Help:Editing

From Kyle XY Wiki

One of the great thing about a Wiki is the simplicity with which it can be edited. You don't need to know HTML code to edit an article, all you need to know is English and a simple wiki code. Best of all, you don't even need to register or log in to edit articles.

To find an article which needs editing or creating go to our Finding Material to Edit Article. For more specialized information on the page layout and writing style, see our Manual of Style.

Contents 1 Getting Started 2 Basic Editing 2.1 More Linking Techniques 2.2 Adding & Linking Categories 3 Advanced Editing 4 Saving 5 Testing 6 See Also

[edit] Getting Started

To start editing an article, you need to click on the edit button, which is at the top of each page. Once you get to the editing screen you will see the editing box. The editing box is where you will type your text.

Just type the text as you would on a word processor. You can also type in the simple wiki code to format text, make links, add pictures, and so on. There are also buttons above the editing box that add in common wiki code.

If you see something interesting on a page, you can always click the Edit or View Source link at the top to see how it was done. Feel free to copy, paste, and edit!

[edit] Basic Editing

Above the editing box you will find several editing buttons:

• Bold button. This button will make highlighted text bold. Another way to make text bold is to put three apostrophes (single quotes) on each side of the text you want bold.

• Italic button. This button will make highlighted text italic. Another way to make text italic is to put two apostrophes (single quotes) on each side of the text you want italicized.

• Internal link button. This button will link a word to an article of the same name inside Kyle XY Wiki. Another way to create an internal link is to put a pair of brackets [['''Nicole Trager''']] around the word you want to make a link.

See below for more linking techniques.

• External link button. This button will make a link to an external web page. Another way to create an external link is to put [http://www.example.com] around the website address.

Advanced technique: Instead of using a pipe, use a space to control the look of external links. For instance, this: [http://www.abcfamily.com/kylexy ABC Family's Official Website] will appear on the page as this: ABC Family's Official Website.

• Level 2 Headline button. This button will start a level 2 headline, the biggest headline, used for the top-level sections. Another way to create a Level 2 Headline is to put ==Headline Title== around the headline title.

Advanced technique: Add more equal signs for smaller headlines. When a page has four or more headlines, it will automatically generate a Table of Contents at the top.

• Embedded Image button. This button will add an image to your article. Another way to create an Embedded Image is to put [[Image:Example.jpg]] around your image title.

Advanced technique: Use pipes to add modifiers to the image. Modifiers include thumb, size in pixels (e.g. 200px), left, right, and so on. You can also add a caption. For instance: [[Image:Example.jpg|200px|right|thumb|This is an example]] will produce an image scaled to 200 pixels, on the right hand side of the page, with "This is an example" as a caption.

• Media File Link button. This button will create a link to a non-image media file.

• Mathmatical Formula button. This button will allow you to add a mathmatical formula to the text.

• Ignore Wiki Formatting button. This button stops the highlighted text from following the wiki code format. Useful for writing pages like this one.

• Signature button. This button will add your timestamp and the date. Please use this to sign your posts in Zzyx Headquarters and on Talk pages. You can also type in four tildes: ~~~~

• Horizontal Line button. This button will add a horizontal dividing line on the page. We suggest you use this feature sparingly.

[edit] More Linking Techniques

As described above, you can link to another Kyle XY Wiki article by typing a pair of brackets [['''Stephen Trager''']] around the name of that article. More advanced techniques (adding a pipe, linking to sections, linking to Wikipedia, and linking to other Wikia articles) are detailed here:

• Adding a pipe ( | ) allows you to control how a link appears.
  For instance, this: [[Jessi|781228]] will appear on the page as this: 781228.
  • The pipe is often used to shorten a character's name while still linking correctly: both [[Declan McDonough]] and [[Declan McDonough|Declan]] link to the same article.
  • You can also use a pipe to hide anything before a colon or in parenthesis. This can be useful when linking to pages with disambiguation tags. For instance, this: [[Kyle|781227]] will appear on the page as this: 781227.

• To link to a page section, add a pound sign and the heading, like so: [[Declan McDonough#Season 2]] will create a link directly to Declan's activity during Season 2: Declan McDonough#Season 2. You can also add a pipe as described above to change the appearance: [[Declan McDunaugh#Season 2|Declan during season 2]] gives Declan during season 2.

• Linking to Wikipedia simply requires the "wikipedia:" prefix; [[wikipedia:Amnesia|amnesia]] produces Amnesia.

• To link to other Wikia pages, use "w:c:" followed by the URL prefix, for example [[w:c:starwars:Jar Jar Binks|Jar Jar Binks)]] (Jar Jar Binks at Wookieepedia) or [[w:c:tardis:Tom Baker|Tom Baker]] (Tom Baker at Dr. Who wiki).

[edit] Adding & Linking Categories

For a list of categories, see: Categories

To add a category, put something like this at the bottom of the article:

[[Category:Characters]]

To add more than one category, simply list them all, like so:

[[Category:Characters]]

[[Category:Beachwood High School students]]

Articles are sorted on category pages in alphabetical order. To list an article by a different name (e.g. Bloom, Amanda), use a pipe. When adding categories for people, please be sure and use this technique to sort them by surname:

[[Category:Characters|Bloom, Amanda]]

To link to a category without the current article being added to that category, add a colon right after the first pair of brackets in the category link, like this:

[[:Category:Zzyx employees|People from Zzyx]]

If this example were used on Josh Trager's page, it would permit users to click and view the list of Zzyx employees within that category, but would appropriately ensure that Josh would not himself be categorized in (added to) that list.

[edit] Advanced Editing

• To rename a page, click Move at the top of the page (between History and Watch). Note: You must be logged in to move a page. A redirect page will be created automatically, so moving a page does not break links. The page's history and talk will be moved along with it.

• To revert a page to a previous version:
  • Click on the history tab
  • Click on the date stamp of the version you want
  • Click on the edit tab
  • Choose "Save Page." You can also do any editing you want before saving. Either way, it's polite to include a note in the Summary box mentioning that you are reverting the page.

• To suppress the "Edit" links that appear to the right of each heading, add __NOEDITSECTION__ to a page. This is useful for short pages that utilize headers.

• If you have added a picture and there is not enough text to separate one section from another, you can add <br clear="right"> or <br clear="left"> (depending how the picture is aligned) at the end of the text. That will keep the next heading from running into the picture. If there is enough text to separate the sections already, the tag will not add space. (To see how it looks, see Nicole Trager)

[edit] Saving

Once you have written your text, you can either save the page or show preview. We suggest that you always choose the show preview button before saving the text. However, remember that whatever happens, you or someone else can always edit your work later.

It may be useful to include an edit summary in the text box, to let others know what you did.

[edit] Testing

If you want to try something out just to see how it looks, you can use the Sandbox. The sandbox is just for experimenting, so any changes made to it are expected to be temporary. It can be useful for getting feedback on something new before making real changes to an encyclopedia page, or for testing things in different browsers.

[edit] See Also

• Starting a page
• Finding Material to Edit
• Kyle XY Wiki's Policies
• Kyle XY Wiki's Manual of Style
• Kyle XY Wiki's Vandalism Policy
• Kyle XY Wiki Help