Help:Contents
From Still Life Wiki
You've arrived here to learn how to edit wiki pages. Great! There are a few great sources out there already that you can google up, but I will share some of the basics about the mark up and structure that you can use to get started with editing right away.
Contents |
Structure
The wiki is a giant tree of information. At the root of the tree is the... root of the wiki. That's what you see when you go to www.stilllifeguild.com/wiki and from there spawn categories, subcategories and individual article pages. For the sake of this wiki, articles should go no deeper than 2 categories, as it would be annoying to navigate that deep to find stuff. For example:
- Root > Safeway > Produce > Apple
Above example is good, because it only has 2 categories (Safeway, Produce) and the article itself is titled Apple.
- Root > Store > Safeway > Produce > Isle 4 > Apple
This is terrible, because it uses needless categories. Try to avoid making the tree branch out too far.
Example Category Structure
By the time you write your first article, all major categories should already be set. Administrators will create categories for whatever new game we're playing or whatever other topic. Major categories are linked on the left; for instance Final Fantasy XIV. Those can be considered roots for their respective topics, so for example:
- Final Fantasy XIV > Races > Hyur
This is good, because it only has one branch and gets to the point rather quickly. On the Hyur page, you can then edit the information about the race and its starting stats as well as any other pertinent bits.
- Final Fantasy XIV > Classes > Archer > Archer Weapons
This will also work, but to start I would simply link to outside websites with listings of items, rather than paste them here. It's really up to you how filled out you want this wiki to be!
Creating and Linking Categories
Let's say you want to create a new category, because Admins are slacking and don't have one for what you need. Let's use the FFXIV example above. If you want to create a new category, simply type in www.stilllifeguild.com/wiki/CategoryName:Main where the CategoryName is whatever you want it to be, like Professions:Main or Cities:Main.
So now you've created your Cities category and you're looking at the edit screen. Let's say you want to link this category to Final Fantasy XIV. First thing you're going to type is [[:Category:Final Fantasy XIV]]. This will link Cities to FFXIV. So when you click on the FFXIV link on the left menu, the resulting page will show the Cities category added there.
Now in the Cities category you want to add Gridania.
Creating and Editing Pages
You've created the Cities category and you want to start populating it with articles about... cities. To create a new page, simply type in www.stilllifeguild.com/wiki/Pagetitle so .../wiki/Gridania for example. This will bring you to a page that says that Gridania doesn't exist. Click the Edit This Page link to start making a new page.
You are now looking at a big edit box with some buttons at the top. Unfortunately the default wiki interface leaves a lot to be desired in terms of WYSIWYG. You can simply type in text, but to pretty it up you will need to use the MediaWiki Markup language. It's actually pretty simple to use, and there are plenty of great guides out there, so I'm not going to repeat them all here. Instead, here are some links:
How to pretty up your text
How to make links
How to insert and format images
How to create tables
One thing to remember is that table of contents bits are created automatically when you have four or more headings: ==Heading== or ===Heading===
If you're creating a guide, feel free to use headings and tables, and the TOC will be generated automatically, along with the proper article hiarchy.
