Tutorial

## Getting Started

### Making your Page

Making a page for The Millenium Tech Wiki is deceptively simple.The first thing you will want to do is look at some of the pages already there. This will give you an idea on how a page should look. While there is no absolute right way to make a page, a good idea of what other pages look like will help you with the following these steps. If nothing else, you will be able to see if something is going horrendously wrong while following these steps. Typos can happen, so it's best to know what you are looking for when you are starting out.

Making a page on Wikia is a bit different and a bit easier than creating one on a standard wiki. I had all of these instructions typed up with all of these formatting shortcuts and then realized that much of the creation part of things isn't much different than just making a text document. Just follow the instructions below and you'll be well on your way to getting a page built.

### Creating the Page

Creating a page on Wikia is as simple as the following steps:

1. Create a Wikia account. You can do that at the top right of the screen. The settings are such that it won't allow you to edit or create unless you're a registered user to keep people from vandalizing pages or creating spam pages. It only takes a minute or two and gives you access to the forums and all that sort of thing.
2. Press the Contribute button that is generally found on the upper-right area of the wiki page.
3. Select 'Add a Page' from the list of options that appears.
4. Enter your Character's name in the box that appears afterwards.
5. The edit window will appear and this will be your blank canvas for creating your page.
6. The editor window will look not all that different from the options you'd get from using a word processing program like Microsoft Office or Open Office. You can insert pictures, links, videos, change text styling and insert templates right from the bar that appears above the editing area.
7. Press 'Insert' and type HeroBox at the top and select the HeroBox template that comes up in the search. This will be the information box for the page.
8. An Edit window will appear after you insert the HeroBox. This will be where you insert the information. With the exception of the attributes all of the labels should be pretty self explanatory. Keep in mind that any category that you don't enter information into will not appear in the finished page. This is for if you wish to keep certain things hidden.
9. Once you enter the information into the HeroBox edit window and click the button to edit it you'll be back to the basic editing window. You can type text, insert images, add links, lists, or whatever you need at the press of a button. Any button you're not really sure of you can hover the mouse over the button and it'll tell you what it's function is.

### Templates

A template is a set block of information that you may fill in as necessary. Think of it like a madlib. I have prepared a couple excellent tutorials for setting up your template. I've included a list of custom Templates that I've created for this wiki. They won't all be needed and none of them are necessary but they are here for your convenience. You can insert these into your pages by clicking 'Insert' from your pages edit window and Selecting 'Template'. Then you type the name of the template in to find the specific one. Here are the custom Templates that I've set up:

* **Work in Progress** (Search for WIP in the insert template window)

**This page has been marked as a creative work in progress.**
*The original author of this article has marked it as a creative work would prefer that other users not edit it. Please respect this, and unless repairing a typo, spelling, or other minor technical error think of this page as read-only.*

* **Spoiler** (Search for Spoiler in the insert template window)

This is for information about the game story or information that would be considered spoilers.

**Spoiler warning: *Details about story arcs or other game content follow.***
* **Player Spoiler** (Search for Player-spoiler in the insert template window)

This is for if you want to include information for a player created storyline that would spoil the story if people read the information after this tag.

**Spoiler Warning**

Details about a player-created storyline, or information currently unrevealed about a character, follow.

Please do not use this information ICly unless given permission to do so.

* **End Spoiler** (Search for Endspoiler in the insert template window)

This is to show that any spoiler information has ended and the reader can read further information without worry.

***Spoilers end here.***
### Outlines

The wikia software automatically generates an outline when you select more than two headings or headers. It will set up the table of contents in a descending order according to what you've set up as Headers or Sub-Headers. Nothing more on your part needs to be done with this.

### Categories

Categories are used to help people find your character. There are a large number of categories that you can apply to your character. For example, to add your character to the Male category, you simply click button that looks like three stacked bars that is next to the 'Cancel' button in the edit window and select 'Categories'. You then type the name of the Category for the character to appear in and select 'Apply Changes'. That Category is now applied to your character.

It is recommended you add a category for your character for your gender, powers, Game, alignment and role. That'll make cataloging the characters much easier and so make searching for characters that much easier. The List of Categories that you can put your character into are:

* Student
* Staff
* House of Melee
* House of Power
* House of Tech
* Tank
* Damage
* Support
* Male
* Female

There are other categories that can be created but we'd prefer that you include at least the ones that apply to your character from the list above so that they appear in one of the Registries. Go nuts and really flesh out your character but please at least include the minimal of whether you're a **Student** or **Staff** and which **House** your character belongs to.

### Images

Everyone loves images. We'd all like to have a bunch to show off our character. It's incredibly easy to add images to your character's page. There are many more parameters that can be added but for the sake of a simple tutorial on how to get you started making a page the basics will just be listed here. If you'd like more information you're always free to search around the internet for the information.

To add an image to your page you can simply click the 'Image' button at the top of your edit window. It'll open another window asking you to upload the image. Select the image from your computer in the window and click 'Apply Changes'. Your image is now inserted. It's really that simple. Some technical/legal things to consider as well:

1. Try to keep this picture's size within reason; as a rule of thumb, pictures that are over 150KB should to be trimmed down, and you should avoid uploading anything 300KB or larger. Once the picture is uploaded, you will be able to pull it up with the same name. For example, if I upload an image named **Dark Dreams 1.jpg**, the file's name will be **Dark\_dreams\_1.jpg.**
2. Although this is an uncensored wiki, it is recommended that you adhere to the PG-13 guidelines - some nudity may tolerated, but only if it's tastefully represented. This means absolutely no porn, snuff pics, gore, or other overly visceral or just plain GROSS pictures should be uploaded. Doing so will not only result in removal of said picture, but can result in banning you from the wiki. They say a picture says a thousand words so do please consider what words your picture evokes before uploading.

WARNING! -- Please check to see if a file name exists, before you upload your file using that name. Otherwise you will overwrite the existing file, and someone else's page will suddenly have YOUR picture on it instead of theirs.

For more image options, see Wikipedia Extended Image Syntax

### Finishing Touches

The beautiful thing about Wikia vs more traditional wiki software is that you're not dealing with a convoluted mess of brackets and equal signs without any idea of what the page is going to look like or what you've messed up until it's all done. What appears in this editor will appear (about 99% of the time) on your finished page. So if your page looks good to you here you can click 'Save Page' in the top right of the edit window and it'll save all of your edits and take you to your now published page.

You can access your page from either the Student Registry or the Staff Registry, assuming that you entered the Categories on your page as suggested. You can also find your page by typing the name in the top search bar of the wiki. Congratulations! You're all done making your basic page! You can find other resources around the internet on how to make much more interesting or complicated pages for your character. This is simply a basic tutorial to get you used to making a character.

You're able to insert these classes with most CSS style elements.  So, if you want these sections to stand out a bit more you can insert background colors, borders, and other assorted things that can be used in a CSS class.  I hope this helps you create more of the page that you want.