Revision as of 04:38, 23 May 2008

Wiki Code

Wikis use their own syntax (markup) for creating text formatting. Below is a list of common syntax you can use to format your pages. A more extensive guide to wiki editing can be found on Wikimedia's site.

Text Formatting

Heading 1 =Your heading=

Heading 2 ==Your heading==

Heading 3 ===Your heading===

Italic Text ''Your Text'' (2 apostrophes)

Bold Text '''Your Text''' (3 apostrophes)

Bold Italic Text '''''Your Text''''' (5 apostrophes)

Creating Links

Creating links is very simple and there are two methods to do so: an external site link for outside sources and an internal site link for content inside the DiabloWiki.

Internal Links

Internal site link use two brackets [[ ]] on either side of the title, with an optional title (if specified, separate with a | character). [[Topic|Link Title]]

External Links

External links are used like this: [http://yourlink.com Your Link Title].

External links can be made with one bracket on either side of the link without space and a description, like [http://yourlink.com], and will create a link in brackets, like this: [1].

To add title text to your link, use a space between the URL and the text. For example, linking to the IncGamers Diablo2 website (http://www.diabloii.net) is done with [http://http://www.diabloii.net Diabloii.Net website] which turns into Diabloii.Net website. When possible, provide text for the link, as not doing so produces the "[1]" style links which are better suited to citations.

The link can also just be typed without using brackets at all for a "bare link", such as http://www.diabloii.net. This is acceptable for simple links (like short domains) that are easily recognizable.

Table of Contents Boxes

Wiki format is pretty clever and can automatically create TOC boxes like you see at the top of the page. A content box is automatically created when you use 4 or more headlines, which are formatted as explained above. All headlines will show up in the TOC, which is very handy.

Additional equals signs will create additional layers of headings. It's that simple!

Creating Tables

If you are familiar with html then wiki syntax will seem logical; however, if you are not familiar with html it is still pretty simple to follow.

Here's an example of one of the mediawiki table notations:

 {| 
 | 1
 | 2
 | 3
 |- 
 | 4
 | 5
 | 6 
 |}

which should look like this:

The tables are automatically formatted with the site style so you aren't required to add any style elements to the tables. The only time you would really need to add an element to the table is if you specify a width.

As you can see the wiki code 'looks' like a table and you can expand on this and format more complex tables. Just check some of the pages with tables around the site if you need to see how things work.

Categories

To add a page to a category, type somewhere in the page in question (usually but not officially at the bottom):

[[Category:xxxxx]]

Where xxxxx is the name of the Category. Likewise, if you wish to place a clickable link to a category (without adding the page to that category), type:

[[:Category:xxxxx]]

Where xxxxx is the name of the Category. Notice this differs from the previous code by a ":" before the "Category". If that page is meant to be in that category, add a tag for it at the end of the page as well.

Images

To insert an image (which must have been previously uploaded to the wiki):

[[Image:filename.jpg|alternate text here]]

The example above shows a jpg, but it may use any valid file extension. Images inserted this way will be placed with left justification, and text will wrap around them.

To link to the GWO Wiki page for the image, type:

[[:Image:filename.jpg]]

Images automatically link to the full page for that image, where the image is displayed full size, along with any caption and copyright info included for it. Images may be set to link directly to other pages, though this is non-standard wiki practice, and its recommended that such links are provided in the image's caption, or are placed directly on the full image page. To link from an image:

{{clickpic|TARGET PAGE TITLE|FULL PATH OF IMAGE FILE}}

Where "FULL PATH OF IMAGE FILE" is the full path, for example http://www.imaginarywiki.com/wiki/index/image.jpg - so this works better with external images, but may be used with images you have uploaded with you use their full path instead of the usual shortcut.

Image Formatting

[[Image:Mon-achmel1.jpg|left|center|thumb|125px|Caption.]]

The most common image formatting command is "frame" which simply adds a border around an image and (by default) right justifies it. Various other image formatting commands (such as thumb, or inserting a caption) will create a frame automatically, as seen in the above example.

• Right/left/center are valid justifying commands.
• Thumb will thumbnail an image, and should be used when the full image is so large it will affect a page's formatting. Default is 200 pixels wide. If a different display width is desired, simply type it in, immediately after the thumb command, separated by a pipe.
• To caption an image, simply type whatever you wish the caption to be, after the other commands, immediately before the closing double brackets. Wiki formatting is to keep captions as short and to the point as possible. Long captions will stretch the image frame beyond the image, and look ugly.

Further Reading

• Onsite Wiki FAQ
• Advanced image technique placement, making thumbnails, captions, etc can be found in Wikipedia's article on extended image syntax.

Try it out!

There is a special Wiki Sandbox that you can try out your editing skills in, without making unnecessary changes to existing articles.