Help:Editing

This is the not-so-useless-anymore Editing Help Page.

Tips for Editing: The Basics

 * This is the best Wikia can offer.
 * Cheatsheet for most formatting issues
 * "Show preview" is your best friend. Bestest best friend, in fact.
 * Good luck.

Neshomeh's Editing Tutorial
Okay, guys. Editing the wiki is just about the easiest thing you can ever do. You just need to know a few bits of punctuation. You DO know your punctuation, right? I thought so. All you need to do now is redirect it.

Go ahead and pick a page to edit in a separate tab or window. Make a new one if you like--preferably starting with a blank page, since you may or may not need the headers the pre-formatted page suggests. Ready? Okay.

To begin, if you have not done this already, turn off that gods-awful Rich Text Editor. The RTE is evil. Some very important functions don't work like they should, and using it limits you to what it thinks you should need to do. To turn it off, look for a button in the upper right of the tool bar that says "Source." It's got two little HTML carats next to it, like this: < > Just click on it.

Now, all the fancy pretty bits will disappear, and you'll have either a blank window or a window full of text and formatting characters. It may look like nonsense at first, but we're going to fix that right now. Using the Preview button, try out everything I do on this page on your own page and you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. Examples of wiki code will appear in red.

Formatting Characters
Formatting on the wiki is done by means of re-purposed punctuation marks. This section discusses them.

There are five main characters you need to know about to format most wiki pages. These are them:


 * The single quote for text formatting: '
 * The equal sign for headers: =
 * The square bracket for links and images: [ ]
 * The curly bracket for infoboxes and templates: { }
 * The pipe for internal link text and infobox row data: |

If you want to make a list, like this one, you may also need:
 * The asterisk for bulleted lists: *
 * The pound sign for numbered lists: #

There are a few odds and ends these do not cover, like underlining, but those are done with HTML.

The Single Quote
This mark is used to make text italic, bold, or both. For italics, use two single-quotes on either side of the word, like so: italic. The first set begins the italics, the second set ends it. Do not confuse two single-quotes for a double-quote. The latter will not work. For bold text, use three single-quotes, like so: bold. For both italic and bold text, use five single-quotes: both.

On this wiki, use bold text to emphasize the topic of your page in the first line. You'll see this on Wikipedia, and you should see it here. For example, check out my user page.

The Equal Sign
This is really simple. See the header just above this line? See the others like it? You make those with equal signs flanking the text you want in your header. One equal sign to a side makes a big underlined header, the same size as the page title. That looks silly, so mostly you'll be using double equal signs to each side, like so: == Header == This gives an underlined header, like up where it says "Neshomeh's Editing Tutorial."

If you need sub-headers, just add an equal sign to either side, like so: === Sub-header ===

The header for this section of the tutorial is a sub-sub-header, so it uses four equal signs to a side.

Important notes about headers: You cannot have body text on the same line as your header, or it won't work. In other words, there must be at least one line break between your header and your body text in the editing window. You can use a double line break in the editing window if you like the way that looks better (I do); either way, Wikia automatically uses a double line break when it renders your page. HOWEVER, if you use more than a double line break, it will add on the additional breaks and render an extra-big blank space on your page. That looks sloppy, so don't do it.

The Square Bracket
Square brackets are very important, because they allow you to make internal and external links on the wiki, and to insert images into your page.

Let's start with internal links. You can easily link to any page in the wiki simply by putting the name of the page in double square brackets. Say I want to link to Bleeprin (which should always be capitalized as a brand name, by the way). Since there is a page with that exact title, all I have to do is put the word Bleeprin in square brackets, like so: Bleeprin.

However, if I want to link to Bleepka, that's a bit different. There isn't a page called "Bleepka," because it's discussed on the Bleeprin page, so what I need is a link that says "Bleepka" but points to "Bleeprin." I do that with a pipe between my page name and my text, like so: Bleepka.

If you want to link to a category--say, Medications--you need to tell Wikia you need a category, not a page. You do that by adding in " :Category: " in front of the category's name, like this: Category:Medications. You'll almost always want to use a pipe and rename category links: Medications.


 * One nifty thing that Wikia does for you is link hinting (provided you have it turned on in your Preferences). If you suspect that something might have a page, but you're not sure, just type the opening brackets and the first three or four characters of the word you have in mind. If that page or pages with similar spelling exist, they'll show up in a drop-down menu below your cursor and you can select the one you want, upon which Wikia finishes the link for you. Nice, huh?


 * Another nifty thing is that Wikia doesn't trouble itself about initial capital letters, so if I'm linking to neuralyzer, but it's not the beginning of the sentence, I don't have to capitalize it to make the link work. Wikia does that for me. So, no excuse for random caps in your articles!


 * A third nifty thing Wikia does is that it will include letters added directly onto the end of an internal link in the link, so if I want "neuralyzers," plural, I just stick the S on the end of the link: neuralyzers . However, this doesn't work if there is punctuation, like an apostrophe, involved.



For external links, you use single square brackets around the URL: [www.URL.com].

