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MassiveCraft Wiki Guide[]


This guide tries to summarize the entire Wikia Functions in a short general way. This guide shall give all readers a short overview about his/her possibilities in this Wiki. The Wikia itself has many many help pages installed as default, which will be used in this guide at some point. It's necessary to link to theses default articles, because they are full of media and more or less proven by the Wikia-Team.

The main help starts here: Help:Contents

(you can reach every help page from this point)


The Basics[]


The Wiki is based on categories. Everything has nearly a category, even categories itself.

Usually there is a namespace for all articles/pages/etc.
You can see it in your browser bar (URL) as http://massivecraft.wikia.com/wiki/namespace:page.

Here a list of the common namespaces:

  • Category
  • User
  • Template
  • Help

More Namespaces

  • Special
  • Massivecraft Wiki
  • Talk
    • Category
    • Help
    • Template
    • ..
  • Message Wall
  • User Blog


Read more about in Help:Namespaces

An example: The faction page "Excalibur - Shops" is categorized as article of the "Category:Excalibur". The category itself is also categorized in "Category:Factions"

Excalibur - Shop > Category:Excalibur > Category:Factions

Note: All Namespaces are able to store sub-namespaces by "/whatever"

Example: Category:Excalibur/sandbox

Read more about it in Wikia Basics

Why this?[]

This is the way Wikia has setup the structure and now we have to live with it, but the advantage is, that at the end of each Category, all stored Categories/Pages/etc. will be automatically displayed. At the end of each categorized page it will automatically display random pages from the categories the page is in. These two advantages will send you as reader always around the wiki and you will find interesting articles.


The User[]


As registered user of the Wikia, you are able to write with your profile in all wikis of the Wikia. A user has on each Wiki (this too) certain namespaces of his/her own. A user can change these sections on their own and can see it as his home.

You can set personal preferences, like "Signatur", "Language" or "Show section edit links", via My Preferences. (This settings will affect all Wikias you are in.)

Read more about it in Help:Preferences

Now you know your four home places, your wikia profil (User:Username), your talk page (User_talk:Username), your message wall (Message_Wall:Username) and your blog (User_Blog:Username).

You are free to use your home for testing templates or blueprints. Therefore you can easly type/use: User:Username/sandbox

Read more about it in User Page

Mainly the User:Username page is for you in general, if you want to report over your massivecraft character, then create an own page for that.

Read more about it in Create a member profile or create a role-play character.

Customize[]

Beside the Special:Preferences you can customize your own toolbar at the bottom of the site.

Read more about it in Help:Toolbox


Contributions[]


Let us talk about the contributions! Articles can be created, renamed, categprized, moved or deleted. This section will give you an overview about that.

Creation[]

There are some function for editing an article. First thing you need to know, you don't really create them, you edit them. To edit articles you can use two methods:

Example 1: You hit the Contribute button-button and select "Add a page", type in the name and choose a layout.
NOTE: You can also type a namespace in front of the name i.e. "Category:Test"

Example 2: You type into the url bar: "../wiki/Namespace:Pagename" and browse to this site, then you see an empty page with default text. The Edit / Create ▼-Button at the top of each page will bring you to the editor where you can enter your text.
Note: "../wiki/Namespace:Pagename?action=edit" will guide you directly to the editor.

Read more about it in Help:New_page
Read more about it in Help:Editing

Categorize[]

Now you know how to create/edit articles. Each article/category has at the end of the content a box, where you can add the article into a category via the Category button-button. During the edit you can also categorize your page, by using the toolbox Categories at the side. That are the easiest ways to do this, because the editor will autocomplete your typing and show what categories are avaible. If you are in the source of an article, then you can type in the editor i.e. [[Category:Factions]] and your article will be added to the category "Factions".

Read more about it in Help:Category

Rename[]

We talked at the beginning of your personal area, but we didn't talked about how to "publish" i.e. from your sandbox. You can rename every page/image/post and not only renaming, you can also move it to another namespace.

Hit the arrow of the edit-button and press rename, then a new page with a drop-box and an edit line with appear.

There you can for example choose (Main) and type a new name for the page.

Example: [ User ] TestAcc/sandbox rename to [ (Main) ] Excalibur

Note: It's NOT possible to move/convert a page into a category/file or something related and vice versa like a file to a page or a category to a file/page.

Deletion[]

User are not allowed to delete anything in the wiki, even their own created pages/blog posts.

