Help:Editing

This article or section needs to be cleaned up, either its format or general style. Notes: This should be as basic as possible, as to not overwhelm users new to wikis. Images and tables will help clarify, and getting rid of advanced info, like magic words, will certainly be better.

This page is a reference and a tutorial for Mediawiki code, which is the code used on this wiki. Should there be something that you cannot find here, but want explained, ask here.

Text

Text entered into the editor will appear in the article as standard text.

To separate paragraphs, there must be an empty line between them.

Code	Result
This is some text. This is a new paragraph.	This is some text. This is a new paragraph.

Links

To link to another page, surround a piece of text with 2 square brackets. This will create a link to the article within the square brackets.

Code	Result
A [[Bulborb]] is found in the [[Garden of Hope]].	A Bulborb is found in the Garden of Hope.

To change the text displayed in the link, place a vertical bar between the link text and the displayed text.

Code	Result
Caves are [[Randomization|randomly generated]] by arranging [[Cave unit|rooms]].	Caves are randomly generated by arranging rooms.

Note that the capitalization of article titles in links must be correct for the link to work (except for the first letter in the title, which can have any capitalization).

Formatting

To make text italic or bold, surround it with 2 or 3 apostrophes.

Code	Result
''This text is italic.'' '''This text is bold.''' '''''This text is italic and bold.'''''	This text is italic. This text is bold. This text is italic and bold.

To make a bulleted list, put an asterisk at the start of each line. Using multiple asterisks will indent the list.

Code	Result
Enemies: *Grub-dog family **Bulborb **Orange Bulborb *Breadbug family **Dwarf Bulborb **Dwarf Orange Bulborb	Enemies: Grub-dog family Bulborb Orange Bulborb Breadbug family Dwarf Bulborb Dwarf Orange Bulborb

A numbered list is similar, but with # symbols instead.

Code	Result
Areas: #The Impact Site #The Forest of Hope #The Forest Navel #The Distant Spring #The Final Trial	Areas: The Impact Site The Forest of Hope The Forest Navel The Distant Spring The Final Trial

A paragraph of text can be indented by starting it with a colon. Using multiple colons will indent it further. This is commonly used in talk pages to indicate a reply.

Code	Result
This is a paragraph. :This is a reply to that paragraph. ::This is another reply.	This is a paragraph. This is a reply to that paragraph. This is another reply.

Sections

Articles are divided into sections, and there can be multiple levels of sections. To make a paragraph of text into a section heading, surround it with 2 or more equals signs.

Code	Result
== Main heading == Paragraph. === Subheading === Paragraph. ==== Minor heading ==== Paragraph.	Main heading Paragraph. Subheading Paragraph. Minor heading Paragraph.

It is possible to link to sections of an article by placing a # sign between the article name and the section name. Omitting the article name will link to another section of the current article.

Code	Result
[[Ship part#List]] is a section of the [[ship part]] article. See [[#Sections|here]] for more information about sections.	Ship part#List is a section of the ship part article. See here for more information about sections.

Images

To make an image appear on a page, link to the article containing the image, which will start with File: and end with the image's file format.

Code	Result
[[File:SSBB Olimar.jpg]]

This produces an image with no frame and at its original resolution, which is generally not a good thing. To fix these things, put |thumb after the file name, which will turn it into a thumbnail.

Code	Result
[[File:SSBB Olimar.jpg|thumb]]

It is possible to add a caption to images by putting text after another vertical bar.

Code	Result
[[File:SSBB Olimar.jpg|thumb|Olimar in ''Super Smash Bros. Brawl''.]]	Olimar in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Finally, it is possible to change the size of images and their position on the page with additional pieces of text before the caption. 250px will make the image 250 pixels wide (this number can be changed, and the default size is 200 pixels wide), and left will place the image on the left of the screen (center and right also work, and right is the default position).

Code	Result
[[File:SSBB Olimar.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Olimar in ''Super Smash Bros. Brawl''.]]	Olimar in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

More formatting

These are some additional formatting options.

The "gallery" tags create a gallery of images:

<gallery>
First image's name
Second image's name|this one has a caption
Last image's name
</gallery>

To make a line across the page, use four hyphens:

----

To display plain text that is pre-formatted, preserving the line breaks it has, use the <pre> tag:

<pre>Everything in here
retains the line breaks
it has.</pre>

To embed a video (see Help:Files#Videos for more details):

{{#ev:service|id}}

To have a page automatically redirect to a different one, use:

#REDIRECT[[redirect location]]

If a display of wiki coding is wanted, use the "nowiki" HTML-like tag around the code. The following produces the text "[[Main Page]]" rather than creating a link:

<nowiki>[[Main Page]]</nowiki>

If you do not wish to include something on a page but want it on another page that includes that page, add "includeonly" tags around the code:

<includeonly>code to be included only</includeonly>

Similarly, information in "noinclude" tags is only displayed on the original page:

<noinclude>this is not included in pages that include this one</noinclude>

As well as this, a fair amount of HTML is functional. Tags such as <span> and <div> can be given a style attribute to add some CSS, in the form <span style="CSS here"/>content</span>.

More links

It is also possible to link to a specific section of a page. For that, add a number sign and then the name of the section, like this:

[[article name#name of section]]

To link to a page in another wiki, place its interwiki prefix at the start of the link. This prefix is not necessarily the wiki's title; a full list can be found at Special:Interwiki. Pikmin Fanon's main page, for example, is found here:

[[fanon:Main Page]]

External links

To add an external link (a link to a website outside of NIWA, MediaWiki, Wikipedia and a few others), use single square bracket. It is necessary to include the prefix (http://, https://, ftp://, irc://, etc.):

[http://web_address]

Again, it is possible to change the displayed text. This time, however, simply leave a space between the address and the text. The following example displays Google link:

[http://google.com Google link]

Media

This includes images and audio files. To include them on pages, link to them as you would an article. As with categories, adding a colon before the namespace creates a link rather than showing the media.

