The Basics

Here is the Simple Tutorial presentation of the basics of editing Monstropedia articles. The items on this page will teach you all you need to know to use the site functions with ease. If you want to practice what you learn here, try out the Sand box, where you can do anything you like. It is recommended that you open up that page in a seperate browser window and edit along with this tutorial.

Editing a page

Just hit the "edit" button on the gray bar above. This will bring up an editing box for that page. Just type away and hit "Save page" to make the changes or "Show preview" to see what it will look like first. "Cancel" will throw out your changes and the article will remain unchanged. If you do save your changes, it is polite to briefly describe your changes in the "summary" box. The "minor edit" button is for marking small changes, like spelling fixes, punctuation, simple formatting, adding links, etc. If you click on "Watch this page", it will add it to your "watch list" (which you can access in the black bar at top), which monitors changes to articles you are interested in.

Starting a new article

You can start a new article in three ways:

• Type it into the URL address bar in your browser and hit return.

Example: "http://monstropedia.com/wiki/index.php/New_article_title"

• Click on an existing red link (red links lead to empty pages)
• Create a link (see below) to a non-existing page, then click on that link

Formatting

• Italics: put two apostrophes on both sides of text, like this: ''italics'' = italics
• Bold: put three apostrophes on both sides of text, like this: '''bold''' = bold
• Headings: put two equals signs on both sides of text, like this: ==Heading one== (when you add more equals signs, up to five, the text becomes sub-headers)
• Indenting: A colon (:) at the very beginning of a line will indent the whole paragraph. More colons makes deeper indentions.
• Fixed text: A space at the beginning of a line will also shift the whole paragraph. This is useful for poetry, but not long lines of text, because a space causes the line not to break.
• Bullet points: Use asterisks (*) at the beginning of a line to make bullet points. More asterisks make deeper indentions.
• Numbered lists: Use the number sign (#) at the beginning of a line to make numbered lists.

For a complete list of wiki formatting, see Markup

Links

The real magic of a wiki is the ability to make internal links to other articles. It is very easy:

• Simple links: if you put text in double brackets, it will instantly create a link to a page of that exact title.

Example: [[Extras]] = Extras Or: [[ratchet]] = ratchet if the article doesn't yet exist.

• Links using different text: you can link to a page with different text using a pipe ( | ), which is a vertical (not forward or back) slash.

For example: [[Simple Tutorial|Introduction]] = Introduction, but links to the article page called Simple Tutorial

• Links to external sites: There are three ways to do so:

1. Write out the full url: http://www.link.com = http://www.link.com
2. Make a citation: put the URL in single brackets: [http://www.link.com] = [1]
3. Link to a site with text: put the full url in single brackets + a space + text.

Example: [http://www.link.com A great site] = A great site

Before you make a link to an article, please search to make sure it doesn't already exist. Titles have to be exact, including capitalization. For example, a link to "Temp Zone" is not the same as "Temp zone" or "The Temp Zone". For more linking options, see Wiki Links

Everything you learned on this page is enough to get you started editing articles. Even if you learn nothing else, you are now prepared to be a competent Monstropedia editor, at least when it comes to the technical ability to create and edit pages on this site. Of course, you should also become knowledgeable about our editorial principles, policies, and techniques for writing good encyclopedia articles. You can find all that in the Help and Category: Editors Guides However, if you are still in need of more really simple instruction, you can move on to the next page, which covers images, templates, citing sources, and more advanced formatting techniques.

1. Introduction
2. The Basics
3. More Formatting
4. Content
5. Extras

Adapted from Thelemapedia, the encyclopedia of Thelema and Magick