If you want to display text instead of the raw link (which you probably do most of the time), you insert a space after the URL and then your text: [www.URL.com Your text]. The space is very important. Without it, your link will not work.

To add an image like you see to the right, you use double brackets, sort of like an internal link except that you're linking to an image, not a page. You have to tell Wikia that by putting " Image: " before the name of your image. For example, my image is called "Example.jpg", so to call it I do this:.

If I want my image to be a thumbnail, I use a pipe and the word "thumb" after the image name:.

If I want to put it on the right side of the page and give it a caption, I add those in, too:. The text after the last pipe will always be a caption.

Exception: When adding an image to an infobox, you don't need brackets or anything but the image name in the appropriate category. There should be an "Image" category already, so the line in the infobox will look like this: |Image = Example.jpg

The Curly Bracket
Double curly brackets allow you to use Wikia templates such as "Stub", "NSFW", "Spoiler", and the very spiffy infoboxes you see to the right of so many pages. You just need to know the name of the template you want, and Wikia will very kindly give you hints if you're not sure, just like with internal links. To use any of the first three templates, and a few others, you just put the name of the template in double curly brackets, like so:.

Infoboxes are a little trickier, but not terribly so--unless you're using the Rich Text Editor. This is the real reason I told you to turn off the RTE earlier. If you ignored me, turn it off now. Seriously. When you ask for an infobox with the RTE, it sticks the entire code for the template on your page, which means that if someone like me wants to make changes--add a new category, or make the name bar a different color--I have to hunt down your page and do it manually, or your page is messing up the internal consistency of the wiki and making it look sloppy. It defeats the purpose of a template, it makes your page look bad, and it gives me extra work. So don't do it.

If you want an infobox, I've made it really easy for you by providing everything you need to copy & paste into your page on each infobox's page. You can find them all by looking in Template:Infobox or Category:Templates. If you want to do it line by line, though, this page does a pretty good job of telling you how.

Asterisks and Pound Signs
These serve pretty much the same function in that they create list items like you saw above. For a simple list, you just use an asterisk or a pound sign in front of each list item, like so:

* First Item * Second Item * Third Item

If you need sub-items, you add an extra asterisk or pound sign for each sub-level:


 * 1) First Item
 * 2) First Sub-Item
 * 3) Second Sub-Item
 * 4) First Sub-Sub-Item
 * 5) Second Item
 * 6) Third Item

It is very important that you do not double-space between list items, especially when sub-items are involved. To show you why, here is the above numbered list done right:


 * 1) First Item
 * 2) First Sub-Item
 * 3) Second Sub-Item
 * 4) First Sub-Sub-Item
 * 5) Second Item
 * 6) Third Item

And here is the same list done with extra line breaks:


 * 1) First Item


 * 1) First Sub-Item


 * 1) Second Sub-Item


 * 1) First Sub-Sub-Item


 * 1) Second Item
 * 2) Third Item

It looks bad. Don't do it.

Odds and Ends
At some point, you may want to do something the wiki formatting characters can't do. For those things, you will need HTML. There are lots of places to find HTML tutorials, and this ain't one of 'em. Sorry! However, I am going to talk a little bit about a few non-formatting things to help you make your pages better.

Categories
When you make a page, you should always put it in the appropriate category or categories so that people can find it while browsing the wiki. There should be a little bar at the bottom of the editing window that allows you to do that. Play around with it. As with links, Wikia will often suggest categories if you type a few characters in, so if you're not sure if a category exists, just try it. It also helps to familiarize yourself with the existing categories by browsing through them. I suggest starting with Category:PPC.

Images
To add images to the wiki, upload them using the "Upload New Images" button in the left-hand sidebar. It's got a little image of a framed green picture next to it.

Do NOT try to use the RTE to add images to your page. I have it from multiple sources that this does not work.

You can put your images in categories, too. Don't forget! You can do it one of two ways: 1) you can add the category after you've uploaded it by going to the image's page, clicking "Edit," and adding the category just like you would a regular article; or 2) you can add the category when you first upload it by typing into the summary field. Just switch out "Category Name" for the actual name of the category you want, whether it's Agent Images, Flash Patch Images, Canon Images, etc.

Style
Since the wiki has been around for a while, we've begun to settle on a Certain Way Of Doing Things for many types of pages. It makes all of us look better if the wiki has internal consistency, so pay attention to what others have done before you and, if you notice a pattern in a page or type of page, stick to it. Bold those page topics. Alphabetize your additions to the badfic lists. For heaven's sake, use spell-check.

Also, finish what you start. If you edit the wiki, fill in your user page so we know who you are. If you make a page for your agent, fill it in with more than one or two lines, and definitely make sure you state who the agent's author is. If you make a link to a page that doesn't exist, create that page or get rid of the link. It's about integrity, and it's about looking good. The wiki is a form of writing, too, and there's really no reason for us to care less about it than we do our other works.

Really, that's about it.

I'm done now. Tutorial's over. You're an expert! ... Right?

Fact:
If you've used the above tutorial, you shouldn't need any of the RTE nonsense below.