Template:Welcome screen
Welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you enjoy the encyclopedia and want to stay. As a first step, you may wish to read the Introduction.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask at the Teahouse.
Here are some more resources to help you as you explore and contribute to the world's largest encyclopedia...
Finding your way around:
- The Wikipedia Adventure (a tutorial orienting you with Wikipedia)
- The Signpost, our newspaper
Need help?
- Questions – a guide on where to ask questions
- Cheatsheet – quick reference on Wikipedia's mark-up codes
- Wikipedia's 5 pillars – an overview of Wikipedia's foundations
- Article wizard – a Wizard to help you create articles
- The simplified ruleset – a summary of Wikipedia's most important rules
- Guide to Wikipedia – a thorough step-by-step guide to Wikipedia
How you can help:
- Contributing to Wikipedia – a guide on how you can help
- Community portal – Wikipedia's hub of activity
Additional tips...
- Please sign your messages on talk pages with four tildes (~~~~). This will automatically insert your "signature" (your username and a date stamp). The
button, on the tool bar above Wikipedia's text editing window, also does this. - If you would like to play around with your new Wiki skills without changing the mainspace, the Sandbox is for you.
 | Any breaking changes to this template, including moving it or nominating it for deletion, must be communicated in advance to Twinkle's users and maintainers at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle. The standard installation of Twinkle relies on this template. |
 | This template should always be substituted – use {{subst:Welcome screen}}. Any accidental transclusions will be automatically substituted by a bot. |
Usage
- To greet a user with this template just as it appears above (your signature will automatically replace the
~~~~), place the following wikicode on the user's talk page:{{subst:Welcome screen}} - To add a message before the last sentence, use:
{{subst:Welcome screen|message}}- Replace message with your desired message. It will be inserted into the greeting before "Good luck, and have fun."
- To add a (level-2) heading above the box, use:
{{subst:Welcome screen|heading=text}}- The heading will be titled as what you replace text with.
- To make the template transparent, for use on custom-designed talk pages with built-in formatting, use:
{{subst:Welcome screen|clear=true}} - The above options can be combined:
{{subst:Welcome screen|Wikipedia is far better than Britannica.|heading=Welcome to Wikipedia}}
Notes
- Find subst count and examples of this template on User talk pages using this advanced search.