Help:Basics

From STOwiki

Welcome, new user! The goal of Help:Basics is to provide a reference source that will familiarize you with Wiki structure.

For those of you who know HTML: The Wiki software allows restricted usage of HTML, most common tags such as bold and center will work.

Please use our Sandbox page to experiment!

More advanced topics and reference resources is avaible in Help:Contents

Contents 1 How Wikis Work 2 What You Absolutely Need to Know 2.1 Editing & Creating Pages 2.2 Sections 2.3 Links 2.4 Interwiki Linking 3 Useful Things to Know 3.1 Text Formatting 3.2 Lists 3.2.1 Bullets 3.2.2 Numbered 3.2.3 Definition 3.3 Images 3.3.1 External Images

How Wikis Work

The basic idea behind a wiki is that anyone can modify or add to it's content. The most well known wiki would probably be Wikipedia. The merits of a wiki has allowed Wikipedia to grow in a short time to be the most comprehensive and up-to-date encyclopedia on the internet.

To learn more about the history of wikis, visit Wikipedia's Wiki Article.

What You Absolutely Need to Know

Editing & Creating Pages

Look up, and you will see an "edit" tab on almost every page of STOwiki. There are also "edit" links at different sections of an article. Click on them, and you will be brought to an text editor to modify that page or section's content.

Creating pages is simple, you can just follow a red link to a non-existant page and click on the edit button.

An alternative method would be to modify STOwiki's URL in the address bar by putting the name of the article after "\index.php\".

Sections

All articles need good organization.

To divide articles into sections, surround the article title with equal signs.

The examples below came from this section:

==What you Absolutely Need to Know==

===Sections===

You can see that the three equal signs title is a subsection of the title with two equal signs.

Sections can be considered equivalent to HTML headers. Sections are used in generating a table of content. HTML headers do not show up in the auto-generated table of content. Table of contents appear automatically if you have more than four sections.

To force a table of content to appear at a certain location, use this:

__TOC__

To get rid of the table of content:

__NOTOC__

Links

One of the easiest ways to start making articles is to click those red links that indicates an as yet non-existent article and start typing away.

You can link to other articles in STOwiki by surrounding the article name with double brackets.

Code: [[Species]]

Result: Species

Another link example:
Code: [[Perpetual Entertainment|Perpetual]]
The name of the article you are linking to, then a "|", then the word you want the link to display.

Code: [[Perpetual Entertainment|Perpetual]]

Result: Perpetual

You do not need to include multiple links to the same article when editing. You only need to link the first occurrence of the word. When clicked, the first letter of a link is always capitalized and spaces are converted to underscores.

An external link is a link leading to a site away from this Wiki. External links are surrounded by a single bracket and given a name, i.e. [site name].

Code: [http://www.google.com Google]

Result: Google

It is not necessary give a name parameter but it is recommended that you do so. Notice that external links are marked by an small arrow while intrawiki links are not.

Interwiki Linking

Interwiki Linking will enable you to link to other articles on the STGU Wiki's.

Example: [[STGUGamesWiki:Category:Armada II|Armada II]]

Result: Armada II

Interwiki Links: STGUModdingWiki, STGUGamesWiki, STGUSTOnlineWiki, STGUSTLegacyWiki

Useful Things to Know

Text Formatting

Text is italicized when surrounded by two single quotes.

Code: ''Example Text''

Result: Example Text

Text is bold when surrounded by three single quotes.

Code: '''Example Text'''

Result: Example Text

Lists

There are three types of lists, bullet, number, and definition lists.

Bullets

Code:

*Example Item

*Example Item

**Example Sub-Item

***Example Sub-Sub-Item

Result:

• Example Item
• Example Item
  • Example Sub-Item
    • Example Sub-Sub-Item

Numbered

Code:

#Example Item

#Example Item

##Example Sub-Item

###Example Sub-Sub-Item

Result:

1. Example Item
2. Example Item
   1. Example Sub-Item
      1. Example Sub-Sub-Item

Bullet and number lists can be combined:

*Example Item

#Example Item

#*Example Sub-Item

#*#Example Sub-Sub-Item

Result:

• Example Item

1. Example Item
   • Example Sub-Item
     1. Example Sub-Sub-Item

Definition

Code:

 ; Definition list : list of definitions 

; STOwiki

: An encyclopedia for Star Trek: Online
 

Result:

Definition list 

list of definitions

STOwiki

A encyclopedia for Star Trek: Online

Images

Images can enrich articles in many ways, as such, there are a variety of options to configure them with.

NB: The order of the options does not matter except for one rule: The image name must come first and the image description must be last.

The basic image code:

[[Image:FederationLogo.jpg]]

Result:

Image in thumbnail mode, resized to 50 pixels, aligned left, and a description:

[[Image:FederationLogo.jpg|frame|Federation Seal]]

Result:

The thumbnail ("|thumb|") option informs the user that a larger image is available.

When a thumbnail is not required, but you would like to box the picture with a description, you can use the "frame" option. An image displayed using the frame option cannot be resized.

Image Alignments:

• left
• center
• right
• none - this turns off floating, meaning text will not wrap around the images.

One last example:

[[Image:FederationLogo.jpg|frame|center|Federation Seal]]

Result:

For more indepth coverage on images, visit the Wikipedia Picture Tutorial

External Images

It is possible to display external images, just use the URL of the image on the page in question. You can align the image by surrounding it like so; <p align="left">http://stgu.com/startrekscreenshots/albums/122/thumb_defiant02.jpg</p>

We would prefer it if you would place any screenshots or similar images on the Image Archive which will then automatically give you a thumbnail and one other sized image along with the original. If you wish to add images there then you can Email Us and we will set you up with the appropriate permissions.