This guide contains all the steps required for a player such as yourself to submit their first wiki page. A video version of this guide is also available for those who prefer to save their eyes the effort of reading. Timestamps will be included for quick navigation to sections of the video guide.
Video Link
Sections include:
I. Navigating to the Wiki and Important Pages
II. Wiki Account Creation and Logging In
III. Creating the Page
IV. Utilizing Backbones
V. Basic Formatting
a. Headings
b. Table of Contents
c. HTML
d. Links
e. Italic and Bold
f. Images
g. Summary and Preview
VI. Posting
Section I: Navigating to the Wiki and Important Pages
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The wiki can be found at https://wikia.lordofthecraft.net, or by clicking on the wiki button on the forum bar. If you are having trouble loading the page, make sure that you are including “https://” as this may solve the issue.
The two important pages that are useful for general editing are the Wiki Player Handbook and Wiki Priority List pages.
The Handbook contains the Wiki Rules in addition to editing suggestions and formatting tips. The Priority List is a tiered, prioritized list of what the Wiki Team wants completed and how urgent the tasks are. If one wishes to help out the most, simply take a look at the high priority tasks.
Section II: Wiki Account Creation and Logging In
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Before you can begin editing on the wiki you must first obtain a Wiki Account. This can be done by contacting any Wiki Team member and providing them with a user name and email. A temporary password will be sent to the email which will allow you to log in to your Wiki Account. The login button is found in the upper right corner. After logging in, you are free to change your password to whatever you please.
Section III: Creating the Page
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To create the page, first search the title you want for the page in the search bar. Make sure to use the exact wording that you wish the final title to have. If a similar topic appears in the results and has already been covered, do not create a duplicate page. Once confirming that the page has not been created yet, the option to create the page should appear in Red at the top of the list. Clicking on this red link leads to the creation box.
Section IV: Utilizing Backbones
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It may look daunting to start a page from scratch. Therefore the Wiki Team has created an assortment of pre-made page templates, called backbones, to assist in the writing process. By opening a new tab and navigating back to the wiki player handbook, or searching for backbones in the search bar, or clicking this link, the list of backbones can be found. Simply choose the backbone that seems to be most related to the page you are creating.
To copy this backbone to the creating box for the page, you must click on edit to view the source information.
Then copy this text and paste it in the creation box where you will be writing the page. Note it is recommended to write pages in an external program such as Google Docs or Word to prevent data loss. Now all you must do is fill in the information as suggested in the backbone. Do note that not everything on the backbone must be completed or utilized – it is simply a writing assistant and starting point for page creation. You may certainly include information that is not covered in the backbone.
Section V: Basic Formatting
Headings
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Headings are designated by equals signs. Ex: =Heading=
One equals sign on each side means a first level heading, while two equals signs designates a second level heading, and so on. This can be used to neatly organize your page and make it look more appealing.
Table of Contents
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A table of contents will automatically be created for the page and placed near the top. However, when __NOTOC__ is placed anywhere on the page, no table of contents is created. It is common practice to place this on the first line of the page.
On the other hand, if you would like the Table of Contents to be placed in a specific location instead of on top of the page, simply type __TOC__ and the table of contents will be placed in that location.
HTML
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Html can be used on the Wiki’s platform, Mediawiki, to some extent. Not all Html will work correctly and things such as CSS cannot be used at all. If you would like to spruce up your page with your own Html, feel free to do so, although this will make it more difficult for people to contribute to your page in the future as not everybody is learned in coding.
Links
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A useful feature on the wiki is the easy way to link to other pages on the wiki. By putting two brackets around a word, a link is automatically created to a page with that title on the wiki.
Ex: [[Link]]
To link a web address, copy the address within single brackets. Put a space after the address and then a word to have that work link to the web address.
Ex: [www.lordofthecraft.net Link]
Italic and Bold
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For italicizing and bolding, two apostrophes on each side of a word makes it italicized and three apostrophes on each side makes it bolded.
Example Italic: ‘’Italic’’ Example Bold: ‘’’Bold’’’ Example Italic and Bold: ‘’’’’ItalicBold’’’’’
Note: Apostrophes can be altered when copy and pasting from external word processors, causing them to not function correctly on the wiki. If this occurs, simply re-type the apostrophes in the wiki creation box
Images
The process of uploading images will be covered in a future separate guide that will be linked here.
Summary and Preview
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Summarize your creation and any future edits by shortly describing the changes you are making in the summary bar. This creates an easily identifiable record of the reasoning behind changes to pages.
Preview all your changes to ensure they are appearing as intended by clicking the preview button. This is highly encouraged over saving multiple times to correct errors as this clogs the wiki records and makes sifting through them more difficult.
Section VI: Posting
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After entering all of your information, one last thing to do when using a backbone is to go to the very bottom and make sure to remove <noinclude>Category:Backbone</noinclude>
Once that is done, do one final preview, and if it checks out, you can finally click the ‘Save page’ button.
Congratulations! You have posted your very first wiki page. I hope this guide has been a help to you. If you have any questions, feel free to contact myself or any wiki team member. Happy contributing!