Help:Go button
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This is a copy of the master help page at Meta. Do not edit this copy.
Edits will be lost in the next update from the master page. See below for more information.
The Go button appears on all MediaWiki pages in the standard skin, next to the search button. The function of the go button is to display a page directly, instead of first having to select it from the search result page. In other words, it allows you to quickly navigate from page to page without following links.
Use
To view a page, just enter its name in the search field and click "Go". The Go button is more complex than it looks. It works as follows (each time, only continuing if there is no match):
- Check existence of the page exactly as it is entered, e.g. Test Page and Test page are different pages (but most projects have case-insensitivity of the first character of the whole page name, and in the case of a namespace prefix, of the first character after that).
- Try all lower case (with the first letter capitalized), e.g. if you type "TEST PAGE", Test page and not Test Page would be displayed.
- Try the version with all words capitalized.
- Try the all upper case version.
- Carry out a full text search as if you clicked the "Search" button; see Help:Searching.
If you use the Go button wisely, it will allow you to quickly jump to your most frequently used pages. It is also a good idea to use it for unambiguous searches -- if a direct match fails, it will always fall back to the normal search anyway, and if it succeeds, you are immediately taken where you want to go. In general, the go button generates little server load, and therefore usually remains functional even if the fulltext search is deactivated for performance reasons.
Special features
A special feature is that applying Go on an IP number gives the User contributions of that IP.
Depending on the contents of MediaWiki:Nogomatch there may be a link to the edit page of the non-existent page, see e.g. w:MediaWiki:Nogomatch. A useful side-effect is that this allows going conveniently to a page on another wiki, by adding the interwiki prefix, albeit that the text "create an article with this title" would not be accurate for the link, in the case of an existing page. Also the CSS-class of the link is "new", not "ex4tiw".
*This is a parameter you set while configuring MediaWiki.
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Wikipedia-specific help
This page is a copy of the master help page at Meta (for general help information all Wikimedia projects can use), with two Wikipedia-specific templates inserted. To update the main text, edit the master help page for all projects at m:Help:Go button. For Wikipedia-specific issues, use Template:Ph:Go button (the extra text at the bottom of this page) or Template:Phh:Go button for a Wikipedia-specific lead (text appears at the top of this page). You are welcome to copy the exact wikitext from the master page at Meta and paste it into this page at any time. To view this page in other languages see the master page at Meta.
