Help:Getting Started

From CastleWiki

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be a tech wizard to edit a wiki. If you can use a word processor, you can probably edit a wiki.

Just follow these instructions and you'll be editing in no time!

About Wikis

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a website that you can edit. The word comes from "wikiwiki", a Hawaiian word for "fast". Wikis are designed to be collaborative so people can work together on a wiki project, so it's possible to build up a lot of content very quickly.

Find out more about the background of wikis on Wikipedia.

Getting started

Creating Your Account

While Castlepedia can be edited anonymously, creating an account allows you to keep track of your edits and only takes a few minutes.

1. Click the "log in / create an account" link in the upper right hand corner of the page.
2. Choose a username and a password in the newly opened box.

Note: If you don't give a valid email address you will not be able to recover your account if you forget your password.

Using the wiki

Finding Articles

All pages have a search box at the left. Just enter your search term here, and click Search. You can also click Go to go directly to the page name you typed in.

Recent Changes

Recent changes is one of the most important pages on a wiki. It lists every edit that's made, tells you who made the change, and shows you what edit summary they added. So, it's a great way to get an idea of what's going on in your wiki and what pages are most active.

You can get to the recent changes page by clicking on the "Recent changes" page in the toolbox on the left or by going to Special:RecentChanges.

Keeping Track of Changes to an Article

Every page has a "history" page to go with it. This lists the usernames of everyone who has edited the page, and tells you when it was edited. It also gives you links to old versions... nothing is lost when a page is changed, you can always recover previous versions. To see the history of a page, look for the "history" link above each article.

Knowing when a Page is Changed

You can "watch" any page, by adding it to a list of pages kept for your username. To do this, click the "watch" link at the top of the article you want to watch. You can set your preferences to have an email sent to you each time a page on your watchlist is edited.

Logging In

Click the "log in" link at the top of any page. This will open a box where you can enter your username and password.

Tip: You might want to leave "Remember me" unchecked if using a public computer.

Note: You must have cookies enabled to log in to Castlepedia.

Changing Your Email, Password Etc.

Almost everything you might want to change can be found in your preferences. To get there:

1. Click the "Special pages" button (on the left hand side of every page).
2. Under the heading Users and rights, choose "preferences"

To be sent directly here, simply go to Special:Preferences.

Editing

Changing a Wiki Page

Editing a page is easy:

1. Click the "Edit this page" link above any article. Doing so will open a window that looks like a word processor document.
2. Type your changes in the text box. Tip: It's a good idea to preview your edit, then to save your changes, scroll down to find the "save" button and click to save. This allows you to see and fix mistakes before they get saved onto the wiki.

There's no way to break a wiki, so feel free to dive in and start making changes right away.

Undoing an edit

Keeping bad content off the wiki is just as important as adding good content. That's why it's important to know how to revert back to a previous version of an article.

Every edit made is stored on a Wiki, that means it's easy to go back to an old version if an edit is a mistake or vandalism. To change an edit for an article, go to the article's "history" page. Each date/time listed on the history page is a link to a different version of that article. Just click the version you want, then click edit, followed by the save button. Wiki admins have a shortcut link for this, and can "rollback" the most recent edits with one click.

Formatting text

• Bolding: Surround a word with three single quotation marks (''').

• Italicizing use two quotation marks ('').

• Putting it together: You can make text bold and italic with five quotation marks (''''').

Linking to another page on a wiki

To link to a another page, you put the page title in double square brackets. So to link to the page "Example", you would type [[Example]].

Starting a New Page

To start a new page you can use four basic methods:

• Click a red (broken) link. A broken link is a link to a page that doesn't (yet) exist on the wiki.
• Create a red link in an article by enclosing a word in double brackets, then hit save. Clicking on the red link will then take you to your new page.

Remember to do a search for your topic before creating a new page. This is especially true of large wikis where there is a high probability that the subject you want to write about has already been added to the wiki by someone else.

Renaming (moving) Pages

Any logged in user can move pages. To do so, use the "move" link above the article:

1. Click "move".
2. Enter the correct title
3. Click "Move page".

Note: It's a good idea to explain your move first in the box provided.

Using Templates

A template is a page with text ready to be used on many pages without having to type it in each time. It looks like a normal page, but the title starts with "Template:". Templates are good for content that has to be added to many pages on the wiki, since they save you the time and effort of having to write the same text and wiki code over and over again.

To use a template, you just need to type its title inside curly brackets. So {{name}} will add the text from the page Template:Name.

Templates can get very complex, but they are just pages that can be used many times using a simple form.

Adding an Image

To add an image:

• Upload it to the wiki using the upload link in the toolbox. You will be able to choose an image from your computer, and save it on the wiki. Then you can add it to an article by editing a page to add the image name in the form [[Image:Name.jpg]].

Categorizing Pages

Categories are added in a similar way to making links. Just add [[Category:Name]] to the article. This will add the category to the bottom of the page. If you want to link to a category, rather than add a page to it, you need to add a colon inside the brackets: [[:Category:Name]].