• To show an image:

[[File:image name]]

• To link to the description page of an image.

[[:File:image name]]

• To link to the image file itself rather than the description page:

[[Media:image name]]

Arguments

As with links, arguments are separated by pipe ("|") characters, all placed within the square brackets. For starters, it is possible to display the image at a different width. This measurement requires a unit: use pixels, abbreviated "px".

• To show an image at a width of 300 pixels:

[[File:image name|300px]]

To display a frame around an image, pass frame as an argument; images included like this cannot be resized. To give an image a frame and resize it, you want a thumbnail: use thumb. By default, thumbnails are displayed at the size set in the user's preferences (or the original image size, if smaller), so it is recommended not to define a width.

Images with frames can be given captions, by passing the text of the caption to display as an extra argument.

• Thumbnail image with the caption "this is an image":

[[File:image name|thumb|this is an image]]

The alignment of images is important to the layout of the page. The default value for this argument is none, which leaves the image "inline": it is displayed in line with text in the same paragraph. Images with frames, on the other hand, are "floated" right by default: float images with left or right, to make text and other inline or floated elements of the page flow around the image. Finally, center centers an image on the page, making text before and after it leave a gap to either side, instead of flowing around.

• Centred image with a width of 350 pixels:

[[File:image name|350px|center]]

• Image in a frame, displayed in line with text, with the caption "inline image":

[[File:image name|frame|none|inline image]]

The order of arguments is flexible, to some degree; measurements are interpreted as widths, for example. Follow the examples throughout this section for a guide as to what can work, and if the result isn't looking like you expected, try switching arguments around.

Categories

If you want to add a page to a category, simply add:

[[Category:Category name]]

If you want to make a link to a category and don't want to add the page to that specific category, add a colon in front of "Category". For example, to link to Category:2-Player Locations, type:

[[:Category:2-Player Locations]]

Tables

Main article: Help:Tables.

Magic words

So-called "magic words" are pieces of code that affect the layout of a page; here are a few of the commoner ones. Note that there are two underscores on either side of each:

Code	Effect
__NOTOC__	Hides the table of contents (ToC)
__TOC__	Forces the ToC to appear where the word is placed
__FORCETOC__	Forces the ToC to appear in the normal place for a page with any number of sections
__NOEDITSECTION__	Removes 'edit' links on sections
__NOGALLERY__	Replaces image thumbnails with links in categories
__END__	Forces the page to end there, allowing extra lines at the end of the page
__HIDDENCAT__	Hides category the word is placed on from the footer of pages in it

Templates and inclusions

Any page can be included in another page by way of enclosing it in double curly parentheses. Write the page name as you would in a link. This includes everything on that other page wherever the code is put:

{{namespace:Page name to be included}}

When a number of pages need similar information or layouts, templates are used, which are pages in the Template namespace created to be included in other pages. They make pages shorter and remove complex code, and allow many pages to be altered at the same time. If a namespace is not supplied in the inclusion code, Template is used by default; to include a page in the main namespace, use {{:Page name}}.

It is possible to pass information to templates when including them, which make the content displayed different. These are either named or numbered, and used as follows:

{{Template name|a piece of information|another piece of information}}

In the template, these are referred to as "{{{1}}}", "{{{2}}}" and so on, and can be put anywhere, as if they were text or code. For example, the following template, included as above, would display "This template contains a piece of information and another piece of information.":

This template contains {{{1}}} and {{{2}}}.

These can be named to make things easier to follow:

Template:

My name is {{{name}}} and I am {{{age}}} years old.

Code:

{{Template name|name=Bob|age=5}}

Result:

My name is Bob and I am 5 years old.

Signatures

How to sign a post

To sign your name at the end of your posts, type four tildes.

~~~~, for me, produces Prezintenden 20:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Three tildes will only display your signature without the time, and five will only show the time without your sig.

Custom signatures

To make a custom signature, first make a subpage to your userpage called "User:yourname/sig"; this can be done by adding /sig to the URL in the address bar while at your userpage. On that page, you can add a link to your userpage if you like, and edit your username as you want it to appear in your signature, maybe adding colour, a picture, or a link to your talk page.

After you fixed up your custom sig to your liking, you now (quite obviously) want to display it. To do so, save your creation, then go to your preferences screen in the upper right hand corner. In the "Nickname" field (right under your email address), add {{SUBST:User:yourname/sig}}, make sure that "Custom signature" is checked, and save. Now when you sign your name, your sig should be replaced by your custom sig.

• Example: Take a look at User:Crystal lucario/Sig, User:Prezintenden/sig, or User:Greenpickle/sig as examples of how to turn the coding into something nifty. If you find some other user's sig you like, you can take a look at the source (in most cases) by adding /sig to the end of the user in question's userpage.

Note that this now makes it possible to write {{User:yourname/sig}} on a talk page. This will "update" your signature on pages if you perform changes to your sig. This will not display time, though, but adding ~~~~~ will make up for that if you wish.

Pikipedia standards

Main article: Pikipedia:Policies and guidelines.

• If an article is seriously lacking in vital information, call it a stub by putting {{stub}} at the top of the page.
• Articles that contain a fair amount of content but have layout problems, are badly written or have any other serious problem should be added to the "Clean it up" category by adding {{clean}} to the top of the page.
• Articles that qualify for deletion can be submitted for it by adding {{delete|reason goes here}} to the page. Reasons an article would need to be deleted can be found at Pikipedia:Pages for deletion.
• Images that are screenshots must contain the text {{screenshot}} to add a copyright notice and categorize them. For other image tags and general file information, see Help:Files.