A Guide for Wiki Editing
Mar. 23, 2015A Guide for Wiki Editing
The initial Dark Souls wiki has been around for a good portion of time and has amassed quite a few people willing to help edit it to its perfection. With the upcoming release of Bloodbourne, and the inevitable amount of editing that it will take to make it great, I’ve decided to make a guide for those of you that have yet to gain the proper experience with editing a wiki. So for those of you that are wanting to help but don’t know how to edit or create certain features, take a look through this guide to learn a bit about editing and how it’s done.
Go ahead and click through the tabs below for any information that you might need to make your time on the wiki easier!
Here you’ll be able to find some of the more basic information about the wiki detailing how to edit it properly.
Let’s start out with one of the more basic elements of displaying wiki content and editing it. This will be how to switch to the text editor:
For this tutorial we’ll simply be accessing the main wiki for Fextralife and altering a setting for you account.
In order to do this you’ll need to head to the top-right corner of you screen and find your chosen wiki name. Click it, this will send you to your account settings for the fextralife wiki. Here you’ll need to head over to your Settings, once you have you’ll find the ‘Use Visual Editor’ at the top of the page. Click no and you’ll be able to load up future pages with the text editor.
Another method of changing in-between editors can be found while editing a page. To do this simply click on the arrow by the ‘save’ feature and scroll down until you find ‘Text Editor’.
Switching, while based on your own preference in editing is generally done to avoid a break in tooltips when loading the page with the visual editor.
Now that you’ve learned the different ways to view a page while editing it, let’s talk about the creation of a page itself. On more established wikis most pages will be developed, but on newly made wikis certain pages may not exist yet and will need to be created.
In order to do this, you’ll need to head to the top left of your screen and find a section labeled as ‘Pages and Files’ click this and you’ll be redirected to a directory of everything that has been added to that specific wiki. Once you’re here, go ahead and click on ‘New Page’ on the top right of the page. Once you’ve done this, you’ll need to label the name of the page you’re creating give the page the name it needs and you’ll have created a page.
The ability to create a Template is very similar to creating a page, as you may have noticed the ability to do so is also located on the ‘Pages and Files’ section of the wiki. If you haven’t, head on back to that section, you’ll be able to find it close to ‘New Page’.
Before we begin with creating the Template, it’s best to understand the difference between a Template and a Page. Unlike the Page, a Template doesn’t exist for one specific item but rather a category of specific items. They normally become the base of the page for other users to enter information onto them.
So with that explained let’s talk about creating a Template. As mentioned before you’ll need to be in the ‘Pages and Files’ section of the wiki, once there go ahead and click on ‘New Template’ located on the top of the page. Now you’ll have to name your new template before you can get started on editing it. Once you have, you’ll have started your own template.
Have an image that needs to be uploaded onto the wiki? No need to worry, the process of uploading it is very easy to do. All you’ll need is to head over towards the ‘Pages and Files’ section and select ‘Upload Files’ once you have, you’ll be able to upload images from your computer onto the wiki. Once you’ve uploaded, it will become one of the files for the wiki for you to select while editing.
One of the most essential aspects of editing a Page or a Template is the table that will be created for it. However the ability to create a table differs incredibly based on the type of editor that you will be using during your time editing. So go ahead and check out the information that suits the editor that you choose to use.
One of the first steps in creating a table when using the visual editor will be to start editing the page. As soon as you do you’ll see a section labeled ‘Table’, once you’ve clicked this you’ll be given the option to enter how many columns and rows you’ll want for the table you’ll be making. Once you’ve entered in the amount of rows and columns you want, your table will be posted onto the editor.
Normally even after creating a table, work will need to be done in order to make it more efficient with information. Merging cells, while not often needed, is normally used in making sure that there isn’t an unneeded cell within the table after it’s been created.
In order to merge with the visual editor you’ll need to click inside a cell, once you have a small label of a table will appear. Click the label, and then click ‘this cell’ this will give you a small list of directions that you can use to merge the cell towards. Click the desired direction and you will have merged the cell together.
Much like merging alignment can be found by click inside and clicking the table label. Once you have you can select whether you wish to align information left or right with that specific cell, specific row, or specific column.
Headers generally tend to be used in order to tell the viewer what information will be displayed inside the table with these special cells. Turning these cells into headers, tends to be quite easy to do.
In order to turn a row, column, or single cell into a you’ll need to click inside a cell before selecting the row, column, or specific cell and then click the option to turn these cells into headers.
