Help:Basic formatting and functions
(Redirected from User:Wholecanesugar/Help:Basic formatting and functions)
While there are extensions that allow what-you-see-is-what-you-get style editing of Wikis, the Build-A-Bear Wiki does not have these, so all its pages are created through a text editor. That means you need to know some coding to successfully make or edit a page. This page aims to explain the basics that a new bearchivist might need to learn to get started, and to link to more advanced resources for anyone wanting to learn more than the basics.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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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To learn about more advanced text formatting, check out Help:Formatting on MediaWiki and Help:Lists on MediaWiki.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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.
|
[[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
If you enclose the name of a page that doesn't exist inside your double square brackets, whether on purpose, due to a typo, or through errors in capitalization, it will render as a red link instead of a blue link, as in the example of hokusai the great wave bear. If you click on these links (go ahead, try it!), you will be given the option to create a new page with the linked title. This makes red links very useful for creating new pages, as you can link to the page you want to make from another page and then create your new page from there - for example, adding a bear whose page you haven't made yet to the category page for the year it released, and then following the red link to create its individual page.
| Description | You type | It appears as |
|---|---|---|
| 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
}} |
Before making a new page, be sure to double-check whether the page you want to make already exists by searching for it using the search bar! It's possible it already exists under a different name, and we'd rather avoid duplicate pages.
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 |
|---|---|---|
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]] |
 |
| 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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There are too many image formatting options to describe here, and most of them are completely irrelevant to the average bearchivist, so this section has been deliberately kept basic. If you'd like to learn more about how images can be formatted on the Wiki, check out [Help:Images on MediaWiki] - but please try to stay consistent to our established page styles.
An image must first be uploaded to the Build-A-Bear Wiki before it can be displayed on a page. Either go to Special:Upload to upload your image, or use the red link trick below.
Red link trick
Just like with page links, you can create broken links to files that don't exist on purpose to give you an easy link to upload them. This can be very useful when adding bears to category pages prior to making their individual pages. Feel free to click the below red links to see how they take you to upload images, but please don't actually upload any images so we don't need to put new broken links in here!
| Description | You type | It appears as |
|---|---|---|
| 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
}} |
|
| Linking to the file in a gallery | <gallery> BABWiki-Exclusive-Bear.jpg BABWiki-Exclusive-Bear.jpg|Build-A-Bear Wiki Exclusive Bear </gallery> |
|
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 |
|---|---|
| {{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.
|
| {{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! |
