Help

Help Guide Whether you are new to the Wiki, or an old hand, there are occasions when you may need a bit of help to figure something out. This page is intended to list the most useful "Help:" pages. You may find it convenient to refer to this page for guidance when problems arise. Its easy to edit a page on the Wiki, but with experience you're bound to run into more complex problems. This page may help you find the answers, though you can always drop a message on someone's "talk page" and they may be able to help you. But if you see a problem that doesn't seem to have a solution, please let us know---or if you figure out a solution to a problem, you might want to create a help page of your own to explain your discovery. Hey, we all need help from time to time, and we all go farther, faster, the more we help one another.

Principal Help Pages Here's a set of links to some of the most useful general purpose help pages On this Genealogy Wiki: Help:Contents Category:Help General editing guidance Starting a new article page Inserting images Wikia and Wikipedia help pages: The help category on Wikia Central Wikia Central's help index page MediaWiki Editor Handbook, the help pages for the software we're using Wikipedia help contents

Table of Contents

Just Starting? If you can type and click, you can edit most pages on this wiki. Find a page to improve. Click "Edit this page". An "edit box" will open - type your new sentences or corrections (just like MS or Lotus or WordPerfect wordprocessing) Click the "Save" button - (well, it may be wise to hit the "Preview" button first, in case of mistakes!) You're now a Web Publisher. Welcome to the team! (If you want, you can practice in the Sandbox first. It's there for "practicing", or experimenting with something. It's a good place to get used to how the wiki works.)

Templates Wikia users often find a need to insert the same chunk of text in many different articles. "Templates" are Wikia's way of makeing this easy to do. Some templates are designed to provide a standardized message, simply a way to make sure that the message is always said the same way. Other templates are used to provide a constant format for article components, such as a vital statistics table, that are used frequently but with different facts each time. There is also a specialized type of template (called "Magic Words") which when placed in an article inserts certain bits of information, such as the current date. Here are some links that will help you explore the use of templates on this site: Using templates List of Templates "Magic words"

HTML HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and its variants, is what is used to format web pages. Ultimately, every web page is set up using HTML. Wikis like this one, however, are built in such a way that you may never need to know a speck of HTML; page formating required for most articles is amply accommodated by the Edit Menu Bar that appears when you open a page to edit it You can do quite nicely with this as your only formating tool, maybe with a few other bits of simple coding that you gradually learn. (Some browsers, notably Safari, are not supported in the current version of the underlying WikiMedia---so if you can't see the EditMenuBar, try a different browser). However, there are some tasks, such as inserting tables of information, that cannot be accommodated with just the EditMenuBar. For these tasks, a knowledge of HTML may be helpful. The following provides some guidance on using HTML on these pages, should you so wish. * Need a link to HTML Tutorial Some Hints and Tricks. Margie's tricks can be used even if you don't really understand what HTML is, or does. Margie's Tips, Tricks, and Links Entity tags: These are specialized html 'phrases' that allow you to insert special characters (like a cent sign (¢)) (don't forget the ';' at the end of the phrase). :http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp :http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=HTML%20symbol%20reference Color coding: It is possible to add color to your HTML tables, text boxes, and fonts. Colors are specified with HexaDecimal codes, but for some colors "name labels" can also be used. The following link takes you to a table showing the various labels. Color Table Signatures: You may find it useful to create a specialized signature when signing your name to comments, etc. Some instructions may be found at: Signature List of Icons User Zephyrincus has provided a very useful set of icons that can be added to articles to indicate various things. The "under construction" icon, for example, may find common use. These can be inserted into articles at the appropriate point using "transcluding" (aka "reflexive") coding. For example, inserting <center>{{construction}}</center> will insert the "under construction" icon, viz.