RuneScape:Template policy/Personal templates

Many users wish to use templates to add a personal touch to their userpages, or to unify content across a web of user subpages. This is perfectly fine; however in order to facilitate this, users must take care of where they place their personal use templates. This is both for maintenance and organizational purposes. Its important to identify which templates are for user page use, since usually templates are deleted if they only used in the User namespace.

Userboxes
The most common type of personal use template is a userbox. A userbox is a small rectangular box, usually 240px wide and 48px tall, which includes a brief message about likes, dislikes, and other biographical info. Users include these userboxes on their page to indicate that they agree with the message or that it pertains to them. Users can make their own from scratch, or use one of the hundreds of userboxes that other users have premade. See Template:Userbox for more details. If users choose to create their own userbox, they must create it as a sub-page of the Template:Userbox page, for example, Template:Userbox/Loves cats.

If a userbox is made using the Userbox template, it does not need to be categorized, since using Template:Userbox automatically categorizes all userboxes made with it. If one is made from scratch however, it will need to be added to Category:Userbox templates using the format:. The noinclude tags mean that the category will not follow the rest of the template code when it is translcuded on the userpage.

Userboxes often add users to categories which which relate to the userbox. For example, Template:Userbox/Loves cats might add players to Category:Users who love cats. This is accomplished by adding. The includeonly tags means that the category will only be activated when the userbox is put on someone's userpage, and will not include the actual userbox template in the category.

Userboxes usually come with an image, and most of the time this is one of the images already uploaded to the Wiki for encyclopedic purposes. If no image fits in with the user box, an image specifically designed for that userbox may be uploaded, but it must first pass consensus by creating a thread in the Yew Grove and seeing if the community agrees that the userbox should get its own image. This is to prevent people from using a userbox as an excuse to upload a personal use image, which is forbidden, since the Wiki is not a host for image files.

Other templates
Other personal use templates are used to organise and unify the appearance of a userpage. It includes things like headers, sidebars, and footers. These templates cannot be created in the Template: namespace, since they are only for use on one user's page. Instead, they must be crated as a sub-page of the user's page, for example, User:/Header. The can then be transcluded just like any other template using. These types of templates do not need to, and in fact, should not be categorised.