Making a Guide

Ever wanted to share your superior knowledge with the common mortals? Do you ever desire to guide those poor players stranded with the difficulties of a complex game like Fractured? Do you wish to lead those poor lambs... but have no idea how to make a guide on this wiki?

Then look no further, you are on the right page!

Welcome to my guide on how to make a guide!

In here I will explain everything you need to know.

2. More basics: The two editors
3. Keeping it tidy and ordered
4. Adding Hyperlinks
5. Adding Images
6. Adding Tables
7. The finishing touch: Categories

## The basics: Creating a new page

Let's start from the very basic stuff. The first step is learning how to add a page to this wiki. There are many ways to do that, but the simplest one is to input https://fractured.fandom.com/wiki/PageName into your browser, with PageName being the name of the page you want to create. For example, to create this guide I wrote https://fractured.fandom.com/wiki/Making\_a\_Guide. You can use spaces or \_ to separate words, it is the same.
When you go to this page, you will be informed that the page does not exist, and ask you if you want to create a new one. We select that option and start our work on the new page.

## More basics: The two editors

There are two different editors for pages — the source editor and the visual editor.

The visual editor is the default one and it works very similarly to a word parsing tool. The advantage of using it is that you know that the reader will see roughly what you are seeing while writing the guide. You work directly on the final result. However, this comes at the cost of having a limited set of tools you can use.

The source editor instead allows you to write the source code of the page directly. This allows you to use less canonic tools, offering a lot more possibilities to create your guide, but remember that what you see is not what the reader will see. This option is more suitable for those who are familiar with MediaWiki markup and/or HTML layout.

Luckily you can switch between the two editors and your work will be carried over to the other editor. I frequently switch between the two of them.

If this is your first time working on a wiki page, you should probably limit yourself to using the visual one.

## Keeping it tidy and ordered

Paragraphs are your friends, use them!

No matter how good the content of your guide is, it has to be readable, otherwise people will not be interested in reading it.

Properly split the sections of your guide into a paragraph structure and give each one a heading. Each heading will be displayed in the Table of Contents which is generated automatically after your page reaches 4 headings and/or subheadings.

If you feel the need to customize the position of your table of contents, you can add it manually at the top of the page and align it to the left of the rights side (through source editor).

To add a Table of Contents to your guide, you just have to write "{" two times in a row in the visual editor, this will open the template selection window. Type "TOC" and insert it. Alternatively you can type {{TOC}} in the source editor to get the same result. If aligning is necessary, you have to use {{TOC|align=right}}.

## Adding Hyperlinks

What would a wiki page be without hyperlinks?
Adding them is easy, so add as many as you can. Adding them is more easily done from the visual editor, since it will tell you if the page you are linking to actually exists or not. This wiki has a lot of content, but we can't guarantee that it has everything.

To add an hyperlink, type "[" twice, similarly to adding a template. This will open the hyperlink selection window. Type the name of the link you wish to create and it will list you the possible pages related to that name. Click on one of the possibilities, and the link is created. After you have created it, you can also change the text of it that will be displayed.

Alternatively you can do this from the source editor. In this case, just type [[page]] and you have created a link to "page". If you wish for the link to have a different text, type [[page|text]] and this will create a link to "page" with "text" as text. For example, our top navigation has a 'Skills' tab that has 'All Spells' subheading. However, if you press it, it will lead you to a page called 'List of spells & Abilities'. The code to do that would be the following: [[List of spells & Abilities|All Spells]]. The issue with creating them from the source editor is that you have no idea if a page named "page" does exist, and you risk creating a broken link.

## Adding Images

Images can really make or break a guide, but adding them can be a bother.
There is no easy cut and paste method to add an image, **you have to first upload it to the wiki**.
The visual editor offers a simplified wizard for adding them, which uploads and inserts them in one go. You have the icon for it in the toolbar. After you click on it, the image selection window will open, which will offer you to select an existing image already uploaded on the wiki, or to upload a new one (the second tab). We have uploaded almost all of the game icons into the wiki, so you should find everything you need. Obviously, if you need to put a screencap into your guide, you will need to upload it by yourself. After it has been uploaded, it will give you a few options for inserting it. I often put them aligned to the **right** or **center**.
You can do it from the source editor too, but there is no wizard for it. First you will need to upload the image to the wiki and then type [[File:filename.png|right]] with filename being the name of the file you uploaded. **Make sure the name is 100% the one you entered during the upload**, all the wrong capital letters will make the wiki say that the file doesn't exist!

## Adding Tables

Some guides may require tables to properly convey their content to the reader.
Luckily, adding them is extremely easy from the visual editor. Just click on the "Insert" in the toolbar and select "Table". It will create an empty 4x4 table with header like this one.

Double clicking on a cell will edit the content. Selecting it with a single click will show an arrow indicating the row and column selected. By clicking on those arrows you can add or remove rows and columns.

You can insert images into the cells.

You can technically create tables also from the source editor, but that is a more advanced topic not suited for this guide. Just use the visual editor for your tables. Though mind that any styling can only be done through the source editor (text color, table width, etc).

## The finishing touch: Categories

What distinguishes a guide from any other page is the "Guide" tag in the categories, so make sure to add that. This will automatically add it to the list of guides on the wiki.
To do this just paste this into the editor (either visual or source): [[Category:Guides]]

## Craving for more?

If you feel that this guide is too basic for your needs, and want to delve into the occult powers of the source editor, you may dare reading the advanced guide made by LucyKuranSKYDOME here. Warning, you will never look again at the visual editor with the same eyes.