Help:Basic formatting and functions
Text formatting
There are a few different types of formatting supported by The Build-A-Bear Wiki, including Wiki markup and HTML. Some basic formatting options are described below.
Description | You type | It appears as |
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To italicize text, use two apostrophes ('') on either side of the text you want italicized. | ''Glisten and the Merry Mission'' |
Glisten and the Merry Mission |
To bold text, use three apostrophes (''') on either side of the text you want bolded. | '''Maxine Clark''' |
Maxine Clark |
To bold and italicize text, use five apostrophes (''''') on either side of the text you want bolded and italicized. | '''''Furry Friends Hall of Fame''''' |
Furry Friends Hall of Fame |
To make a bullet-pointed list, start a new line with an asterisk (*) and start writing what you want after the asterisk. It will automatically format as a list entry. Adding additional asterisks will indent the list entry. | *List item *List item **Indented list item **Indented list item ***Indented list item 2 ***Indented list item 2 |
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Inserting links
Wiki markup uses square brackets ([]) to create links. It uses this same convention to display images - for more on images, scroll down to Inserting images!
Description | You type | It appears as |
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To link to another page on Build-A-Bear Wiki, enclose the exact page name in double square brackets ([[]]). | [[Hokusai The Great Wave Bear]] |
Hokusai The Great Wave Bear |
Note: On-Wiki links are CaSe SeNsItIve! Your link must match case with the page you are trying to link to, otherwise it will display as a broken link.
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[[hokusai the great wave bear]] |
hokusai the great wave bear |
To change the display text of your on-Wiki link, place a vertical pipe character (|) and the new text of the link inside your double square brackets after the page name. | based on a painting by [[Hokusai The Great Wave Bear|Katsushika Hokusai]] |
based on a painting by Katsushika Hokusai |
To link to a page not hosted on Build-A-Bear Wiki, enclose the URL of the link in single square brackets. | [https://www.buildabear.com] |
[1] |
To change the display text of your off-Wiki link, place a space and the new text of the link inside your single square brackets after the link URL. | [https://www.buildabear.com Build-A-Bear Workshop (US)] |
Build-A-Bear Workshop (US) |
Red link trick
Description | You type | It appears as |
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Linking to the page normally | [[Build-A-Bear Wiki Exclusive Bear]] |
Build-A-Bear Wiki Exclusive Bear |
Linking to the page using Template:Bearlist | {{Bearlist {{!}}bear1=Build-A-Bear Wiki Exclusive Bear {{!}}image1=BABWiki-Exclusive-Bear.jpg }} |
Inserting images
Wiki markup allows us to insert images the exact same way we make on-Wiki links, using double square brackets ([[]]). Images are stored on the Wiki with a filename resembling a page title, and placing that filename between the double square brackets displays the image on the page.
Description | You type | It appears as |
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For most pages, if you're not using Template:Bearlist or Template:Bigbearlist, you will want to use a right-aligned thumbnail to insert an image. To do this, add |thumb|right after your filename inside your square brackets. |
[[File:Smallfrys-BlackCat.png|Caption|thumb|right]] |
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For a full gallery of images, use <gallery></gallery> tags. Your images can be placed each on separate lines between the tags, and vertical pipe characters can be used to indicate a caption. | <gallery> Example.jpg Example.jpg|Example with caption </gallery> |
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Red link trick
Description | You type | It appears as |
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Linking to the file normally | [[File:BABWiki-Exclusive-Bear.jpg]] |
File:BABWiki-Exclusive-Bear.jpg |
Linking to the file using Template:Bearlist | {{Bearlist |bear1=Build-A-Bear Wiki Exclusive Bear |image1=BABWiki-Exclusive-Bear.jpg }} |
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Linking to the file in a gallery | <gallery> BABWiki-Exclusive-Bear.jpg BABWiki-Exclusive-Bear.jpg|Build-A-Bear Wiki Exclusive Bear </gallery> |
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Templates
A template is a special type of wiki page that allows formatted content to be basically copied and pasted onto a second page. There are two main benefits to using templates: they help ensure formatting consistency across pages, and they allow us to use complex formatting on a page without the bulk of that formatting cluttering up the text editor. Many templates have fillable fields, and all templates are invoked using double curly brackets ({{}}). Templates have individual requirements to be used correctly, so click on the template names for full breakdowns of how to use each one as well as visual examples.
Template | Description |
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{{Infobox bear}} | Creates a right-aligned infobox with optional fields for basic bear information, including photo, release date, the countries a bear was available in, birth certificate information, hangtag information, and alternate names a bear is known by. |
{{Reflist}} | Collects all the references tagged throughout a page and displays them in a neat little list at the bottom. Reflist is also responsible for creating the superscript numbers (e.g. [1]) that link to entries on the reference list. |
{{Bearlist}} | A template that can be used to create lists of bears with thumbnail-sized images. It's more suitable for collection or category pages with many bears. |
{{Bigbearlist}} | Also a template that can be used to create lists of bears, but its images are 225px wide. It's more suitable for collection or category pages with few bears. |
{{PAGENAME}} | While not technically a template, for our purposes it functions as one. If you write {{PAGENAME}} in a page's text editor it will display instead on the live site as the title of the page. {{PAGENAME}} can be useful in that it allows a page's name can be changed without the body text having to be changed, but sometimes writing a bear's name manually results in less clunky less clunky text than using its full page name.
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{{Contentbox-row}} {{Contentbox-plain}} & {{Contentbox-contrast}} |
A set of templates used to create standard-design text boxes, for decorative use in areas such as the home page or backend guides (like this!). Most basic bearchivist activities won't require these templates, but they are included here for the sake of comprehensiveness! |