View source for Help:Creating Driver Results Tables

Driver profiles should always include a results table at the bottom of them. This page is going to show you how to create a lovely results table in nice easy steps. The code needed can often look daunting, but it isn't, promise! 

Your driver may or may not have competed in more than one series or category of motorsport during their career. You should have a table for each category or series of racing they have competed in therefore. The results tables are always the last section of a driver's profile and so go at the bottom of the page. Within the editing area you should title the section as follows:
<noinclude>
{| style="float: bottom;"
|
<pre>
==Complete Motorsport Results==
</pre>
</noinclude>
This gives you your section's title, and then within that you should have each series as a subsection within it, for example:
<noinclude>
{| style="float: bottom;"
|
<pre>
==Complete Motorsport Results==
===Complete Formula One Results===

===Complete F1RWRS Results===
</pre>
</noinclude>
Remember, subsections need to have an extra "=" either side of the title.

Now you have your sections ready to go, you can insert a table for your results. This is the most complex part of the process, but doesn't have to be hard. Once you break it down into stages it soon becomes clear!

First of all, you need to create the beginnings of a table in wiki code. This is done by typing out the following on one line:
<noinclude>
{| style="float: bottom;"
|
<pre>
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; font-size:85%"
</pre>
</noinclude>
Confusing? Not so! A table in a wiki can have lots of parameters set for it, or none at all. Here we've added the "style" parameter and within it how the text should be aligned in the table -  "center", and also the font size - "85%", that is, at 85% of the size of the regular text on a page. You can adjust this number depending on the size of your results table, many drivers need 85% to prevent the table from being too distorted, but drivers with fewer results or a smaller table could use 90% quite easily. The best way to find out what the best size for you is to use the preview function underneath the editing area and see what your table looks like.

So the basis of the table is there now, that top line will fundamentally define how the table appears on your page. From there, you need to start adding the specific details of the series and results for your driver! Wikitables work by placing all the information in horizontal lines, so all the information for the top row comes first, followed by the second, and so on. Therefore the first information you should put in should be what you want to appear in the top row. For a driver results table, this will be the descriptions of what is contained in each column, so pretty straightforward. The standard top row for an F1RWRS driver results table should be coded as follows:
<noinclude>
{| style="float: bottom;"
|
<pre>
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; font-size:85%"
|-
! Year
! Entrant
! Chassis
! Engine
! 1
! 2
! 3
! 4
! 5
! 6
! 7
! 8
! 9
! 10
! 11
! 12
! 13
! 14
! 15
! 16
! DC
! Points
|-
</pre>
</noinclude>
There you can see that all the various columns are described properly, and the individual race numbers are included too. The use of "|-" is as a line-breaker - i.e. it marks the point where the current row in the table ends and entering text below it will start a new row. The "!" at the beginning of each line ensures the text appears bolded in the table. A "|" could be used alternatively, and you'll see that in use elsewhere in the table later on.

So, the code above looks like this on the page:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; font-size:85%"
|-
! Year
! Entrant
! Chassis
! Engine
! 1
! 2
! 3
! 4
! 5
! 6
! 7
! 8
! 9
! 10
! 11
! 12
! 13
! 14
! 15
! 16
! DC
! Points
|}
From here, you want to start putting in the information and results of the driver, so we need our second row of the table for that. In the above code, we already have our "|-" page break inserted at the end, so we just need to get adding some information! Here is the code for Sammy Jones' 2010 F1RWRS season:
<noinclude>
{| style="float: bottom;"
|
<pre>
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; font-size:85%"
|-
! Year
! Entrant
! Chassis
! Engine
! 1
! 2
! 3
! 4
! 5
! 6
! 7
! 8
! 9
! 10
! 11
! 12
! 13
! 14
! 15
! 16
! DC
! Points
|-
! [[2010 Formula 1 Rejects World Race Series season|2010]]
! [[West Cliff Racing]]
! West Cliff WC001
! Chevrolet V8
|bgcolor="#ffdf9f"| [[2010 F1RWRS German Grand Prix|GER]]<br/ ><small>3</small>
|bgcolor="#cfcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS Luxembourg Grand Prix|LUX]]<br/ ><small>11</small>
|bgcolor="#ffdf9f"| [[2010 F1RWRS Saxon Grand Prix|SAX]]<br/ ><small>3</small>
|bgcolor="#cfcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS Chinese Grand Prix|CHN]]<br/ ><small>13</small>
|bgcolor="#dfffdf"| [[2010 F1RWRS Tasman Grand Prix|TAS]]<br/ ><small>6</small>
|bgcolor="#dfffdf"| [[2010 F1RWRS Bahrain Grand Prix|BHR]]<br/ ><small>9</small>
|bgcolor="#efcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS Belgian Grand Prix|BEL]]<br/ ><small>Ret</small>
|bgcolor="#cfcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS British Grand Prix|GBR]]<br/ ><small>18</small>
|bgcolor="#cfcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS Australian Grand Prix|AUS]]<br/ ><small>14</small>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
! 10th
! 23
|}
</pre>
</noinclude>
Good grief! A lot of code? One thing you'll get to understand quite quickly is that when coding wiki tables, they soon get rather long! In the example here, you can see that each column in the first row has an entry in the second row, even if it's just blank. The 2010 F1RWRS season had only 9 races, but for Sammy Jones who competed in seasons that had up to 16 races, you need to take that into account, else all the results won't fit in! The first four lines of the second row show the season, entrant, chassis and engine respectively, and you can see the first two are linked to their respective pages, the 2010 F1RWRS season and West Cliff Racing respectively. 

