Template:Featuredarticle
Template documentationUsage
To feature articles, duh. Needlessly complicated, arcane and completely unmaintanable, the {{Featuredarticle}} template is the enemy of every admin who tries to understand or (God forbid) modify it. To be more accurate, it is a complete suite of disorganized templates that all work together to give you features. God knows why we didn't just steal Wikipedia's (much simpler, more future-proof) system. Anyway, I've done my best to decipher it.
How it Works
{{Featuredarticle}}
{{Featuredarticle/include|{{lastfeature}}}}
The {{Featuredarticle/include}} template uses the DPL extension to grab a section from the {{Featuredarticle/queue}} page, based on the parameter provided by {{Lastfeature}}, which gives a date corresponding to the newest article to get featured.
{{Lastfeature}}
From what I can tell, {{Lastfeature}} grabs a date from the date provided by the date parameter in the {{FA}} template. Except not really. Either way, it'll give you the closest feature date within four days of today, and if there isn't a feature in {{Featuredarticle/queue}}, it'll stop working or something, and you'll have to feature something else to keep the front page from looking empty. This was never really a problem until 2012 or so, when the site began its slow and steady decline from near-irrelevant to irrelevant, and people stopped voting.
{{Featuredarticle/include}}
{{#if:{{#dpl:
|title = Template:Featuredarticle/queue
|include = #{{{1|}}}
|allowcachedresults = false
|suppresserrors = true
}}
|{{#dpl:
|title = Template:Featuredarticle/queue
|include = #{{{1|}}}
|allowcachedresults = false
|suppresserrors = true
}}
|{{Featuredarticle/default}}
}}
This page essentially checks if the feature queue is empty, and if it is, it'll spit out the {{Featuredarticle/default}} template. This was necessary because no admin could be bothered to feature or re-feature a new article every four days, and keeping the front page occupied makes everyone feel pleasant and warm inside. An earlier version of this template used {{Featuredarticle/oscar}}, but we don't use that anymore. Poor Oscar.
{{Featuredarticle/default}}
{{#ifexist:Uncyclopedia:Featured articles/{{#time:F j}}|{{Uncyclopedia:Featured articles/{{#time:F j}}}}
|{{#dpl:
|namespace = Uncyclopedia
|linksfrom = Uncyclopedia:Featured articles
|titlematch = %Featured_articles/%
|include = *
|mode = userformat
|randomcount = 1
}}
}}
Default features will appear if the feature queue is empty. The feature blurbs are found in Uncyclopedia:Featured articles, sorted by date. This template grabs a page with the corresponding date for today, and if the page doesn't exist, it'll show a random page from the list.