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[sandman] how to create a group wiki on shoutwiki.com
someone asked us how we made our group wiki and we said we'd write up a guide. if you're interested, here it is.
ok first of all you're gonna create an account & login, then go here: http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Special:CreateWiki
agree to the terms of use or whatever, i know you don't need me to hold your hand through every step but it's easier for me if i do
enter all the information and be sure to select "private" under the "wiki type" drop down menu
step two is to pick the layout/look or whatever of the thing, we like the typical wikia look so we went with monaco but obviously pick whatever
in step 3 set viewing and editing restriction to "invited users only"
we unchecked "import content from starter wiki" but you can check it if you want. it will import the content from this wiki into yours: http://starter.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page i don't think its very useful but i guess the main page formatting could be useful, i'm not sure what else comes with it, i can't tell if that wiki has other pages because the layout is so fucked
so anyway hit continue when you're done, then review the info and hit create. hopefully yours won't error like mine did
so then go to the main page of your wiki. wow, this shit is completely bare. now what??? first we'll start with importing all the templates we stole from the dramatical murder wiki like a couple of gay weeaboos.
also good time to note that i discovered that the nimbus layout and chrome or... something, i don't know what's causing it, aren't friends, the top is cut off for some reason? if you need to switch your layout or anything there's a link on the sidebar for "Preferences" and then click the "Appearances" tab or you can go here: http://testingwiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering (except replace "testingwiki" with your domain)
ok now let's actually put some templates up. templates are going to be like regular pages except they're named "Template:Whatever" so the wiki recognizes it as a template. make sure there's no space after the colon. i'm still not really clear on how this works. look i'm not a computer guy i'm just explaining how we did it. so here goes:
warning: wiki code is REALLY particular about capital vs lowercase letters, so any time there's a page title paste it in exactly as i have it written here, if i say "Template:RoundTop" make sure it's exactly like that because for some reason it won't read "Template:Roundtop" the same way and you'll be screwed. this got confusing for use at some point. this will be an issue throughout with category pages later but right now let's focus on templates.
in the search bar, paste "Template:Border-radius" (without quotes always) and hit enter. it will take you to a search results page that says there were no results matching that query, then bold text that says "Create the page "Template:Border-radius" on this wiki!". click the red text and you're brought to the page to create the template.
paste this in exactly from the pastebin here: http://pastebin.com/jUsPSEb9
then save page. it will create a page that says this:
-moz-border-radius: 1em; -webkit-border-radius: 1em; border-radius: 1em; -khtml-border-radius: 1em; -icab-border-radius: 1em;
that's exactly what you want. just leave it alone. chances are you will never look at this page again, but it's needed to make another template work. there's a couple like that.
the next template we want to create is "Template:Clear". do the same thing like before where you paste that in the search bar, search for it, and then click the red link. when you're creating the page, here's what you enter: http://pastebin.com/6GdFN7bp
by the way, template doesn't look like a word anymore already
this is for making blank pages and there is actually a use for it, we'll get to that later though. the template page will look like there's nothing on it. that's good, just leave it. this is all behind the scenes stuff so to speak
two more set-up templates before we get to the other thing: "Template:Quote" and "Template:RoundTop"
here's "Template:Quote": http://pastebin.com/q8KUtsvf
this one's optional and i think the only page that even uses it is chris' but it's neat anyway. you know how like on most wikias when you go to a character's page or even sometimes other pages there's a quote in a little box at the top of the page? example: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Obi-Wan_Kenobi there's a quote from anakin on the top of this page (not in a box i guess on this style but w/e you get it) this template is what creates that look. when you hit save page, the template page will now show you the code to include in your article to get the quote to work:
{{quote|quoted words|person quoted|source=}}
that looks like confusing actual garbage, here it is in practice:
{{quote|I can't believe Sonic the Hedgehog is fucking dead.|Chris, probably}}
there's a space for the source also but we didn't use it because we didn't have one, not entirely sure how that works sorry
here's "Template:RoundTop": http://pastebin.com/06mxiVrw
it's going to create a page that says a lot of shit about border radius. just ignore it.