If you have accidentialy create a page or something related like a picture with your old skin, then your only option is to edit the page/photo and add this:

{{tag|type=delete}}

This will mark the page as a candidates for deletion and a wiki admin will remove the page soon (if it's needed).



Main Functions[]


Some main function will be explained in this section like creating an article and format it a bit.

Links[]

You have three types of a link.

  • internal page link
  • internal wiki link
  • external link


You can add a link by selecting text in the visual editor and hit the button with the "chain icon" Link button at the top. A pop-up will appear, where you can add your link into the "Target page or URL"-field.

  • To add an internal page link, type a hash and the headline: #Headline
  • To add an internal link, start typing the name of the page into the field. There will be an autocomplete function, which shows you either the page exists or not.
    • NOTE: You need to type ALLWAYS the namespace! (If there is one)
    • A link to a category it looks like this --> Category:
    • A link to a blog post it looks like this --> User_blog:
  • To add an external link, type the complete url or copy-paste it.


In the source editor the links will look like this:

  • internal page link: [[#The User]]
  • internal page link with custom text: [[#The User|The User Headline]]
  • internal wiki link: [[Laura Redblock]]
  • internal wiki link with custom text: [[Laura Redblock|Laura]]
  • internal wiki category link: [[:Category:Ellador]]
  • internal wiki category link with custom text: [[:Category:Ellador|Ellador]]
  • another custom namespace link: [[:User_blog:TestUser/Newsome|Newsome]]
  • external link: [http://www.testurl.com/ An external link]

Above code as result


Read more in Help:Links

Style[]

Beside the medial features you can style your text by using text formats. It's possible, like in Office programs, to make a selected text bold, italic or underlined. Press therefore the buttons or use the Wikia tags in the source.

  • Bold button makes bold text
  • Italic button makes italic text
  • Underline button makes underlined text
  • Strikethrough button makes strikethrough text
  • Justify button sets the justify of the text
  • Bullets buttonNumbers button makes a list iwth bullets or numbers in front (as this list)
  • Indent button makes an indent to the text or removes one (as this line)
    • Note: Sometime the remove doesn't work, then try to fix it by using Format > "Normal Text"
  • Format button makes a healine of the text (heading2-5) or switches to "Normal Text" / "Code"
    • Note: Text marked as heading will be used to generate an automatic content list by using more than three headings.

It's also possible, if you are familiar to HTML and CSS, to use some elements of it to structure/style your text.

Read more about it in Modifying Text and Help:Formatting_pages

Color[]

Wikia has no function to add color to a text, but html in combination with css does. Currently there is only one way to color your text, use the following code in the source code.

  • Code: Some text <span style="color:#ff0000">is colored</span>, great!
  • Produces: Some text is colored, great!

The colors can be copied from color tables (google > web color) or from programs like GIMP or you calculate them on your own:

  • #RRGGBB = #Red Red Green Green Blue Blue
  • #ff0000 = is Red
  • #00ff00 = green ..

The range is from "00-99" and continues to "aa-ff", therfore "#a10c3d" is a possible color.

Pictures[]

You have entered a lot of text, but you want to style your article a bit, then use the Media Toolbox. You can currently add photos (as single, as gallery, as slideshow, as slider), videos and tables to an article.

Read more about it in Help:Add_Images, Help:Uploading_files and Help:Tables

The wiki has internal functions to detect double uploaded pictures and will also check the name of the picture to prevent overwritings. The main thing you have to know: "Please rename your pictures!"

You have taken a screenshot of your built dragon statue and want to upload that screen to the wiki, then you normally upload a picture with a name like: "2012-11-03 ..png"

The problem is, that for example the picture of a dragon statue could be used in a role-play article about statues, but no user will ever find this picture via the wiki picture search by typing: "dragon"

Therefore we entreat you to rename the pictures you want to upload: "Faction XYZ - Dragon Statue.png"

Format[]

Sometimes it's needed to format the picture a bit more than the visual toolbar is able to.

Look at the examples to understand, what your possibilities are.

