Template:Citation Style documentation/url

• url: URL of an online location where the text of the publication can be found. Cannot be used if title is wikilinked. If applicable, the link may point to the specific page(s) referenced. Do not link to any commercial booksellers such as Amazon.com; see WP:PAGELINKS.
  • accessdate: Full date when URL was accessed; use the same format as other accessdates in the citations; do not wikilink. Can be hidden by registered editors.
  • archiveurl: The URL of an archived copy of a web page, if or in case the url becomes unavailable. Typically used to refer to services like WebCite and the Internet Archive; requires archivedate.
    • archivedate: Date when the item was archived; use the same format as other archive dates; do not wikilink.
    • deadurl: When the URL is still live, but preemptively archived, then set |deadurl=no. This changes the display order with the title retaining the original link and the archive linked at the end.
  • template doc demo: The archive parameters have error checking to ensure that all the required parameters are included, else {{citation error}} is invoked. On errors, main, help and template pages are placed into Category:Articles with incorrect citation syntax. Set |template doc demo=true to disable categorization; mainly used for documentation where the error is demonstrated.
• format: Format of the work referred to by url; examples: PDF, DOC, XLS; HTML is implied and should not be specified; displayed in parentheses after title. Does not change external link icon.

URLs must begin with a supported URI scheme: http:// and https:// will be supported by all browsers; irc://, ircs://, ftp://, news:, mailto: and gopher:// will require a plugin or an external application and should normally be avoided. IPv6 host-names are currently not supported.

If URLs in citation template parameters contain certain characters they will display and link incorrectly. Those characters need to be percent-encoded. For example, a space must be replaced by %20. To encode the URL, replace these characters:

sp	"	'	<	>	[	]	|	}
%20	%22	%27	%3c	%3e	%5b	%5d	%7c	%7d

Single apostrophes do not need to be encoded; but unencoded multiples will be parsed as italic or bold markup. Single curly closing braces also do not need to be encoded; but an unencoded pair will be parsed as the double closing braces for the template transclusion.