Help:Editing

Creating a new page

Creating a new page is alot simpler that it first seems. As the page does not exist there is obviously no link to it, so you have to enter the page address yourself and, the software being clever, the page will be created with nothing in.

E.g:

This page doesn't exist

That link (unless someone has decided to be clever and put stuff in it) will come up as a big text box waiting to be created (note: you must be logged in to edit/create a page).

But what if you don't have a handy link to the page you want to create (as stated earlier that you won't)? Its still very easy. The link above SHOULD come up as

http://www.gtamodding.com/index.php?title=This_page_doesnt_exist&action=edit

(the &action=edit may be missing if you are not logged in or it already has content - which it shouldn't). The most important part of the link is this part:

/index.php?title=This_page_doesnt_exist

The bold part is the page you are creating/editing so to make a new page all you need to do is change that, so the extension for a page entitled "I am going to the shop" would look like:

/index.php?title=I_am_going_to_the_shop

You may have noticed the underscores (_) instead of spaces, web urls should never contain spaces and, although they will work (by being replaced by %20), they should not be used. The wikimedia software has therefore been designed so underscores replace spaces in page titles, and when you view the page, the title will be displayed correctly (as you can see in the examples).

When you come onto the site, the default page is title=Main_Page so you can easilly create a new page just by changing that.

Important note:

On Wikipedia and some other sites using the wikimedia software, to create a new page you can just type:

http://www.wikipedia.com/newpage

And it will create a new page for you. Unfortunately, GTAModding.com is running on an IIS server, where that sort of URL rewriting is not allowed, so it will give a 404 error. There are ways around it (using said 404 to redirect from the page that invoked the 404 to a modified index.php?title=, but this has not been implemented.

Basically, if you don't understand that, www.gtamodding.com/I_am_going_to_the_shop will not work, www.gtamodding.com/index.php?title=I_am_going_to_the_shop will.

Editing your page

There is a massive amount of information on editing pages which is documented far better than could be possibly done on this site on the mediawiki site here, but these are some of the basics:

Getting to edit it

To edit an existing page, simply click on the edit tab at the top of the page and a text box with the current contents of the page will appear. If you make a new page this will come up automatically and will be blank. There will be the viewable text along with a load of strange characters you never normally see, these are the formattings (similar to the BB code on GTAF) and are covered in depth in the above article.

Some basic editing information

Most of the formatting options are covered in depth on the mediawiki site, however a few useful ones are listed here for conveniance. The codes are used just like normal HTML or forum tags, with an open before the text and a close after the text

E.g. HTML code:

<b>This will be bold</b>

Forum code:

[b]This will be bold[/b]

Wiki code:

'''This will be bold'''

Name	Open Tag	Close Tag	Forum eqivalent	Usage	Effect
Bold	''' (3 Apostrophes)	'''	[b] [/b]	'''This will appear bold'''	This is bold
Italic	'' (2 Apostrophes)	''	[i] [/i]	''This will appear Italic''	This is Italic
Code	Leading space on line. Every line of code needs a leading space. Note: there is no line wrapping in code.	End of line	[code] [/code]	This will appear as code	This is code
Local link	[[	]]	None	[[Main_Page]] [[Main_Page|Home]]	Main_Page Home
Link	[	]	[url] [/url]	[http://www.gtanet.com] [http://www.gtanet.com GTANet] (Note the use of a space as a delimiter, as oppsed to the bar in a local link.)	[1] GTANet

Previewing

While editing, you have the option to preview your work. This will bring up the page as it will now appear with the text editor below it. This can be useful for checking minor edits but it should be noted that this DOES NOT save your work, everything as you have it will still be in the box, but it will not have been saved to the database.

Saving

If you click "Save page" the data will be written to the database and you will return to the article itself. This is obviously important but you do have to go back into the editing tab to continue. If it is only a minor edit (such as correcting a spelling mistake by someone), you may want to select the "This is a minor edit" checkbox, this will inform people that the page has changed, but there is no real new information on it.

When you save the page as it is is written to the database as a NEW entry. As this is the most recent one, it will be the one displayed, however all back copies of the page are still available to be viewed. For this reason it is adviseable to save frequently as it will allow you to easily return if you go wrong.

Categories

It would be greatly appreciated if someone could fill us in on how categories work and function.

Restoring work

Occasionally people will think its funny to go onto a page and delete all the content and save. As annoying as this may seem it is not that hard to restore your work to its former glory.

Click on your pages "History" tab and a list will appear with every old save on it. Click on the date/time of your last good revision and it will come up. Click edit and save.

Note: If there is a better (safer) way to do this, please say.

See Also

• MediaWiki Editor Handbook
• Editing FAQ