This template is used in MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-custom-URL. Changes to it can cause immediate changes to the Wikipedia user interface. To avoid large-scale disruption, any changes should first be tested in this template's /sandbox or /testcases subpage, or in your own user space. The tested changes can then be added in one single edit to this template. Please discuss any changes at the talk page before implementing them.
This template creates a formatted external link. It formats the appearance of displayed URLs, while making them machine-readable as part of emitted microformat meta-data, inside templates such as infoboxes.
Note: If you wish to display text instead of the URL (e.g. website instead of example.com), please do not use this template. Instead, consider using normal wiki markup or Template:Official website. Displaying text instead of the url will render the microformat data invalid.
The first parameter is parsed to decide whether it is a complete URL. If it doesn't start with a URI scheme (such as "http:", "https:", or "ftp:"), the prefix "http://" is prepended to the specified generated target URL of the link.
Parameter 2 ({{URL|url name|optional display text}}) is deprecated. See note above for more information and alternative templates.
URL with = character should use numbered parameters
If the URL contains an equals sign, as is common in a query string, the parameter |1= should be used for the URL ({{URL|1=example.com}}). This applies when the value of the URL is unknown, for example, when this template is used in another template specifying the effective URL as a variable value
The template attempts to handle simple cases where a URL containing an equals sign is specified without the necessary |1=, but it is still better practice to pass it in.
The deprecated second parameter for the displayed text, if present in legacy uses, must also be explicitly numbered if the first parameter is explicitly numbered ({{URL|1=url name|2=optional display text}}); otherwise it will override the value of the first parameter:
The template wraps the displayed URL with a class="url" so that it is included in any parent microformat which takes a URL parameter – see our microformats project.