finally, here's what the actual profiles come from: "Template:Person"
before you actually create it, you need to upload a picture that's 300px wide to your wiki to act as a placeholder. we were so lazy that we literally just took what the dramatical murder wiki had so we have the logo for this embarrassing anime porn game as a placeholder. you could do that i guess. whatever it is, it needs to be 300px wide. here's what we used: http://i.imgur.com/H9LnT8I.png
click on "Upload File" on the sidebar of your wiki (if you didn't pick one with a sidebar i don't know, look around for the Upload File page) and then upload it. pretty sure it has to be from your computer, not from a url. hit upload file and then it'll take you to a page showing you that the file has been uploaded.
here's a screenshot:
the very top title of the page (where i have a red box around it) that says "File:Whatever.png" is your file name and you'll want to copy that. there might be a better way to do this but i dont know what it is and this is my tutorial
so copy that and hold on to it, you'll probably want to paste it somewhere else because you're about to have to copy other things first
now go and create "Template:Person" like you created the other template pages. here's what you paste in: http://pastebin.com/F9N90Bmf
anywhere where you see "File:Wiki-wordmark.png" you can replace that with your own full file name for your own placeholder image, but that's what mine was called. it's in there twice just fyi.
i highly recommend pasting this in as is and saving it before you scrutinize the code and make any changes to it based on your own needs. when you're done you're going to be brought to the Template:Person page. it'll have a small version of the sidebar without anything actually filled out, so it's just collapsed, that's normal. then on the bottom there will be the code you actually use to create each individual person's page.
let's say you don't like what we have on our template and you want to change it. no big deal, i'll show you how.
the code's broken up into a few parts. first is the name section. you'll see this:
{{#if: {{{Kanji Name|}}}{{{Romaji Name|}}}{{{Other Names|}}}|
! colspan="2" style="background-color:#406aa2; color:#ffffff;" {{!}}Name
{{!}}-
}}
you don't really need to remove anything, because anything you don't fill out on an individual person's page just won't show up in their template. but if you find yourself consistently not using one of these categories you can, or you can change it to something else. let's say you wanted to remove "Kanji Name". you would pull out this section from the above section: "{{{Kanji Name|}}}" and then, go below and take out this entire section:
{{#if:{{{Kanji Name|| }}} |
{{!}}style="background-color: #406aa2; color:#FFF"{{!}}'''Kanji'''
{{!}}{{{Kanji Name|}}}
{{!}}-
}}
|-
then you also need to go all the way down to where it says "==Template Usage==" (cntrl+F that if you need to) and remove this part: "|Kanji Name ="
but let's say you wanted to add something! same process, but in reverse. first you need to figure out where you want to add it. there's several sections to this: name (which isn't actually labeled, sorry), biographical information (stuff like age, birthday, occupation), physical description (like height, weight), and system information (where we put meta stuff like Hogwarts house, group affiliation (like any groups/teams/whatever here that they're a part of for whatever reason) and arrival date). then you find the appropriate section. let's say i wanted to add "hair color" to the physical description section. first locate the physical description... chunk. i am so bad at explanining, holy shit, but here it is:
{{#if: {{{Gender|}}}{{{Height}}}{{{Weight|}}}|
! colspan="2" style="background-color:#406aa2; color:#ffffff;" {{!}}Physical Description
{{!}}-
}}
i need to add "hair color", so i'm going to make sure to format it the same as the others. i don't care if it's after "weight" so i'll just slot it in there. so you'll add "{{{Hair Color|}}}" after "Weight" (but before that final "|")
then you need to add hair color below, after the weight signifier. so scroll down and find this:
{{#if:{{{Weight|| }}} |
{{!}}style="background-color: #406aa2; color:#FFF"{{!}}'''Weight'''
{{!}}{{{Weight|}}}
{{!}}-
}}
|-
you'll want to just copy that, paste it, right after, and change every instance of "weight" to "hair color". remember about using consistent capitalization. so you end up with this:
{{#if:{{{Hair Color|| }}} |
{{!}}style="background-color: #406aa2; color:#FFF"{{!}}'''Hair Color'''
{{!}}{{{Hair Color|}}}
{{!}}-
}}
|-
pasted in right after the weight signifier.
