Wiki editing tutorial

The East Scarp Wiki runs on a content management system called MediaWiki. It's the same open-source software that powers Wikipedia. Formatting text for the wiki can be a little unusual, but it's a very simple learning curve. In this guide, we will try to help you get it!

Wiki formatting and editing

If you've been on the Internet for long enough, you probably know about BBcode. The formatting that what used on many forums for decades and is, somehow, still in use on certain websites including Nexus mods. Mediawiki, albeit different, works similarly.

The wiki has a visual editor and a code editor. Although the visual editor is simpler to handle, we recommend you use the code editor, at least for creating pages. Now, how does the code editor works? It's a bunch of tags, really. Let's use an example. You see that fancy "Wiki formatting and editing" above this section? Here how it looks in code:

== Wiki formatting and editing ==

That's it! Just a bunch of equal signs.

The best part is, you don't need to remember every single tags. The menu above the editing window has buttons to use bold text, add links or images. We recommend switching it to "Advanced" to have even more tools at your disposal.

The only thing you really need to remember when using the code editor, is to add <br /> everytime you want to skip a line.

(You didn't see, but I just used it, twice).

Wiki formatting list

The MediaWiki wiki (yes, it's a bit meta) has a great list to browse every formatting option possible.

MediaWiki Formatting

Templates

On Mediawiki wikis, we rely a lot on what is called templates. For example, the navigation menu on the bottom of this page is using a template, so it can be added easily to every single page. Templates are a way to store information in one place and display it in several places.

When doing "regular" wiki editing, you shouldn't have to create new templates, but just in case, here is some documentation regarding MediaWiki templates and the commonly used templates on this wiki:

• MediaWiki Templates
• Template:GalleryMainNPC
• Template:GalleryMainVanillaNPC
• Template:Icon
• Template:Icon/doc
• Template:MainNavbox
• Template:LocationsNavbox
• Template:Character: This template isn't used directly on other pages. It's a way to store the formatting for NPC pages.

Page creation checklist

Before you start creating new pages on the wiki, we recommend you go through this checklist:

• Does the page already exist? Use the search bar or go to the search page to check.
• Is there a template for the page you want to create? Check the templates section of this page above.
• Add categories to your page. To add a category, just type [[Category:CategoryName]] at the end of the page. You can see the list of categories on this page: Special:Categories.
• Add the navbox at the bottom of the page. The East Scarp wiki navbox is a quick and easy way to navigation through the wiki. It must be added at the bottom of every page on the wiki. You can see or edit the template on this page: Template:MainNavbox. To add it to a page, just type {{MainNavbox}} in the code editor.