help:Advanced Guide Creation
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If you have read Basic Guide Creation and you find yourself thinking there must be a bit more to all this, then you are on the right page. Here we are going to touch on a few more tips and tricks of wiki that can help to make your Guides a little more interesting.
General Observations
- It is actually possible to over-link an article. Studies have shown that linking every possible word in an article that can be linked reduces readability as the reader emphasizes in their mind when they see a link, like a pause at a comma, and this interrupts comprehension. When you have a word that should be linked, like a mob name, but it appears many times, link it only the first time it appears in the article. Avoid linking the same word again unless it is separated from any other mention of the same term by at least several paragraphs.
- Links CAN be used in headers but you must use the alternate text or the Table of Contents (TOC) shows the entire link.
- ==[[Rift Mob:Rorf]]== is bad, as it will show in the TOC as 1. Rift Mob:Rorf
- ==[[Rift Mob:Rorf|Rorf]]== is good.
- Avoid using a header at the top of a page. An introductory paragraph should not need a header. This is especially true for repeating the name of the page. NEVER put a header at the top of the page that simply repeats the page name.
Tables
See Tables
Table of Contents
There are a couple of compiler directives that can affect where the compiler puts the page's Table of Contents.
- __NOTOC__ - Suppresses the Table of Contents. Not really useful on Guide pages but very useful on some database pages where we do not want the TOC messing up the page layout.
- __TOC__ - Tells the compiler to put the Table of Contents at the current location. This can be placed inside a div or table and the TOC will behave itself. This is commonly used to keep the TOC and the GameTag lined up together vertically on the right side of the page.
The following example would make the TOC appear directly above the Rift gametag with the Guides link. Without this they would appear side by side but not very nicely. This page is actually an example of how this appears when properly done.
{| style="float:right;"
|__TOC__
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|{{Rift|g}}
|}Templates
See Category:Template Users Guides for complete guides to the available temples, both global and game-specific, but here I am going to mention a few that you may want to use. You can click on the linked name of the template to go to the Template: page and see the complete documentation.
- Back One - {{Back One|gameid|previous_page}} - This template places a nice small link to the page that preceded the current page when you are doing a group of pages. The previous_page might be a menu or just a page that sets up several related topics.
- Stub - {{Stub|gameid|message}} - Displays a box that informs the reader that the indicated section is a bit anemic and could use help from another editor that knows that part of the topic better. message can be omitted.
- Credit - it is very important to credit your sources properly, both legally and ethically. If an article is NOT credited and we receive a complaint we will remove the content. Many games here will have special custom credit tags for specific fansites that we credit frequently so ask your CMs if you are not sure.
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This page is a work in progress. The above sections will be filled out to make them more than just references to other pages. |