but it's not done yet! one last thing you have to do: scroll down to the bottom where "==Template Usage==" is. After "|Weight =", linebreak and paste in "|Hair Color =".
then you're set. let me know if you have any questions because that is a lot to take in and the squiggly brackets can be confusing.
so let's make our first page. we're just testing so we'll do something sweet like indiana jones. if you have an indiana jones in your system that's cool. no judgement. i'm kind of confused as to how we don't, but ok
there's a couple ways you can do this. some people upload a picture first and then hang on to the file name. that's cool. but since we're already on the template page, might as well do this:
save the template:person page if you haven't already. then scroll down to the bottom and copy the entire thing, it should look like this (plus or minus any changes you made for your own purposes)
{{Person
|Name =
|Image = [[File:Wiki-wordmark.png]]
|Kanji Name =
|Romaji Name =
|Other Names =
|Age =
|Birthday =
|Zodiac =
|Nationality =
|Species =
|Sexuality =
|Blood Type =
|Pets =
|Occupation =
|Affiliation =
|Status =
|Alignment =
|Theme Song =
|Gender =
|Height =
|Weight =
|Canon =
|Hogwarts House =
|Group Affiliation =
|Arrival Date =
}}
usually we paste this in another window (like just a textedit file) and fill it out there but you could fill it out in the page too i guess. so let's go create our sample page. type "Dr. Henry Jones Jr." into your search bar and hit enter. no, i haven't found an easier way to create pages. Yes it is stupid.
so then you're brought to the create a page screen that you're pretty familiar with this time. paste what you copied (above) into the page. fill it in if you haven't. so it might look something like this:
{{Person
|Name = Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.
|Image = [[File:Wiki-wordmark.png]]
|Kanji Name =
|Romaji Name =
|Other Names = Indiana Jones, Indy, Junior
|Age = 36
|Birthday = July 1, 1899
|Zodiac =
|Nationality = American
|Species = Human
|Sexuality = Straight
|Blood Type =
|Pets =
|Occupation = Archaeologist, College professor
|Affiliation =
|Status = Alive
|Alignment =
|Theme Song =
|Gender = Male
|Height =
|Weight =
|Canon = Indiana Jones (films)
|Hogwarts House = Gryffindor
|Group Affiliation =
|Arrival Date = Some day
}}
you can save this. he'll end up with the placeholder image as his picture. that's lame. also kind of awkward if you used the dramatical murder logo. we want something better. so let's go online and find something good.
this one with the machete is pretty hot if that's what you're into: http://i.imgur.com/9VAvzcX.jpg
upload that to your wiki and you'll get a file name. for example, mine was "File:Indy.jpg" (because i renamed it). Make sure you paste it exactly because again, caps matter so much to wikis.
now go back to indy's page and edit it. find this line:
|Image = [[File:Wiki-wordmark.png]]
(or whatever your placeholder file name was) and replace the entire filename so it reads:
|Image = [[File:Indy.jpg]]
(or whatever you named your kickass indiana jones picture.)
you could hit save here but holy SHIT it's gonna be a problem. actually totally do it so you can see what happens, but yeah you'll quickly see that it's not going to work. luckily it's an easy fix that doesn't involve resizing the image yourself in photoshop or whatever. go back to edit the page, and add this:
|Image = [[File:Indy.jpg|300px]]
save it and phew it's a lot better. there we go. perfect.
you can leave it the way it is, although it's threadbare. let's go in and edit one more time and add some categories.
categories are ways you can filter people by certain aspects. i don't know why you would, but let's say you wanted to see all archaeologists in your system. you could just search "archaeologist" and it would pull up every page with that written on it, but categories are a cool/better way to do it.
scroll down to the bottom of your page and linebreak a few times. we go kind of crazy with the categories. since we share a wiki with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
houseburning, we put a category for which system or w/e a person is in, their gender, sexuality, any jobs, the canon they're from, species, and probably other shit i can't remember. hogwarts house, zodiac. basically anything.
