Basic Wiki Markup Guide

This is a technical guide to wiki markup. See wiki writing guidelines for information about writing style and etiquette for Why This Way.

Basic markup

Bold & italic text

What you type	What it looks like
Two apostrophes make text ''italic''. Three apostrophes make it '''bold'''. Five apostrophes make it '''''bold and italic'''''.	Two apostrophes make text italic. Three apostrophes make it bold. Five apostrophes make it bold and italic.

Signing

What you type	What it looks like
Signing your posts on talk pages with four tildes generates your username and the date and time. ~~~~	Signing your posts on talk pages with four tildes generates your username and the date and time. Sylvia 17:52, 1 March 2013 (CST)

Headings

Use equals signs to make section headings:

==Two equals signs create a heading==
===Three make a subheading===
====Four make a smaller subheading====

Bullets and indenting

What you type	What it looks like
Asterisks create bullets. * One * Two A colon indents text like this: : Indented text A colon and an asterisk creates an indented bullet: * Point one * Point two :* Sub-point one	Asterisks create bullets. One Two A colon indents text like this: Indented text A colon and an asterisk creates an indented bullet: Point one Point two Sub-point one

Linking

You can link a word to its page with square brackets. When linking to a page with more than one word, capitalization is important.

What you type	What it looks like
Here's a link to the [[food]] page. [[Rules of Communication|This]] links to the rules of communication.	Here's a link to the food page. This links to the rules of communication.

External Links

What you type	What it looks like
Here's a link to [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Tables tables help].	Here's a link to tables help.

Linking to categories

You can link to a category without adding the page to that category by putting a colon before the category title.

What you type	What it looks like
Here's a link to the [[:Category:Core Beliefs and Practices|core beliefs and practices]].	Here's a link to the core beliefs and practices.

Linking to a page section

To link to a section of a page, write the page title, then a pound sign, and then the name of the section.

What you type	What it looks like
Here's a link to the [[Rules of Communication#The rules|rules]] section of the rules of communication.	Here's a link to the rules section of the rules of communication.

Creating, moving, and redirecting pages

Creating a page

There are different ways to create a page. Probably the simplest way is to type the page title into the search box (and remember to capitalize it if it's more than one word). The results will say "create the page 'Page Title' on this wiki!"

Another way is to create a red link in the text. A red link is any link to a page that doesn't exist on the wiki yet. Clicking on the link will bring you to an editing box where you can start the page.

Moving a page

To move a page, just click on the move tab above it, and type in the new title. Moving a page will automatically create a redirect from the old title to the new one.

Redirecting a page

If you want to redirect the word "school" to the education page, go to the school page and write:

#REDIRECT[[Education]]

Templates

To add a template to a page, type the name of the template in double braces in the relevant section. To add the "needswork" template, you would type:

{{needswork}}

Categories

To add a page to a category, for instance, the "Wiki Guidelines" category, type this at the bottom of the page:

[[Category:Wiki Guidelines]]

This is not necessary for categories that are generated by templates, such as the Pending Changes category. For categories like that, adding the template to a page will add the page to the category. The Pending Changes category is generated by the "pending" template.

Creating a category

Adding a page to a category with the above process will create the category. Once the page is added, you can click on the category link at the bottom of the page, and create the category page.

Re-naming a category

Unlike moving a regular page, there is no simple way to re-name a category. Instead, you can re-create the category on a new page, change all of the references to that category, and create a redirect from the old category to the new one.

Redirecting a category

To redirect a page to Core Beliefs and Practices, type on the page:

#REDIRECT[[:Category:Core Beliefs and Practices]]

Images

You can upload an image using the "upload file" link on the left menu. To add the image blue.png to a page, type:

What you type	What it looks like
[[File:blue.png]]

You can also add attributes to the image by adding labels after the file name and separated by pipes.

What you type	What it looks like
[[File:blue.png|right|frame|Here's a picture]] Here's how to right-align the image and add a frame and a caption.	Here's a picture Here's how to right-align the image and add a frame and a caption.