User blog:Godisme/The Ultimate Wiki Markup Guide

So after I introduced the Bleach Wiki:Arena, I came to realize that not many people understand wiki markup and so this is my guide to understanding what wiki markup is and how to use it. This will be constantly updated as I have more time to work on it and if you have any questions on how to do something, leave it in the comments and I will add it in.

What is it?
So when I say wiki markup, you are likely not really sure what I mean. Wiki markup is the code that wikis run on. When certain characters are entered into a wiki, the wiki will automatically format it into something special. So if you enter #Hi in the editor, the wiki will automatically format that as #Hi. This is wiki markup. So in this blog, I am going to run down a lot of the essentials of wiki markup, what they do and how to use them.

#
# : The pound symbol is the code for a numbered list. If you type the pound symbol, it will replace that with the next number in the list.

Example:


 * 1) This is number 1.
 * 2) This is number 2.
 * 3) This is number 3

Will automatically format to:


 * 1) This is number 1.
 * 2) This is number 2.
 * 3) This is number 3

Make sure that you don't have any blank lines between each pound sign or else the list won't continue and there will be another number one, such as if you were to do this:


 * 1) This is number 1.


 * 1) This is number 2.
 * 2) This is number 3.

Will format to:


 * 1) This is number 1.


 * 1) This is number 2.
 * 2) This is number 3.

Blank Lines
One of the more abstract things is the use of blank lines in wiki markup. Basically it boils down to this: This is text This is text as well

Formats to:

This is text This is text as well

But if you were to throw a blank line in there:

This is text

This is text as well

You would end up getting:

This is text

This is text as well.

Using a blank line is the only way to get two lines of text to be on a separate lines.

Links
Links can be both simple and complex depending on how you use them. There are three kinds of links you can use, Internal, External and Interwiki

Internal Links
Very simple here. To link to any page on this wiki while you are on this wiki, just take the page name and surround it with.

Example:

Sōsuke Aizen

formats as:

Sōsuke Aizen

You can also change what the links says by using a | and entering what you want the link to say afterwards.

Example:

The best character ever

formats as:

The best character ever

Also with internal links, you need to know the namespace of what you are linking to. The namespace is just the prefix before the article name. Earlier I linked to the Arena, when I linked to it, I needed to put Bleach Wiki: before the word Arena as it is in the Bleach Wiki namespace. If you want to link to your user page you need to put User: in front of the name. My user name is Godisme, but I can't simply go Godisme because no page by that name exists in the main article space, aka the pages with no prefixes. So if I want to link to my user page, I need to do the following:

User:Godisme

which will format as:

User:Godisme

and if I want it to just say Godisme, I need to use a pipe like so:

Godisme

which will format as:

Godisme.

If you are linking to an image, say Aizen.png, you need to put Image: in front of it. Now this is where it gets tricky, there are two namespaces that will format as more than just a link, those are the Image/File namespaces (Image and File are two names for the namespaces where pictures are stored) and the category namespace. So let's look at these in a little more depth

Links to the File/Image and Category namespace
There are two things you can do with these namespace, you can display the picture for the file namespace and categorize the page you are on with the category namespace, or you can just link to it. For right now, I am just going to cover how to link to it. I will go into how to do the other options when I get more specific with categories and files.

So just linking to these is very simple, just put a colon before the prefix. So if I wanted to link to Aizen.png, I just do the following:

File:Aizen.png

which will format as:

File:Aizen.png

And just like other links, I can use a pipe to change what my link says.

This is a good picture

which will format as:

This is a good picture

The exact same rules apply to linking to a category.

Interwiki Links
Because Bleach Wiki is hosted by Wikia, there are a ton of other wikis all hosted by Wikia as well that can be linked to very easily through wiki markup. If you are linking to another wiki, there is no need for an external link so long as the wiki is also on wikia.

There are two things to understand when using an interwiki link and those are the letters w and c.

The prefix w: in a link, tells the wiki that you are linking to Community Central, the central hub of all wikis. So if I wanted to link to my user page on community central, I would put:

w:User:Godisme

which formats as:

w:User:Godisme

If you click the link, you will see that you end up on community.wikia.com/wiki/User:Godisme, which you can see is a pretty handy shortcut to typing out the url.

So once you are on central, the prefix c: tells the wiki that you are linking to another wiki. To do this you need the part of the url that comes before the .wikia.com, not the wiki name itself. A good example of this is the Fairy Tail Wiki. While the name of the wiki is Fairy Tail Wiki, the part before the .wikia.com is just fairytail with no space. So if you were on community central, the following would link to Fairy Tail Wiki:

fairytail

But since we are not on community central, that won't work here. So in order to link to another wiki, we simply need to tell the wiki to go to community central and then back to another wiki, which you do by combining w and c as follows:

w:c:fairytail

which formats as:

w:c:fairytail

Click it and you will end up on Fairy Tail Wiki. Now that we can link between wikis, you can get even more specific by linking to specific pages. This is done through another colon like the following:

w:c:fairytail:Laxus Dreyar

which formats as:

w:c:fairytail:Laxus Dreyar

Click it and you will end up on the page for Laxus Dreyar on Fairy Tail Wiki. From there, all other rules of links apply, you can add pipes to change what the link says or you can add the namespace in there to link to different namespaces.

Ignoring Wiki Markup
So by now, you are probably thinking "If all of this is done automatically, how are you showing all of this without the wiki turning it into what its supposed to?" The answer is pretty simple, there are two tags that can make it so that the wiki does not automatically format your text. These are the nowiki and pre tags.

So first questions: What is a tag?

A tag is a special bit of code that when wrapped around something, will format it in a predetermined way. You can recognize a tag by arrows (<>). A tag starts with and ends with. That is pretty important as only when you enter that, will the tag stop formatting text. So the nowiki tag is perfect for getting the wiki to not format anything on a single line. Usually when you put,

#hi

It comes out as:


 * hi

But if I put:

#hi

It comes out as:

#hi

The pre tag works exactly like this except for two key differences. The first is that the pre tag surrounds everything in a box. The second is that it disables ALL wiki markup. The nowiki tag can't stop certain things, such as the pre tag from formatting. Pre stops all wiki formatting so if you ever have a bunch of stuff you want to write down that includes a bunch of things that will format, use a pre tag

To be continued