you don't need to create the categories before you add them, although i guess you could? we never have. here's how you format a category on someone's page:
[[Category:Archaeologists]]
don't put a space after the colon just like on the template pages and virtually everything else.
so we just paste that to the bottom of Indy's page and poof, he's in the archaeologist category. It doesn't actually exist yet but i'll get to that in a second. remember about the capitalization thing. i'm going to keep harping you about it.
so if you want a ton of categories, you just do that over and over again. you can put a space between them but you don't have to. so you might end up with this at the end of Indy's page:
[[Category:Archaeologists]] [[Category:Male]] [[Category:Straight]] [[Category:Humans]] [[Category:Professors]]
hit save and you'll notice that these are all red links which means they don't actually exist. this is where the Template:Clear comes into play.
click on the "Category:Archaeologists" link. in my wiki's layout this is on the bottom where it should be in a separate bubble but apparently in some layouts it's at the top??? monaco is the clear superior shoutwiki layout, just a head's up.
anyway click on the red link and it'll take you to the page to create that category, since it doesn't exist yet. you don't need to do anything like link back to Indy's page here because that will be done automatically (categories are beautiful) but anything you type in here will go at the top of the page before any of the individual page's links.
now i'm not judging, you might have a lot to say about archaeologists, but if you don't and you just want the blank page with links, all you enter in the text box is:
{{clear}}
and hit save. this calls on the Template:Clear that we made before and just makes it a blank page (with the links). gorgeous. do this with all your categories if you want them to actually exist. it's kind of tedious at first but eventually you have all the categories you need and you just add them to pages as you create them.
there's one more thing you can do if you want to: let's say you wanted to make the word "Archaeologist" in Indy's profile actually link to the Category:Archaeologists page, just for kicks. that's not hard. edit indy's page again, scroll down to where you wrote "Archaeologist" under occupation, and replace that word with this:
[[:Category:Archaeologists|Archaeologist]]
(the colon before the world category is important)
first you are creating the link, then any text after the "|" is what the link text will be. for example we could have set it as "[[:Category:Archaeologists|Grave robber]]" and the text would just say "Grave robber" but link to the Archaeologists category. save it and take a look for yourself.
you can do that throughout if you want, but you might decide it's not really necessary since the categories are already linked on the bottom of the page. we do it because we're weird.
so that's all fine and dandy but it's still kind of a lackluster page without a lot of information. right now it looks like this:
{{Person
|Name = Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.
|Image = [[File:Indy.jpg|300px]]
|Kanji Name =
|Romaji Name =
|Other Names = Indiana Jones, Indy, Junior
|Age = 36
|Birthday = July 1, 1899
|Zodiac =
|Nationality = American
|Species = Human
|Sexuality = Straight
|Blood Type =
|Pets =
|Occupation = [[:Category:Archaeologists|Archaeologist]], College professor
|Affiliation =
|Status = Alive
|Alignment =
|Theme Song =
|Gender = Male
|Height =
|Weight =
|Canon = Indiana Jones (films)
|Hogwarts House = Gryffindor
|Group Affiliation =
|Arrival Date = Some day
}}
[[Category:Archaeologists]] [[Category:Male]] [[Category:Straight]] [[Category:Humans]] [[Category:Professors]]
but all that's really on here is the profile sidebar and the categories. if we want actual text, the place where you type it is in between the }} ending the profile sidebar code and before the categories start. hopefully that makes sense.
here's a quick guide on wiki text formatting, for linking and other stylistic stuff: http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Help:Formatting
the entirety of the shoutwiki help section can be helpful in chunks: http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Help:Contents
so that's all i have for you, if you have any questions or anything turns out flagrantly wrong let me know.
oh quick thing. if you made your wiki private you'll have to invite people to see it. that's kind of tricky to figure out how. go to "Special Pages" (should be on your wiki's sidebar but if not here's a link: http://testingwiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Special:SpecialPages except replace "testingwiki" with your domain), scroll down to "Users and rights" and click "Invite a user". you have to enter their username with the correct capitalization. Shoutwiki will automatically capitalize your username's first letter no matter what so keep that in mind. once you invite them you should be able to change rights if you need to in "User rights management" otherwise people can't do things like delete pages if you want them to (if you're working on something collaboratively).
