Botl:Guide to contributions

**This article, Botl:Guide to contributions, is part of Botl Wiki's "Guide" articles. It is treated as a community project and serves as both hints and guidelines. You are free to edit it, if deemed appropriate.**

Greetings fellow adepts of the Botl Wiki! Are you frustrated trying to post a new page? Do you feel like putting your foot through your monitor? Fear not, for we have created this guide to assist our newer contributors learn how to use the source coding of wikia, so that they can be successful at posting a brand article. So, how do you start a new page? Starting a new page on the wiki takes only a couple of clicks and is an important part of contributing to a community. This page, starting with the steps below, will walk you through the basics.

## Step-by-Step

* Click on the Add button (it appears as Add New Page if you are an anonymous user) on the top right of your community header, next the Number of Articles for the wiki.

* The "Create a new article" box will open.
* You can choose the article name by typing it in the box. This name will become the last part of the page's URL.

* Decide between a standard page layout or a blank page. The standard layout provides image and video placeholders as well as section headings. The preload contents for the "Standard layout" are stored at MediaWiki:Createpage-with-video on your community and can be edited by local admins.

* A second way to create a page is by clicking on any red link on your community (which is created by linking to a page that does not exist). You will then be brought into the editor where you can add your content.

### Options

The "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences includes options for page creation:

* **Use a blank page as default for creating a new page** - This makes the 'Blank page' option the default on the 'Create a new article' box.
* **Disable "Create a new article" flow** - If checked, this' disables the box for you.

## Formatting

Formatting, links and categories can be done fairly easily from the "WYSIWYG" editor, but if you need help using different code sections, please utilise the guide below.

### Headers

Place equal (=) signs at the beginning and end of your section title: 2 for a 2nd level header, 3 for a 3rd level and so on (1st level is the title of the whole article)

```
====Example Header====
```

becomes:

#### Example Header

These Headers are automagically included in the table of contents at the top of a page when there are more than three.

### Bold, italic

Bold, italics and underlining are applied with single quotes (') - 2 sets for italics, 3 sets for bold

```
'''Bold''' ''Italics''
```

**Bold** *Italics*

### Bulletpoints

Type an asterisk (\*) at the beginning of your line (no space preceding it!)

```
*Test Bulletpoint
```

* Test Bulletpoint

## Linking

By default, when you create a link with [[square brackets]], it'll take you straight to the page in the wiki with that name, or give you a link to create a new page of that name - however, if you add in a | symbol, you can also choose the text for your link ie

```
[[page name|link in text]]
```

if you have headers in your page, you can also create links to them:

```
[[Page name#Header name|hello world!]]
```

### Redirections

The last bit of help I can give for links atm is "redirections": these can help when you move a page to a new page name, or if a page could conceivably have several kinds of links - eg, we've got pages that redirect a legion numeral to the Legion in question, ie:
On the wiki page "I Legion", we have:

```
#REDIRECT  [[The Harbingers]]
```

And similarly on the page "Kozja" we have

```
#REDIRECT  [[Kozja Darzalas]]
```

(The redirect pages can also take you straight to a header with the same # symbol I discussed before)

So in general, wiki links are fairly easy to use, but you can't guess the format either - in general, I expect you'll be using the WYSIWYG editor though initially, so the basic links (without the headers, or redirects) should come fairly naturally

## Categories

The next part is arguably more important to think about from the get-go (something we messed up a bit) : Categories are fairly easy but super important and not immediately obvious
At the bottom of a wiki page, you'll see a list of categories that page belongs to, where you can also add new ones - this is the first step
Once you have a few of pages in a category (eg, the "Legions" category is a pretty easy start), you can then add that category to a larger category (eg "Space Marines" could receive the sub-category "Legions")
To do so, edit the category which will become the sub-category ("Legions" in our example) just like you would any other wiki page, with the little edit button at the top

Now, in your page, you're going to add a special kind of link: while it's got the same kinds of square brackets, you're also going to include the keyword "Category:"

```
[[Category:Space Marines]]
```

This won't create a link in the body of the sub-category page, but a two-way link
if you want to create a link somewhere else to a category, in the body of a page, you'll have to use the keyword ":Category:" rather than "Category:", else you'll include your page in the category rather than creating a link

While this can be useful, also be wary because I don't think Categories pop up in the search engine except with a bit of fiddling
I say the category step is important, because having a general idea of the category structure will help you keep things nice and organised and easy to find - don't sweat it though: the Category structure will evolve as you populate the wiki, so you're allowed to "make mistakes"

## Templates

for Templates, to start with, stick with simple Infoboxes from the generator, as template design can be a bit involved and shouldn't be a priority. All you need to do is go to the "Template:Your\_Template\_name" page in your wiki
(This should be in "yourwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Template:your\_template\_name")
Hit "Create" and choose the Infobox among the possibilities that appear - it'll take you to a generator that is fairly easy to use. Think it through before clicking "publish", as when you do so it'll automatically create a bit of documentation, which is way simpler than doing it by hand
When you have published it, remember to include it in a Category so it's easy to find! (Category:Templates should be an easy way to start)
In your template page, click "edit" - the generator will appear again, but were cheating a bit: there are two large square brackets in the bottom right of the wizard, which take you to the "source code editor" - if you've never done any coding or webdesign, don't worry, it isn't as scary as it looks
At the bottom, write :

The "noinclude" in question means the category:templates link won't be copied in other wikia pages that include your template, which is important because otherwise you'd place every page that includes the template in the category:templates
To place your new template in another page, there should be a "Infobox" icon in the classic editor, in the band to the right - this will show you a fair amount of choices, so make sure you pick the one you want
You should then be given a wizard that gives you possibilities of including the information you chose in the Infobox - if you don't yet know what you want to put in a section, don't write anything in it at all, as the line simply won't appear when you publish the page

## File Naming Conventions

Final thing at the moment: create a naming convention for the files you include (like pictures) it's all very well and good to have Xdtudb.png and yrhxbehsi.jpeg on your computer when you can see the thumbnail, it's a lot harder to make out when writing your pages - I'd suggest a prefix letter (ie, P for Portrait, E for emblem, CS for colour scheme), the name of the subject in question, and the name of the artist like

E\_HalcyonWardens\_IHF.png
P\_HectarionMycenor\_Slaine.jpeg

Also think of creating some artwork categories which will come in mighty handy to find them again (:thinking: I've only just thought of that and am wondering about how to implement it)

And try to include a link to the artist's website gallery for artwork you've commissioned - it's a little gesture that can go a long way to make them more traceable