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Wikis use their own syntax (markup) for creating text formatting. Below is a list of common syntax you can use to format your pages. A more extensive guide to wiki editing can be found [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing on Wikimedia's site].

Wiki pages should present information with words and occasional images, in a simple, low-tech format. Wiki pages are more analogous to forum posts or word documents than to modern webpages, and as such only a few commands are necessary. Some of the most useful are:

* <u>Underline</u> <nowiki><u>Your Text</u></nowiki>

To keep pages readable and organized, separate the text into sections. Section headers do this nicely, and are automatically added to the table of contents. Headers should be hierarchical and descending, as needed. There are several levels of headers, and the text so offset by equals signs will display in descending point size and font colour.

The single equal sign is ''not'' used in articles. It's used for the formatting for the title of pages. Use the double equal signs for the first heading and replace any heading hierarchies on article pages that might use the single one.

Aside from links and tables, covered elsewhere on this page, the most common formatting tool is the list. There are two types: bulleted and numbered, and they are written in exactly the same manner. To create a bullet list, simply place asterisks * at the start of each line you want to bullet. If you want a numbered list, use the hash (#) sign. To add subheadings, simply use 2 or more such punctuation signs. The wiki script will automatically arrange them on the page.

Bullet points or numbered lists should be used to organize and format pages, and to present short facts in sequence.

The wiki script ignores single returns. For instance, if you type something that looks like this in the edit box:

Lists, generated by the * or # codes, are an exception, as shown in the above example.

To make a short quote stand out, simply add two spaces before it begins, and the wiki script will automatically place it in a red-tinted box with a special outline. For example:

This should only be used for short notes, since items in this sort of box do not receive additional wiki formatting, and will stretch pages infinitely wide. Use the <nowiki><br></nowiki> command to keep such lines from running endlessly off to the right, if they are longer than a few words.

Creating links is very simple and there are two methods to do so: an external site link for outside sources and an internal site link for content inside the DiabloWiki.

Internal site link use two brackets <nowiki>[[ ]]</nowiki> on either side of the title, with an optional title (if specified, separate with a | character). <nowiki>[[Topic|Link Title]]</nowiki>

External links are used like this: <nowiki>[http://yourlink.com Your Link Title]</nowiki>.

The link can also just be typed without using brackets at all for a "bare link", such as http://www.diabloii.net. This is acceptable for simple links (like short domains) that are easily recognizable.

Wiki format is pretty clever and can automatically create TOC boxes like you see at the top of the page. A content box is automatically created when you use 4 or more headlines, which are formatted as explained above. All headlines will show up in the TOC, which is very handy.

If you are familiar with html then wiki syntax will seem logical; however, if you are not familiar with html it is still pretty simple to follow.

As you can see the wiki code 'looks' like a table and you can expand on this and format more complex tables. Just check some of the pages with tables around the site if you need to see how things work.

Categories and subcategories are the backbone of a wiki's navigation. (Especially since the wiki search options aren't very intuitive.) Every page should be slotted into at least one category, to enable other users to find it easily.

Where xxxxx is the name of the Category.

Subcategories are automatically created by the wiki script, just like categories. They are displayed on categories pages, and are used to organize individual pages into smaller, more focused groups. These can overlap or intertwine to some degree. For instance, the [[:Category:Monsters|Monsters Category]] has subcategories for [[:Category:Act Bosses|Act Bosses]] and [[:Category:Superuniques|SuperUniques]]. Furthermore, the five Act Boss pages are all found within the SuperUniques category. Moving up the hierarchical tree, the monsters category is found within the [[:Category:Basics]].

Linking to categories can be helpful, since the search option will not generally display a category page even if that's the most useful page for their desired information. It's also helpful for newer wiki users who may not know to scroll to the bottom of a page to find automatically-generated links to every category a page is slotted into.

Where xxxxx is the name of the Category. Notice this differs from the previous code by a ":" before the "Category". If that page is meant to be in that category, add a tag for it at the end of the page as well.

To insert an image (which must have been [[Special:Upload|previously uploaded]] to the wiki):

Where "FULL PATH OF IMAGE FILE" is the full path, for example <nowiki> http://www.imaginarywiki.com/wiki/index/image.jpg </nowiki> - so this works better with external images, but may be used with images you have uploaded with you use their full path instead of the usual shortcut.

Images may be presented in various ways by adding commands within the brackets, after the image, separated by "pipes." For example, the image below this paragraph has the following code:

* To caption an image, simply type whatever you wish the caption to be, after the other commands, immediately before the closing double brackets. Wiki formatting is to keep captions as short and to the point as possible. Long captions will stretch the image frame beyond the image, and look ugly.

* [[Help:FAQ|Onsite Wiki FAQ]]

* Advanced image technique placement, making thumbnails, captions, etc can be found in Wikipedia's article on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Extended_image_syntax extended image syntax].

There is a special [[{{WikiTitle}}:Sandbox|Wiki Sandbox]] that you can try out your editing skills in, without making unnecessary changes to existing articles.

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