Unlike the visual editor for creating tables, the text editor is a bit more efficient when it comes to forming cells and tables. So below you can find all the ways to create and edit a table within the text editor.
In order to create any of the above, you’ll first need the simple text used for making a cell, || space ||. Once you’ve done this you can go into more detail with creating rows or columns in order to do this you’ll need to either enter that same code under or right next to the first cell code. Entering to the side will create a two cell row, while entering it below the initial code will create a column.
In order to merge cells together with TE you’ll need to have first started either a row or a column first. Afterwards you can start merging cells together. In order for a merge horizontally you’ll need to combine cells together for example || cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3 || would become |||| cell 12 || cell 3 || when merging cell 1 and 2 together.
Merging vertically with TE however is quite different, as you’ll first need to have a few more cells in order to create merged column. Once you have you’ll need to take the bottom cells and replace || cell 4 || and || cell 5 || with || ^ || and || ^ ||. Not getting it entirely? Check out the example below for a better understanding.
|| cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3 || becomes… || cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3||
|| cell 4 || cell 5 || cell 3 || || ^ || ^ || cell 6||
The text for aligning and assigning headings to certain cells isn’t all too difficult to understand. For alignment you’ll need to pay attention to whether or not the information within a cell starts out with a ‘<,>,=’ within it. These symbols are used to center the information or align it to the left or right. So when aligning to the right you would need to use a ‘>’ in order to align it properly, while ‘<‘ would align it to the left. So all you’ll need to worry about when focusing on the alignment of a cell is what direction the arrow is pointing towards. Centering information on the other hand within the wiki will need to have a ‘=’ instead of the ‘<,>’ symbols.
Headings on the other hand will need to have the ‘~’ symbol in order to make that specific cell a header. An example of how a cell in the TE should look like can be found below for better clarity.
|| ~ text inserted here || : TE text for a header
|| = text inserted here || : TE text for center alignment
|| > text inserted here || : TE text for right alignment
|| < text inserted here || : TE text for left alignment
Made specifically for long pages, anchors are used for the purpose of directing you to a specific place on the page that you’re currently browsing. Naturally this just makes things easier for everyone involved when anchors are made for such pages, so here’s how to make them.
Starting out you’ll need to head over to the widget tab and then click on the ‘anchor’ label on there. Now that you have all you’ll need to do is give the anchor a name that coincides with the information it links to on the page. Now that the anchor has been given a name you’ll be able to link to it with the ‘insert link’ label, all you’ll need to do is type in the name of the anchor and the link will be created!
Tooltips are creations for users of both the wiki and the forum to use in order to figure out information about a specific item. All the user needs to do is hover over the link created and a display of that weapon/armor’s starts is created on their screen. This of course, can take a bit of time to do for the individual wanting to create the tooltip, so let’s get started!
First, before starting any editing you’ll need to have downloaded Notepad++ or CoffeeCup. Both can be downloaded for free, but if you want to upgrade CoffeeCup you can on their website.
Now that you’ve gotten one of those downloaded we can move on to downloading the HTML file for the item you wish to edit. In order to do this you’ll need to head over to the wiki’s ‘Pages and Files’ tab on the upper left of the site. Once here you’ll need to locate the file you’re looking before and then download it. Afterwards we can start editing it in your HTML editor.
First let’s start with editing the URL of the file, in order to do this locate the text: . You’ll see where I named the ‘page_name_needed’ the place where you’ll need to enter the real URL of the item you wish to edit.
Finally let’s get to the meat of the editing, which will be the content of the HTML edit. In order to do this you’ll just need to head to the text that starts with and ends with . Once here you’ll be able to do quite a few things with the content such as make a list of statistics or simply add more info to the HTML edit. For a list of the things you can do with this content simply scroll down below and have a look.
Next all you’ll need to do is save the file you’ve edited as a ‘.html’ file, along with this however you’ll need to make sure it is saved as the file it will correspond with on the wiki. Also, make sure to use lower case lettering for the file save!
After everything is edited and ready to go you’ll need to email the tooltip to admin@fetralife.com for it to be uploaded into the site. Once added you can use this on the forums by simply adding #fex into the url link. For example: [url=LINKTOPAGE#fex][/url] now your tooltip will be available to see on the forums.
Visit and edit theBloodborne wiki
Or maybe you’d like to view or work on one of the otherFextraLife wikis
GrinTwist
Someone that plays too many videogames and sometimes writes a few articles.