ok let me know if you have any other questions
ok first of all you're gonna create an account & login, then go here: http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Special:CreateWiki
agree to the terms of use or whatever, i know you don't need me to hold your hand through every step but it's easier for me if i do
enter all the information and be sure to select "private" under the "wiki type" drop down menu
step two is to pick the layout/look or whatever of the thing, we like the typical wikia look so we went with monaco but obviously pick whatever
in step 3 set viewing and editing restriction to "invited users only"
we unchecked "import content from starter wiki" but you can check it if you want. it will import the content from this wiki into yours: http://starter.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page i don't think its very useful but i guess the main page formatting could be useful, i'm not sure what else comes with it, i can't tell if that wiki has other pages because the layout is so fucked
so anyway hit continue when you're done, then review the info and hit create. hopefully yours won't error like mine did
so then go to the main page of your wiki. wow, this shit is completely bare. now what??? first we'll start with importing all the templates we stole from the dramatical murder wiki like a couple of gay weeaboos.
also good time to note that i discovered that the nimbus layout and chrome or... something, i don't know what's causing it, aren't friends, the top is cut off for some reason? if you need to switch your layout or anything there's a link on the sidebar for "Preferences" and then click the "Appearances" tab or you can go here: http://testingwiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering (except replace "testingwiki" with your domain)
ok now let's actually put some templates up. templates are going to be like regular pages except they're named "Template:Whatever" so the wiki recognizes it as a template. make sure there's no space after the colon. i'm still not really clear on how this works. look i'm not a computer guy i'm just explaining how we did it. so here goes:
warning: wiki code is REALLY particular about capital vs lowercase letters, so any time there's a page title paste it in exactly as i have it written here, if i say "Template:RoundTop" make sure it's exactly like that because for some reason it won't read "Template:Roundtop" the same way and you'll be screwed. this got confusing for use at some point. this will be an issue throughout with category pages later but right now let's focus on templates.
in the search bar, paste "Template:Border-radius" (without quotes always) and hit enter. it will take you to a search results page that says there were no results matching that query, then bold text that says "Create the page "Template:Border-radius" on this wiki!". click the red text and you're brought to the page to create the template.
paste this in exactly from the pastebin here: http://pastebin.com/jUsPSEb9
then save page. it will create a page that says this:
-moz-border-radius: 1em; -webkit-border-radius: 1em; border-radius: 1em; -khtml-border-radius: 1em; -icab-border-radius: 1em;
that's exactly what you want. just leave it alone. chances are you will never look at this page again, but it's needed to make another template work. there's a couple like that.
the next template we want to create is "Template:Clear". do the same thing like before where you paste that in the search bar, search for it, and then click the red link. when you're creating the page, here's what you enter: http://pastebin.com/6GdFN7bp
by the way, template doesn't look like a word anymore already
this is for making blank pages and there is actually a use for it, we'll get to that later though. the template page will look like there's nothing on it. that's good, just leave it. this is all behind the scenes stuff so to speak
two more set-up templates before we get to the other thing: "Template:Quote" and "Template:RoundTop"
here's "Template:Quote": http://pastebin.com/q8KUtsvf
this one's optional and i think the only page that even uses it is chris' but it's neat anyway. you know how like on most wikias when you go to a character's page or even sometimes other pages there's a quote in a little box at the top of the page? example: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Obi-Wan_Kenobi there's a quote from anakin on the top of this page (not in a box i guess on this style but w/e you get it) this template is what creates that look. when you hit save page, the template page will now show you the code to include in your article to get the quote to work:
{{quote|quoted words|person quoted|source=}}
that looks like confusing actual garbage, here it is in practice:
{{quote|I can't believe Sonic the Hedgehog is fucking dead.|Chris, probably}}
there's a space for the source also but we didn't use it because we didn't have one, not entirely sure how that works sorry
here's "Template:RoundTop": http://pastebin.com/06mxiVrw
it's going to create a page that says a lot of shit about border radius. just ignore it.
