Template:Cite dragon/doc

This template is the parent template for all Dragon Magazine citations. It calls Cite publication which is based on Wikipedia cite journal template. Use this template to create sub-templates for specific magazine articles so that you and others may reference them in articles on this wiki, but first look through Category:Dragon citation templates to make sure someone hasn't already made a template for the work you want to reference. You can view all the various citation templates, including books, magazines, video games, trading cards, and web-sourced citations here. For help citing sources with pre-made templates, see Help:Citing sources. For a history of Dragon Magazine, see A Brief History of Dragons (& Dungeons).

Usage
Use the following format when creating a template for a whole magazine:

Use this format when creating a sub-template for a new magazine article:

and replace PAGES with the page number(s) of the whole article. If you don't know the correct page numbers, then just use If you think the work you are citing will never be cited again, you may use this template directly in your article. Insert the following code immediately after the passage you wish to cite: and fill in the blanks. To make it shorter, you may delete the parameters that you don't use. All parameters except issue are optional, but it will look pretty bad if you don't at least supply the basics.
 * pages    =


 * author : One or more author names, if applicable. If no author is specified, the editor field will appear in the author position (if specified). Names may be wiki links if desired. Note that proper citations list  but our wiki links are , so use the wiki link format until further notice.
 * editor : One or more editor names, if applicable. Usually we just put the Editor-in-chief's name here, but you can add more editors if you like. Wiki links are allowed. This field will be appended with "ed." to distinguish it from the author. If a comma (", ") is detected in this field, it assumes there is more than one editor and will append "eds." (So don't put "Mary Editor and Mike Redact" because there is no comma. Use "Mary Editor, Mike Redact")
 * title : The title of the magazine article, which will be enclosed in double quotes (“”). This field should probably not be wiki linked because we don't tend to write wiki articles about magazine articles. However, if this does happen, then a wiki link will work here.
 * url : If this magazine article is available free online, you can add the URL here and its title will turn into a link.
 * issue : Required The issue number as an integer.
 * date : The month and year of publication.
 * year : (deprecated) year will also work instead of date, but is only here for backward compatibility. Please do not use.
 * publisher : The publisher of the magazine. This will be automatically calculated from the issue number, but can be overridden if you so desire. (From Dragon #1 to #297 it was TSR, Inc., afterwards until Dragon #359 this was Paizo Publishing, LLC. Since then the magazine has been self-published by Wizards of the Coast online.)
 * pages : Please replace the string "PAGES" with the page number(s) of the whole article&mdash;this will be the default if no specific page number is specified when this template is called. See examples below. An IF statement is used to check if a page number was specified.  is the wiki code way of saying "if argument number 1 was specified, put its value here, otherwise return PAGES". The IF statement tests this argument and if it finds an empty string then it returns PAGES. PAGES can be a single page number, a comma-separated list of page numbers, a range of pages using a dash (" - ") to separate the first page number from the last page number, or a combination of these. If a dash is detected, it will be converted to an en-dash ("–"). If either a comma or a dash is detected, this will be proceeded by "pp.", otherwise just "p.". If you cannot provide a page number for your citation, but there is likely to be one, use the question mark (?) character as your page number. This will place your article into Category:Articles needing page numbers.

Creating a template for a magazine
Here is the template for Template:Cite dragon/2

When called by this: it shows up as:

You can cite something on a particular page by adding the page number as a parameter: which displays as:

Typical Dragon magazine article citation
Here is the citation part of Template:Cite dragon/10/Gaining a New Experience Level:

When called by this: it is rendered as:

Note the page number was not specified and therefore defaulted to the whole article. If you specify a page number like so: it is rendered as:

If we add the editor:

it looks like this:

Template for an on-line edition
Starting with issue #360, Dragon magazine went digital and was only available on-line. Some articles were published on the Wizards of the Coast site for free as part of their "Daily D&D" feature. Others can still be found with diligent internet searching, but many require you to subscribe to D&D Insider. If you know the URL for an electronic Dragon magazine article, you can put it in the url parameter. If the article you want to reference is not from Dragon magazine, then you should use the Cite web template instead. There is usually no need for the pages parameter in an on-line publication, the url should suffice. Here is an example of using the url parameter:

and it renders like this: