About:AAAAh! Code for dummies

The "AAAAh!" Factor

It can be scary, nay frightening, to delve into the world of wiki, especially if your mind is still struggling to wrap itself around the concept of the internet. Some of us only just learned about email. Others only just worked out how to turn on the computer. Still others really identify with that bit in Zoolander where Hansel and Derek search in vain for the information that, to Hansel's surprise, is in the computer.

But really, writing for the wiki is not that hard. You have to remember some stuff, but it really doesn't get much more complex than writing a file in Word.

A dummy's guide to code

Code, according to the Princeton website, is "the symbolic arrangement of data or instructions in a computer program or the set of such instructions". ¿Comprendes? Didn't think so.

Basically, when we talk about code, we're talking about the little bits of hidden information you have to put into your article to add things like italics, bold text, underlined text, links to other articles in the wiki, photos, footnotes^[1] and a whole bunch of other cool things.

What we have assembled below is a list of codes that you can use in your wiki articles. Some of these codes can also be inserted using the little icon boxes which appear above the editing box when you're writing or editing an article. We have included those icons below, to help you familiarise yourself with them. Besides explaining how to use the code, we'll try to give you a good idea of when to use it.

If you wish to experiment these codes first before starting or editing an article, you can practise on the sandbox page.

Italics

Use [i] and [/i] to open and close a section of italicised text. Italics should be used to denote emphasis in your text. Do not use it for quotes: that's what quotation marks are for.

Bold font

Use [b] and [/b] to open and close a section of bold text. Use bold font to indicate a theme or highlight a central point of your paragraph. Bold font should also be used when referring to businesses such as restaurants, hotels, etc. Do not overuse bold font.

Underline

Use [u] and [/u] to open and close a section of underlined text. You should use underline sparingly though, because underlined text will confuse readers. That's because underlined text usually signifies that that bit of text links somewhere.

Links to articles in the wiki

To link to other articles in the wiki, enclose the text link in [[xxx]]. For example, if you want to link to the article about Australia, you would write [[Australia]]Sometimes, the article you want to link to will have a different title.

Let's say you're writing the article about Australia and you want to link to the article about Victoria, the state in Australia. Simply writing [[Victoria]] won't link to the right place (try it). Instead, you need to link to [[Victoria_(Australia)]]. Does that mean you have to change your text to say Victoria_(Australia)? No. Write your link like this: [[Victoria_(Australia)|Victoria]]. Translate that into this formula and never forget it: [[title of article|word in text]].

You can also refer to specific points (anchors) in the same article or across articles, for instance beginnings of sections. To do so, simply add #section_name to the formula above. For instance, linking to the section 'Geography' in the 'Australia' article would be [[Australia#Geography|word in text]]. Linking to a section in the current article goes the same way, but without the title of the article.

Links to external pages

If you want to link to an external page (one that isn't in the wiki), it's pretty much the same as if you were linking to an article in the wiki. Instead of typing the title (ie. Australia), insert the external page's url, like this: [[http://www.travellerspoint.com]]. If you want the link text to say something like 'Travellerspoint' instead of "http://www.travellerspoint.com", then simply add |Travellerspoint behind the link, like so: [[http://www.travellerspoint.com|Travellerspoint]] Travellerspoint

Photos

Lijiang people

© tashka

You can add a photo to your article by writing [photo|xxx], where xxx is whatever you would like the photo to be of. So say you want to add a photo of France: by writing [photo|France] the image will be randomly selected from all featured photos tagged "France". If you have a specific photo from the Travellerspoint photo gallery in mind, use the photo id number instead of a tag. For example, the photo of the I'll-kill-you-with-my-eyes guy to the right was added using [photo|33379]. If you want to add a photo that is not from Travellerspoint's photo gallery, read about the copyright rules governing what can and can't be used on the TP wiki.

Section headings

You can start a new section of your article by placing two = signs to either sign of your section title. So for this section you're reading now, the section heading looks like this in edit view:

==Section headings==.

When creating section headings, ensure that they

• always start on a new line
• are the first thing on the line (no spaces)
• don't contain any = within the heading (This won't work: ==Peter=Cool==)^[2]

Section headings are what feed into the Contents table at the top of the page, so only use them when you think the subject you're writing about is important enough to warrant an entire section to itself. If you find the section getting too large, perhaps you should create a brand new page dedicated to that subject.

The isin tag

The {{isin|xxx}} tag is used to categorise articles under their appropriate category. To do so, work out where you should file your article. If it's about a city, it should probably be categorised under the region, state or province that it's in. If it's about a country, it should be categorised under the world region or continent it's in. Once you've decided where to file your article, do so by replacing the "xxx" with the title of the article you're filing it under.

An isin tag needs to be included in pretty much every article, because it creates structure and makes it easier for everyone to navigate their way through the guide. For more, check out the article about categorising articles

Editing Quick Facts

To insert quick facts into an article that doesn't have them already, use the following code:

{{QuickFacts
Population=5,000,000
Area=1500 km2
}}

In articles that already have quick facts (all country articles), you can edit them in the same way. It is only possible to add 10 fields - if you add more fields, the page will still only display the first 10 fields.

Tables

Basic tabular data can be inserted into the guide. To create a table use the following code to open and close the table

{|
.. (table here)
|}

Separate the rows of each table with a pipe and hyphen : |-

{|
|-
.. (row 1)
|-
.. (row 2)
|}

For each column of each row, you use a pipe and a new line.

{|
|-
| (row 1, column 1)
| (row 1, column 2)
|-
| (row 2, column 1)
| (row 2, column 2)
|}

Or alternatively, you can use double pipes on the same line:

{|
|-
| (row 1, column 1) || (row 1, column 2)
|-
| (row 2, column 1) || (row 2, column 2)
|}

To specify headers for a table, use an exclamation mark to start the line, like this:

{|
|-
! (header column 1}
! (header column 2}
|-
| (row 1, column 1) || (row 1, column 2)
|-
| (row 2, column 1) || (row 2, column 2)
|}

or a double exclamation mark on the same line will also work:
{|
|-
! (header column 1} !! (header column 2}
|-
| (row 1, column 1) || (row 1, column 2)
|-
| (row 2, column 1) || (row 2, column 2)
|}

The following code:

{|
|-
! Country !! Capital
|-
| [[Australia]] || [[Canberra]]
|-
| [[New Zealand]] || [[Wellington]]
|}

will generate this table:

Footnotes

To write a footnote, use the following codes to open and close the footnote: [ref][/ref]. What you write between the two will be the footnote's text, while a little number will appear in the main body to indicate that there is a footnote. If you reference the same source multiple times, you can reuse a single footnote. Do this by giving it a unique name, like this: [ref|#uniquename][/ref]. The first time you write the footnote, include the source details in between the opening and closing tags. For any subsequent times you have to reference the same footnote, just write the opening and closing tags. For example:

• The first time you reference the source: [ref|brain]This information has been taken from my brain.[/ref]
• Subsequent times: [ref|brain][/ref]