finally, here's what the actual profiles come from: "Template:Person"
before you actually create it, you need to upload a picture that's 300px wide to your wiki to act as a placeholder. we were so lazy that we literally just took what the dramatical murder wiki had so we have the logo for this embarrassing anime porn game as a placeholder. you could do that i guess. whatever it is, it needs to be 300px wide. here's what we used: http://i.imgur.com/H9LnT8I.png
click on "Upload File" on the sidebar of your wiki (if you didn't pick one with a sidebar i don't know, look around for the Upload File page) and then upload it. pretty sure it has to be from your computer, not from a url. hit upload file and then it'll take you to a page showing you that the file has been uploaded.
here's a screenshot:
the very top title of the page (where i have a red box around it) that says "File:Whatever.png" is your file name and you'll want to copy that. there might be a better way to do this but i dont know what it is and this is my tutorial
so copy that and hold on to it, you'll probably want to paste it somewhere else because you're about to have to copy other things first
now go and create "Template:Person" like you created the other template pages. here's what you paste in: http://pastebin.com/F9N90Bmf
anywhere where you see "File:Wiki-wordmark.png" you can replace that with your own full file name for your own placeholder image, but that's what mine was called. it's in there twice just fyi.
i highly recommend pasting this in as is and saving it before you scrutinize the code and make any changes to it based on your own needs. when you're done you're going to be brought to the Template:Person page. it'll have a small version of the sidebar without anything actually filled out, so it's just collapsed, that's normal. then on the bottom there will be the code you actually use to create each individual person's page.
let's say you don't like what we have on our template and you want to change it. no big deal, i'll show you how.
the code's broken up into a few parts. first is the name section. you'll see this:
{{#if: {{{Kanji Name|}}}{{{Romaji Name|}}}{{{Other Names|}}}|
! colspan="2" style="background-color:#406aa2; color:#ffffff;" {{!}}Name
{{!}}-
}}
you don't really need to remove anything, because anything you don't fill out on an individual person's page just won't show up in their template. but if you find yourself consistently not using one of these categories you can, or you can change it to something else. let's say you wanted to remove "Kanji Name". you would pull out this section from the above section: "{{{Kanji Name|}}}" and then, go below and take out this entire section:
{{#if:{{{Kanji Name|
{{!}}style="background-color: #406aa2; color:#FFF"{{!}}'''Kanji'''
{{!}}{{{Kanji Name|}}}
{{!}}-
}}
|-
then you also need to go all the way down to where it says "==Template Usage==" (cntrl+F that if you need to) and remove this part: "|Kanji Name ="
but let's say you wanted to add something! same process, but in reverse. first you need to figure out where you want to add it. there's several sections to this: name (which isn't actually labeled, sorry), biographical information (stuff like age, birthday, occupation), physical description (like height, weight), and system information (where we put meta stuff like Hogwarts house, group affiliation (like any groups/teams/whatever here that they're a part of for whatever reason) and arrival date). then you find the appropriate section. let's say i wanted to add "hair color" to the physical description section. first locate the physical description... chunk. i am so bad at explanining, holy shit, but here it is:
{{#if: {{{Gender|}}}{{{Height}}}{{{Weight|}}}|
! colspan="2" style="background-color:#406aa2; color:#ffffff;" {{!}}Physical Description
{{!}}-
}}
i need to add "hair color", so i'm going to make sure to format it the same as the others. i don't care if it's after "weight" so i'll just slot it in there. so you'll add "{{{Hair Color|}}}" after "Weight" (but before that final "|")
then you need to add hair color below, after the weight signifier. so scroll down and find this:
{{#if:{{{Weight|
{{!}}style="background-color: #406aa2; color:#FFF"{{!}}'''Weight'''
{{!}}{{{Weight|}}}
{{!}}-
}}
|-
you'll want to just copy that, paste it, right after, and change every instance of "weight" to "hair color". remember about using consistent capitalization. so you end up with this:
{{#if:{{{Hair Color|
{{!}}style="background-color: #406aa2; color:#FFF"{{!}}'''Hair Color'''
{{!}}{{{Hair Color|}}}
{{!}}-
}}
|-
pasted in right after the weight signifier.
but it's not done yet! one last thing you have to do: scroll down to the bottom where "==Template Usage==" is. After "|Weight =", linebreak and paste in "|Hair Color =".
then you're set. let me know if you have any questions because that is a lot to take in and the squiggly brackets can be confusing.
so let's make our first page. we're just testing so we'll do something sweet like indiana jones. if you have an indiana jones in your system that's cool. no judgement. i'm kind of confused as to how we don't, but ok
there's a couple ways you can do this. some people upload a picture first and then hang on to the file name. that's cool. but since we're already on the template page, might as well do this:
save the template:person page if you haven't already. then scroll down to the bottom and copy the entire thing, it should look like this (plus or minus any changes you made for your own purposes)
{{Person
|Name =
|Image = [[File:Wiki-wordmark.png]]
|Kanji Name =
|Romaji Name =
|Other Names =
|Age =
|Birthday =
|Zodiac =
|Nationality =
|Species =
|Sexuality =
|Blood Type =
|Pets =
|Occupation =
|Affiliation =
|Status =
|Alignment =
|Theme Song =
|Gender =
|Height =
|Weight =
|Canon =
|Hogwarts House =
|Group Affiliation =
|Arrival Date =
}}
usually we paste this in another window (like just a textedit file) and fill it out there but you could fill it out in the page too i guess. so let's go create our sample page. type "Dr. Henry Jones Jr." into your search bar and hit enter. no, i haven't found an easier way to create pages. Yes it is stupid.
so then you're brought to the create a page screen that you're pretty familiar with this time. paste what you copied (above) into the page. fill it in if you haven't. so it might look something like this:
{{Person
|Name = Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.
|Image = [[File:Wiki-wordmark.png]]
|Kanji Name =
|Romaji Name =
|Other Names = Indiana Jones, Indy, Junior
|Age = 36
|Birthday = July 1, 1899
|Zodiac =
|Nationality = American
|Species = Human
|Sexuality = Straight
|Blood Type =
|Pets =
|Occupation = Archaeologist, College professor
|Affiliation =
|Status = Alive
|Alignment =
|Theme Song =
|Gender = Male
|Height =
|Weight =
|Canon = Indiana Jones (films)
|Hogwarts House = Gryffindor
|Group Affiliation =
|Arrival Date = Some day
}}
you can save this. he'll end up with the placeholder image as his picture. that's lame. also kind of awkward if you used the dramatical murder logo. we want something better. so let's go online and find something good.
this one with the machete is pretty hot if that's what you're into: http://i.imgur.com/9VAvzcX.jpg
upload that to your wiki and you'll get a file name. for example, mine was "File:Indy.jpg" (because i renamed it). Make sure you paste it exactly because again, caps matter so much to wikis.
now go back to indy's page and edit it. find this line:
|Image = [[File:Wiki-wordmark.png]]
(or whatever your placeholder file name was) and replace the entire filename so it reads:
|Image = [[File:Indy.jpg]]
(or whatever you named your kickass indiana jones picture.)
you could hit save here but holy SHIT it's gonna be a problem. actually totally do it so you can see what happens, but yeah you'll quickly see that it's not going to work. luckily it's an easy fix that doesn't involve resizing the image yourself in photoshop or whatever. go back to edit the page, and add this:
|Image = [[File:Indy.jpg|300px]]
save it and phew it's a lot better. there we go. perfect.
you can leave it the way it is, although it's threadbare. let's go in and edit one more time and add some categories.
categories are ways you can filter people by certain aspects. i don't know why you would, but let's say you wanted to see all archaeologists in your system. you could just search "archaeologist" and it would pull up every page with that written on it, but categories are a cool/better way to do it.
scroll down to the bottom of your page and linebreak a few times. we go kind of crazy with the categories. since we share a wiki with
houseburning, we put a category for which system or w/e a person is in, their gender, sexuality, any jobs, the canon they're from, species, and probably other shit i can't remember. hogwarts house, zodiac. basically anything.you don't need to create the categories before you add them, although i guess you could? we never have. here's how you format a category on someone's page:
[[Category:Archaeologists]]
don't put a space after the colon just like on the template pages and virtually everything else.
