Template:Progress box/doc

Usage
In the ideal configuration the template is extremely easy to use:

For example:

This is the complete set of parameters:

Floating
It is often useful to float the intermediate templates (such as Weasel progress) right with the following code:

or better:

to provide flexibility to the calling template.

Counting files and subcategories
If the template is supposed to be counting something other than regular pages, then you need to use the count parameter. If you want to count files, use files, and if you want to count subcategories, use subcats. To find out what you are supposed to be counting, go to the base category, click through to a dated maintenance category, and look at the type of pages that are included.

Examples:


 * For : Category:Articles with dead external links has dated categories like Category:Articles with dead external links from April 2012, which contain pages like Adrian Monk. These are normal pages, so we don't need the count parameter.
 * For : Category:User-created public domain files has dated categories like Category:User-created public domain files from February 2008, which contain pages like File:Canadian pointer2.jpg. These are files, so we need files.
 * For : Category:clean-up categories has dated categories like Category:clean-up categories from April 2012, which contain pages like Category:Articles with unsourced statements from April 2012. These are categories, so we need subcats.

It is also possible to count the total number of pages, files, and subcategories by using all. This is discouraged, however, as it can lead to inaccurate counts if, for example, a user manually adds a subcategory to a dated category for counting regular pages.

Parameters

 * - the base (undated) category. (required)
 * - the base of the dated categories, if different from the name specified in 1. (optional)
 * - the "all" category, if it exists and uses a non-standard name. If not specified, the template will attempt to guess the name. (optional)
 * - what kind of pages to count. Can be "pages" (the default), "files", "subcats" or "all". (optional)
 * - the CSS "float" property for the template. This can be "left", "right", "both", or "none". The default value is "left". (optional)
 * - for dated categories with names like "Articles for cleanup from August 2024", this parameter can set a custom value to use instead of "from". (optional)
 * - a suffix for dated categories. (optional)

Technical details
The template lists all non-empty categories since the date defined in Module:Progress box/config. Once all maintenance categories on Wikipedia for this date and earlier have been cleaned out, the value should be changed to the new earliest date for which articles exist. This is to minimise the number of expensive parser function calls needed to generate the template output.