Difference between revisions of "Help:Markup"

Revision as of 12:53, 28 August 2008

Wiki pages are designed to be easy to create and edit, and require a minimal amount of technical knowledge. If you can create a forum post, you can edit a wiki page. Read this page for some basic theory and common codes, and you'll be well on your way. Also keep in mind that you can always click the edit tab on an existing page to see how it was formatted.

Wiki Code

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 on Wikimedia's site.

Text Formatting

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:

• Italic Text ''Your Text'' (2 apostrophes)
  
• Bold Text '''Your Text''' (3 apostrophes)
  
• Bold Italic Text '''''Your Text''''' (5 apostrophes)
  
• Underline <u>Your Text</u>

Section Headers

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.

• Heading 1 ==Your heading==
  
• Heading 2 ===Your heading===
  
• Heading 3 ====Your heading====
  

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.

Avoid putting numbers into page headers, since numbers are automatically generated by the wiki table of contents, and will look redundant or even misleading.

The Table of Contents Box

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.

The level structure of the TOC works just as explained above with headlines. It's that simple!

Lists

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.

* Item One
* Item Two
** Item Two and a half
*** Item two and three quarters
* Item Three.

Turns into:

• Item One
• Item Two
  • Item Two and a half
    • Item two and three quarters
• Item Three.

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

Soft Returns

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

This
line
has
a
lot
of
returns.

Will show up on the page as a plain line of text, without any line breaks. You need to add a <br> tag to each line you want to format below the next. It's also possible to use pointed or numbered lists for breaks. Read above about lists.

Preformatted Boxes

To make a preformatted box, for showing text with fixed width, especially when showing different types of code, simply add one space before it begins, and the wiki script will automatically place it in a red-tinted box with a special outline. For example:

Aren't I dramatic!

Use this tool primarily to show code in explanatory pages, but it's also possible to use it for short notes, since items in this sort of box do not receive additional wiki formatting, and will stretch pages infinitely wide. Use a soft break to keep such lines from running endlessly off to the right, if they are longer than a few words.

Creating Links

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 Links

An internal site link use two brackets [[ ]] on either side of the title, with an optional title (if specified, separate with a | character). [[Topic|Link Title]]. If you add link brackets to the same article currently shown, the link will turn bold instead of into a link. It's also possible to modify the link title without changing the link by adding characters after the right side brackets (]]) like this: [[Topic|Link Title]]ing.

The following code:

[[Help:Contents]]<br>
[[Help:Contents|Help]]<br>
[[Help:Contents|Help]]ing<br>
[[Help:Contents|Help]]ers<br>

Will look like this:

Help:Contents
Help
Helping
Helpers

Linking to Categories

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 the automated category links.

The problem is of course that adding the "[[ ]]" around a category name will only add that page into the category, so to create a clickable link to a category and avoiding this, type: "[[:Category:xxxxx]]" where "xxxxx" is the name of the Category.

The only difference from actually adding the category is the ":" before the "Category". An optional title is often good to use here, so people don't get confused by the "strange" name. Remember If that page is meant to be in that category, add a tag for it at the end of the page as well.

• Category help page

External Links

External links are made similarly to internal links. The difference is that it uses single brackets ([ ]) and naturally also must contain an external URL. Another difference between internal and external links is that instead of a pipe ("|") to separate the link source with an alternative title, it uses a simple space. This naturally means that it isn't possible to link to pages that uses spaces in the URL. It's easy to distinguish external links in the wiki by the "external link icon" that appears on those links (example).

There are three types of links that can be used; either a clickable URL, a clickable number in brackets, or a clickable link title. The last one work very similar to internal links. Do note that it isn't possible to add letters at the end of an external link to make it part of the link title. The entire link title needs to be within the brackets.

Regular URL Link

Writing the following:

http://www.diii.net/

Will display like this:

http://www.diii.net/

In cases where it's needed to whow the whole url, just write it out in the document, and it will automatically be parsed.

Numbered Link

Writing the following:

[http://www.diii.net/]

Will display like this:

[1]

This is a numbered link that is excellent to use when sourcing other pages. It will be numbered from how many similar links are on a document, so the first such link is [1], and the third one is [3].

Link in Title

Writing the following:

[http://www.diii.net/ Diii.net with custom title]<br>

Will display like this:

Diii.net with custom title

This is naturally the most commonly used link, and is used much like the internal links.

External Links Without Icon

It's possible to remove the little external link icon from links, and this is mostly used when linking within the Diablo community, such as links to the other Diablo wiki, or to Diii.net.

For simple links that does not contain any odd characters like "?", "=", or "&", you can use the Wiki Link template like this:

{{wl|[http://www.diii.net/ Title]}}<br>

Will display like this: Title

For more complex URLs, full html formatting is required. Just add "<span class="plainlinks">" directly in front of your link, and "</span>" directly after for the same effect as above.

Creating Tables

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

Here's an example of one of the mediawiki table notations:

{| 
! 1
! 2
! 3
|- 
| 4
| 5
| 6 
|}

That will look like this:

The tables are automatically formatted with the site style so you aren't required to add any style elements to the tables. The only time you would really need to add an element to the table is if you want to specify a width or want to make a table that is different than the standard DiabloWiki style.

As you can see the wiki code 'looks' like a table and you can expand on this and format more complex tables. It's easy enough to look at other tables as well, to get inspiration if you want to do more advanced things with it.

Categories

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. If you are making new articles, it's very important to make sure they are put in the right category.

• Read more about categories in the Category Help page.

Linking to Categories

In order to link directly to a category, add a ":" in front of "Category", like this: Category:Help, to make it a link instead of adding the article to the category. Optional title is useful. Read more about this in the links section on this page.

Images

To insert an image, just add the following code, that you can see is very similar to other wiki links: [[Image:filename.jpg]]. Make sure you don't forget to write the file extension. The valid image files for DiabloWiki are:

• .gif
• .jpg
• .png

Images will automatically be justificated to the left side on a page, but it's easy to change this with variables, to make boxes around images and to change their size. Read more about images on the Image Help page.

Further Reading

• Onsite Wiki FAQ
• Advanced image technique placement, making thumbnails, captions, etc can be found in Wikipedia's article on extended image syntax.

Try it out!

There is a special Wiki Sandbox that you can try out your editing skills in, without making unnecessary changes to existing articles.