so we just paste that to the bottom of Indy's page and poof, he's in the archaeologist category. It doesn't actually exist yet but i'll get to that in a second. remember about the capitalization thing. i'm going to keep harping you about it.
so if you want a ton of categories, you just do that over and over again. you can put a space between them but you don't have to. so you might end up with this at the end of Indy's page:
[[Category:Archaeologists]] [[Category:Male]] [[Category:Straight]] [[Category:Humans]] [[Category:Professors]]
hit save and you'll notice that these are all red links which means they don't actually exist. this is where the Template:Clear comes into play.
click on the "Category:Archaeologists" link. in my wiki's layout this is on the bottom where it should be in a separate bubble but apparently in some layouts it's at the top??? monaco is the clear superior shoutwiki layout, just a head's up.
anyway click on the red link and it'll take you to the page to create that category, since it doesn't exist yet. you don't need to do anything like link back to Indy's page here because that will be done automatically (categories are beautiful) but anything you type in here will go at the top of the page before any of the individual page's links.
now i'm not judging, you might have a lot to say about archaeologists, but if you don't and you just want the blank page with links, all you enter in the text box is:
{{clear}}
and hit save. this calls on the Template:Clear that we made before and just makes it a blank page (with the links). gorgeous. do this with all your categories if you want them to actually exist. it's kind of tedious at first but eventually you have all the categories you need and you just add them to pages as you create them.
there's one more thing you can do if you want to: let's say you wanted to make the word "Archaeologist" in Indy's profile actually link to the Category:Archaeologists page, just for kicks. that's not hard. edit indy's page again, scroll down to where you wrote "Archaeologist" under occupation, and replace that word with this:
[[:Category:Archaeologists|Archaeologist]]
(the colon before the world category is important)
first you are creating the link, then any text after the "|" is what the link text will be. for example we could have set it as "[[:Category:Archaeologists|Grave robber]]" and the text would just say "Grave robber" but link to the Archaeologists category. save it and take a look for yourself.
you can do that throughout if you want, but you might decide it's not really necessary since the categories are already linked on the bottom of the page. we do it because we're weird.
so that's all fine and dandy but it's still kind of a lackluster page without a lot of information. right now it looks like this:
{{Person
|Name = Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.
|Image = [[File:Indy.jpg|300px]]
|Kanji Name =
|Romaji Name =
|Other Names = Indiana Jones, Indy, Junior
|Age = 36
|Birthday = July 1, 1899
|Zodiac =
|Nationality = American
|Species = Human
|Sexuality = Straight
|Blood Type =
|Pets =
|Occupation = [[:Category:Archaeologists|Archaeologist]], College professor
|Affiliation =
|Status = Alive
|Alignment =
|Theme Song =
|Gender = Male
|Height =
|Weight =
|Canon = Indiana Jones (films)
|Hogwarts House = Gryffindor
|Group Affiliation =
|Arrival Date = Some day
}}
[[Category:Archaeologists]] [[Category:Male]] [[Category:Straight]] [[Category:Humans]] [[Category:Professors]]
but all that's really on here is the profile sidebar and the categories. if we want actual text, the place where you type it is in between the }} ending the profile sidebar code and before the categories start. hopefully that makes sense.
here's a quick guide on wiki text formatting, for linking and other stylistic stuff: http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Help:Formatting
the entirety of the shoutwiki help section can be helpful in chunks: http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Help:Contents
so that's all i have for you, if you have any questions or anything turns out flagrantly wrong let me know.
oh quick thing. if you made your wiki private you'll have to invite people to see it. that's kind of tricky to figure out how. go to "Special Pages" (should be on your wiki's sidebar but if not here's a link: http://testingwiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Special:SpecialPages except replace "testingwiki" with your domain), scroll down to "Users and rights" and click "Invite a user". you have to enter their username with the correct capitalization. Shoutwiki will automatically capitalize your username's first letter no matter what so keep that in mind. once you invite them you should be able to change rights if you need to in "User rights management" otherwise people can't do things like delete pages if you want them to (if you're working on something collaboratively).
ok let me know if you have any other questions