Magic words are words surrounded by brackets or underscores which most often insert or display the current value of what they are called. These include parser functions, variables and behavior switches and are features of wikitext. They are interpreted by the Metawiki software and are often used in templates so that they show different information depending on which page they are on and many other conditions.
Types
There are three types of magic words:
Behavior switches: uppercase words surrounded by double underscores, like. __NOTOC__
Variables: uppercase words surrounded by double braces, like {{PAGENAME}} and function somewhat similarly to templates.
Parser functions: These include expressions and consist of keywords (some beginning #) in double braces with parameters following a colon, ex. {{#expr:2+2}}
Things to Remember
Remember...
Most magic words may be case-sensitive.
"{{SITENAME}}" produces "විකිපීඩියා", while "{{sitename}}" produces
Whitespace is not counted in from the front and back of keywords and parameters and the same also applies to template code.
"{{ Nofeed |Art=Wikipedia }}" and {{Nofeed|Art=Wikipedia}} will both succeed in producing the "Nofeed" template.
Page-dependent magic words will change or show information about the current page, even if the word is from a template, though in most cases, this is the desired effect.
If I insert {{exampletemplate}} and it says {{PAGENAME}}, I will see "Magic words for beginners" even though it is from "Template:example template".
If you want a magic word to paste in its value at the time of saving, you can substitute it in the same way that templates are substituted (using the subst: keyword).
{{CURRENTTIME}} will always display the current time and remain as is, while {{subst:CURRENTTIME}} will result in, for example, 9:45 being inserted and always remaining as regular text.
Behavior Switches
The implementation of magic words
For a more detailed explanation, refer to the behavior switches MediaWiki page.
Table of Contents
__NOTOC__ (can be placed anywhere in the wikitext; prevents a table of contents)
__FORCETOC__ (can be placed anywhere in the wikitext; makes a table of contents appear in its normal position)
__TOC__ (places a table of contents at its position)
Edit/Section Links
__NOEDITSECTION__ (hides section edit links beside headings)
__NEWSECTIONLINK__ (adds a "+" or "new section" link for adding a new section on a non-talk page)
__NONEWSECTIONLINK__ (removes the "+" or "new section" link on "Talk" pages)
Categories and Indexing
__NOGALLERY__ (on category pages, replaces thumbnails with normal links)
__HIDDENCAT__ (on category pages, makes it a hidden category)
__INDEX__ (tells search engines to index the page (show in results))
__NOINDEX__ (tells search engines not to index the page (not show in results))
Titles and Sorting
{{DISPLAYTITLE:title}} (changes the displayed form of the page title)
{{DEFAULTSORT:sortkey}} (sets a default category sorting key)
Variables
A variable in mathA plot of variables in algebra. (Though magic words are much easier!)
For documentation, you may wish to read the variables MediaWiki page.
