Template: MediaWiki URL rules

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

If URLs in [[Wikipedia:Citation_templates#Examples|citation template parameters]] contain certain characters, then they will not display and link correctly. Those characters need to be [[percent-encoded]]. For example, a space must be replaced by <code>%20</code>. To encode the URL, replace the following characters with:

{| class="wikitable"
!scope="row"| Character
!scope="col"| space
!scope="col"| "
!scope="col"| '
!scope="col"| <
!scope="col"| >
!scope="col"| [
!scope="col"| ]
!scope="col"| {
!scope="col"| <nowiki>|</nowiki>
!scope="col"| }
|-
!scope="row"| Encoding
| %20 || %22 || %27 || %3C || %3E || %5B || %5D || %7B || %7C || %7D
|}

Single apostrophes do not need to be encoded; however, unencoded multiples will be parsed as italic or bold markup. Single curly closing braces also do not need to be encoded; however, an unencoded pair will be parsed as the double closing braces for the template transclusion.<noinclude>
{{documentation}}
</noinclude>