Help:Basics

Creating Articles
The way you create a page in Wiki seems a bit unusual to some, but it is quite simple when you get used to it.

The first step is creating a link to the page you want to create. While this might seem backwards, it serves a purpose. Because of this, every Wiki page created will already have a link leading to it from somewhere. This reduces the chance of pages being "Orphaned" by having no links that lead to it (and, therefore, wouldn't be able to be easily viewed).

Next you simply click on that new link, and it will take you to a blank page. Now you just have to write it!

Suppose you were looking at the page and decided to add a page for his grandmother Mildred. First you would go to Fry's page and hit "Edit". Scroll down to the bottom and in the family section, you add a link, like this:

*Mildred, Fry's grandmother

If you hit "Show Preview" now, you would see "Mildred" as a red link, indicating that the page does not exist yet. If that link is clicked on, a page called "Mildred" will be created. However, the site's pattern is to have character pages be named the character's full name, so you scroll back to the bottom and change the link to Mildred's full name, Mildred Fry.

*Mildred Fry, Fry's grandmother

You hit preview again, but now it shows the full name in the link. Again, the preferred in this Wiki is to display only the familiar name, plus any titles, in these links. You can change the text that is displayed for a link, similar to a hyperlink in HTML or BBCode. You do this by using a | (a "pipe" or vertical bar) to seperate the page name from the link text.

*Mildred, Fry's grandmother

If you hit preview again, you will that the link just says "Mildred," but if you hover over it, the page name that pops up will be "Mildred Fry." You're ready to save the changes to Fry's page.

Use these templates to link to the articles of recurring characters whose full names are known.

Formatting and Style
We are trying to be consistent with our style of formatting for articles, particurlarly between articles of the same category. For example, all our character articles follow a certain format, with certain headers and information in a consistent order. The easiest way to get started on a new article, and to remain consistent with the style of other articles, is to start by copying another article of the same category.

To continue the example, while creating the link from Fry to Seymour, before saving we could have selected all the text in the page and copied it to the clipboard by pressing Ctrl+C. Then, after following the link to the blank Seymour page, we can simply paste this (Ctrl+V) and change the specific information, while keeping the formatting and other structural info.

Setting Categories
Every article must have its categories set. These categories appear at the bottom of the aticle as links to the category page. A Category page lists every article in that category, with links, in alphabetical order. For people to find your article, it is important that the categories be set properly. Fortunately, this is the easiest part of writing an article! A list of our existing category hierarchy can be found here. If you've copied an article template, there's a good chance at least some of the categories will be the same.

For our Seymour article, Seymour is a character, so he goes in that category. He doesn't fit into any of the existing sub-categories, though, as he is not human, robot, or alien. He's an animal. Even though the category doesn't exist, we can still use it. Categories are created just like pages - first you have to use them, then you create them. Since we copied from Fry, we can leave Characters and just change Human to Animal.

An article can be attached to as many categories as appropriate in this manner. In most cases you should not need to create a new category, but this explanation is provided for completeness anyway.

Linking Pages
Anything mentioned in your article, including characters, episodes, or interesting items, that has (or should have) its own article page should be made a link. This is very much like the link we made to create the article in the first place. Links can be placed in-line in an article.

Example: Seymour is Fry's loyal dog from the 20th century. Tragically, Seymour was abandoned when Fry was frozen, but he did live a long, healthy life with a regular diet of Panucci's Pizza. After he died, was fast-fossilized and recovered during an archaeological excavation (4ACV07).

Notice that Fry is linked only the first time it appears; it is not necessary to link every instance of the word "Fry" -- However, if there is a significant amount of content since the last "Fry" link, you may want to link it again. This save people having to scroll back up and lose their place if they decide they want to read more about Fry (which the previous mentioning may not have prompted them to do).

Before saving a page with links, it is important to check the preview. Links to existing articles should appear in blue, links to new articles are red. If your link to Fry shows up red, you know you've made a mistake somewhere. The link to Pannucci's Pizza should be red, though, since there is not yet an article on it. Also notice that, for the episode reference, we display only the episode's production code. If you don't know these off-hand, you're not alone. I recomend keeping a second wiki page open while working; then you can look up production codes on the Episode Listing. This is prefered to saving the page, looking it up, and returning to re-edit.

Linking to Categories
Sometimes you need to link a word which is a category rather than a regular article. Since the syntax is already used to define an article's categories, a link uses a different syntax: Category:whatever or link text. Notice the extra ':' before "Category."

Linking to external websites
To add a link to another website, you only use a single set of [ ] 's (square brackets), and you seperate the URL from the text with a space rather than a '|'. This link would link to Google: Google