Tag overhaul
Tag overhaul
Tag overhaul

A picture

Some non-floating textTag overhaul
Tag overhaul
Some floating text
Tag overhaul
[[ File: Tag overhaul.png ]] [[ File: Tag overhaul.png | thumb ]] [[ File: Tag overhaul.png | 32px | thumb | A picture ]] [[ File: Tag overhaul.png | 96px ]] [[ File: Tag overhaul.png | left ]] [[ File: Tag overhaul.png | link= ]]

Parameters

  • left
    • floating around text left
  • right
    • floating around text right
  • center
    • floating around text center
  • <size>px
    • defines the picture size in pixel
  • thumb
    • creates a thumbnail of the picture within a frame
    • this parameter allows to use a caption within the frame
    • combined with '<size>px' it's not possible to make a thumb bigger as the original resolution of the pixture
  • link=<link>
    • will turn off the link to the picture, if no link is given
    • any other Wikia Categpry/Page can be entered for browsing


Video[]

Yeah! Video! It's possible to add videos to a page or a category by clicking on the video button. You only have to insert your YouTube link for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCz1kmfqL7g, where 'CCz1kmfqL7g' the video id is. Please don't insert all the crappy variables like 'feature=player_embedded'!


Note: Wikia forbids to upload your own video to the wiki, but you are free to use one of the supported providers to add/share your video

Read more about it in Help:Video_embed_tool


Special Functions[]


Some main function will be explained in this section like creating an article and format it a bit.

Magical Words[]

Magical Words is a creation of Wikia and is nothing more than a template with special functions. You can add them manualy via source editor or via the templates tool box in visual editor. There is nothing more to know about it, than a list with usefull/common functions and here we go:

Name Description
__HIDDENCAT__ Will hide all categories and inset the page itself to the category: Hidden_Categories
__NOTOC__ This word will prevent an autocreate of a content list
__TOC__ This will put the content list to the page (works also with only one heading) with left align
__Tocright__ This will put the content list to the page with right align
__NOCATEGORYGALLERY__ Hides a category gallery from being rendered on a category page.
__FORCECATEGORYGALLERY__ If the category gallery is enabled on a wiki, but it is not applied to all categories by default, this will add a category gallery to the category page.
__NOWYSIWYG__ Will disable the visual editor on the page.
{{SITENAME}} Will put the name of the wiki to the text
{{REVISIONUSER}} The username of the user who made the most recent edit to the page, or the current user when previewing an edit.
{{PAGENAME}} Will put the name of the page to the text.
{{gender:username
|return text if user is male
|return text if user is female
|return text if user hasn't defined their gender}}
A switch for the gender set in Special:Preferences.

Note: If 3rd parameter is omitted and user hasn't defined his/her gender, then text if user is male is returned.

<nowiki>Function/Text</nowiki> This will disable all wiki functions within the area. For example if you want to explain something of the source code or prevent the autoconvert of external links.
Read more about in Help:Magic words or visit the entire list of words

Tagging[]

Sometimes the visual mode is messed up, then try to fix it via the source. Sometimes you will find pages with content, that is no longer needed. Sometimes you will find pages in no category or in a wrong catergory. The main problem is always, you have no time or idea how to solve this fact, then you can use tagging.

Go to the Templates-Box, click add another template, type in the textbox: 'Tag'
Select the Template:Tag, went on with "Insert" and write into the field 'type' the tag you want to use:

  • 'style' for our first example of 'bad style'
  • 'delete' for our second example of 'page deletion'
  • 'move' for our third example of 'category wrong'

Sources[]

You know Wikipedia, there you see often Sources at the end of an article or category. You can add these references by using:

Computer <ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer "Computers" by User on wikipedia.org, 2012]</ref>
<references />

This will produce something like that: Computer [1]

Templates[]

A template is a powerfull tool of a Wiki, where you can predefine for example a layout with some text and use this template afterwards in a category or page. It's powerfull, because you are able to use parameters. You can insert parameters while you are calling it. These parameters can be handled within the template i.e. to compare them via if-else-statements.

Read more about it in Help:Templates
Read more about it in Help:Template_parameters
Read more about it in Help:Parser_functions

Wiki Activity[]

You are able to follow every activity in the wiki by visiting this page:

Special:RecentChanges

You are also able to look up all new blog post with this page:

Blog:Recent_posts

You are able to see all new uploaded files through this page:

Special:NewFiles

New pages can be visited here:

Special:NewPages

You want to check the contributions of one user? Then go to Special:Log and simple search for the user or you can type in the url bar the following:

../wiki/Special:Log/Username

Wiki Maintenance[]

The wiki has a special category to store all maintenances. Check this category to see for instance deletion/style/content/etc. tagged pages:

Category:Site maintenance

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