• Any wikitext can be added, not just images. (TemplateStyles is only supported starting with MediaWiki 1.39 , see T188443.)
• Every indicator must have a unique identifier (name). It's not possible to have several indicators with the same name – in case of duplicates, the latest occurrence of the tag wins.
• Indicators are displayed ordered by their names (case-sensitive) and not in order of their occurrence. This ensures consistency across pages and provides a simple means of ordering or grouping them.
• Indicators are not tracked. They are intended to merely reflect the content or metadata that is already present on the page, and not be data themselves. You should be able to use the appropriate tracking category , template transclusions list, special page report, or other means to list pages that include a given indicator.

Known problems

• They are not displayed by Skin:Minerva Neue , see phab:T75299.
• They cannot be previewed in the VisualEditor .
• You cannot add a widget of the Widgets extension between indicator tags.

Customizing display on your wiki

If the skin you're using supports page status indicators (all default skins do), you can adjust their display using site and user CSS. The CSS classes to style are .mw-indicators (for the entire containing block) and .mw-indicator (for each separate indicator).

Each indicator is also given an ID of #mw-indicator-name, where name is the name assigned to the indicator using the <indicator name="foo"> syntax.

Adding support for indicators in skins

See array-indicators on Manual:SkinMustache.php .

Using indicators from PHP code

Access the OutputPage object and call its setIndicators() method, passing an ID and the HTML string you want displayed. If you're adding a help link to documentation, call its addHelpLink() method, also implemented by SpecialPage and other classes. This puts a help link in the indicators area; for example, see Special:WhatLinksHere.