Wikipedia:Main Page history

This is an information page. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcut WP:MPH

This page in a nutshell: The Main Page design and features evolved from 2001 to 2006 and have been largely stable since. Because almost all of the text seen on the Main Page is transcluded from various templates, viewing its complete history cannot be done by simply clicking the "View history" tab.

The Main Page, known as HomePage from 15 January 2001 to 25 January 2002,^[a] has been the dominant page on Wikipedia since its inception. The first page to be created, on any given day it is by far the most viewed page on the website, with more than 23 million daily views as of 2016.

Viewing the history of the English Wikipedia's Main Page is not straightforward. Although originally written directly in wikitext, since the late 2000s almost all of the text is transcluded from various templates, which are cascade protected; the main exception to this is the welcome banner and portal list at the top of the page. The Main Page sections that are regularly updated are "Today's featured article", "In the news", "Did you know", "On this day", "Today's featured list" and the picture of the day. In addition, the templates for other areas of Wikipedia, Wikipedia's sister projects, Wikipedia languages and Main Page interwikis may also be occasionally modified; the page also contains a Main Page banner template that is used very rarely to display special messages.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).