Help:Wiki editor's reference

References for advanced users.

Wikitext
The Wikipedia Cheatsheet contains basic formatting commands. Content is more important than format. If you run into difficulty, please continue to edit and ask for assistance later. The editing toolbar will display help text when the mouse is placed over the icon.

Color
The code inside "style=" can be used for tables.
 * Font color:  will display as text
 * Background color:  will display as text

MediaWiki understands color names as well as the hex codes. For example, you can use " " instead of " ".
 * Colors for web pages
 * Main page phpBB color scheme: Change colors: phpBB Style "Prosilver", from phpBB's [Tool online style editor (100+ styles)]
 * (Tango Icon Theme Guidelines (deprecated, use phpBB theme)

Formatting text
Some text formats use HTML elements; such as bold, underline , superscript , and subscript. These tags will function even if raw HTML is disabled (see below).


 * See HTML in wikitext

Images

 * Images, How to size and frame images
 * Force text to relocate after an image:  From MediaWiki image page.

Interwiki links
Interwiki links are links to pages of other wikis, using the wiki's built-in internal link style. There are quite a number of existing links already available, such as Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. For a short list, please see Manual:Interwiki (entered as  ).


 * goes to: ETF, which can be reformatted to show as " ETF" - very useful when placed in context.


 * results in a Google search for "investing." ( investing)


 * goes to: Jack Bogle

The Bogleheads' wiki is also customized to provide an interwiki link to our sister Canadian wiki, finiki. For example, enter  to go to:  RRSP.

Links
You can use a bare protocol, without the https: or http:, so that  displays as [//www.bogleheads.org/forum Bogleheads forum].

Math

 * See Math formulas in the wiki

Parameters, parsing

 * Magic Words
 * Parser Functions, how to process parameters passed to templates

Tables

 * The basics: Tables
 * Comprehensive: WikiTable Markup Guide, lots of examples to do just about anything
 * Use excel2wiki to create tables directly from a spreadsheet.

This website is run by Wikimedia Tool Labs, the organization which oversees Wikipedia.

Templates

 * Transclusion, the key to it all
 * Help:Templates, simple example to get started
 * Help:Template, covers parameters, substitution, parsing
 * Template Substitution, how it works, when you should use it, (more importantly) when you should not use it.
 * Advanced Templates, parameter passing

Mobile
Displaying wiki pages on mobile devices forces a number of compromises due to the small screen size.
 * Recommendations for mobile friendly articles on Wikimedia wikis

HTML

 * HTML Element, attributes, such as,  ,  , and   and
 * HTML scripting
 * Cascaded Style Sheets, reference doc (Standard from W3C) for many HTML items
 * XML and HTML Character References
 * Want to know how to generate a non-break space, &#x00B1; &lt; &gt; &lambda; and about 252 more? Use this reference.
 * Web Building Tutorials
 * Tutorials with lots of examples to practice on live. HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, ASP, SQL, and more.

Raw HTML
HTML is a security risk and must be managed appropriately. Use of  tags in content pages is not permitted. Use of templates containing HTML is restricted to wiki administrators.


 * Google Drive spreadsheets can be embedded with widget:Google Spreadsheet
 * YouTube videos can be embedded with Widget:YouTube
 * Vimeo videos can be embedded with Widget:Vimeo

Admin

 * MediaWiki version info
 * MediaWiki:Common.js
 * MediaWiki:Common.css
 * MediaWiki:Sidebar
 * Sidebar Editing Manual

Namespaces

 * All about Namespaces

Page cache (refreshing)
Sometimes, the MediaWiki engine may fail to rebuild a page. The result is that the change appears to have no effect, despite the user reloading the page from their browser. For example, a new image is uploaded, but the new image or the page linking to that image does not show the new version.

Updating a Google widget such as Google Document may also result in this problem. See: Troubleshoot Widgets

In either case, the user needs to force a cache purge by appending  to the browser's link. See: Purge

For example, the cache of this page can be purged as.

Special pages

 * Special:Version - Installed MediaWiki software and extensions
 * Special Page Help

Special:Allpages
The Special:Allpages works by displaying all categories starting with a character or phrase.
 * will display all categories starting with Main Page and go to the end
 * will display all categories starting with V and go to the end
 * will display all categories starting with V and go to the end

Widgets
Google Widgets are available.
 * Google Spreadsheet - for embedding spreadsheets
 * Google Document - for embedding documents
 * Google Form - for embedding spreadsheet forms
 * Google Presentation - for embedding presentations

Portals
Design guidelines used to create the former Main Page portal.


 * Guidelines on Portal Content

Wikipedia portal listings

 * Portal Directory
 * Portal list by category
 * Featured Portals, highly rated

Main page candidates
The Main Page was based on a mixture of these portals:
 * Business and economics
 * Mathematics
 * Architecture