From there come the actual results Jones had during the season. The given standard for a racing driver's results in a wiki table is to have a three-letter abbreviation of the country the race was held in (for example GBR in Great Britain), with the driver's result in that race below it. If the driver had a fastest lap or pole position, the three-letter country abbreviation is put in italics or boldened respectively, or if the driver got both, then both are used. You can italicise text in wiki code by using two single apostrophes either side of the text to be italicised, like this: <nowiki>''Hello''</nowiki> which then appears as ''Hello'' on the page. The same goes for bolding, but using three apostrophes instead of two. If you wish to do both, then use five apostrophes.

You'll notice the colour codes at the beginning of each race result in the code above, and these correspond to the type of result. Here is the correct codes for different results:

For a first place, use bgcolor="#ffffbf"<br>
For a second place, use bgcolor="#dfdfdf"<br>
For a third place, use bgcolor="#ffdf9f"<br>
For any other points-scoring finish, use bgcolor="#dfffdf"<br>
For any non-points scoring finish, use bgcolor="#cfcfff"<br>
For a retirement, use bgcolor="#efcfff"<br>
And for a failure to qualify or pre-qualify, use bgcolor="#ffcfcf"

Each race is linked to the relevant page in the table, and is then followed by the code:
<noinclude>
{| style="float: bottom;"
|
<pre>
<br/ ><small></small>
</pre>
</noinclude>
This ensures that the result itself fits below the three-letter abbreviation. You should enter the position (e.g. 3, Ret, or DNPQ) between the <nowiki><small> and </small></nowiki>.

At the very bottom, you can see the final championship position and the total points at the end of the year are shown. If the results are from a season still in progress, you should add the latest points total and position in the championship, and place an asterisk after both, which explains that the season has not yet finished.

Following that, the last part of your table should always, always be a "|}" which makes sure the table is closed at the bottom and finished off properly. And then you're done! The code above will produce this table as a result:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; font-size:85%"
|-
! Year
! Entrant
! Chassis
! Engine
! 1
! 2
! 3
! 4
! 5
! 6
! 7
! 8
! 9
! 10
! 11
! 12
! 13
! 14
! 15
! 16
! DC
! Points
|-
! [[2010 Formula 1 Rejects World Race Series season|2010]]
! [[West Cliff Racing]]
! West Cliff WC001
! Chevrolet V8
|bgcolor="#ffdf9f"| [[2010 F1RWRS German Grand Prix|GER]]<br/ ><small>3</small>
|bgcolor="#cfcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS Luxembourg Grand Prix|LUX]]<br/ ><small>11</small>
|bgcolor="#ffdf9f"| [[2010 F1RWRS Saxon Grand Prix|SAX]]<br/ ><small>3</small>
|bgcolor="#cfcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS Chinese Grand Prix|CHN]]<br/ ><small>13</small>
|bgcolor="#dfffdf"| [[2010 F1RWRS Tasman Grand Prix|TAS]]<br/ ><small>6</small>
|bgcolor="#dfffdf"| [[2010 F1RWRS Bahrain Grand Prix|BHR]]<br/ ><small>9</small>
|bgcolor="#efcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS Belgian Grand Prix|BEL]]<br/ ><small>Ret</small>
|bgcolor="#cfcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS British Grand Prix|GBR]]<br/ ><small>18</small>
|bgcolor="#cfcfff"| [[2010 F1RWRS Australian Grand Prix|AUS]]<br/ ><small>14</small>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
! 10th
! 23
|}

You can see that after all that code, the result itself is quite compact and small! Of course this is just for a single season, and there are many drivers with multiple seasons in lots of different series so the code will be very long once they are all included. To add additional seasons to the table above, you only need to repeat the entries as before. The top row is only required once, so if I were to add the 2011 season to the table, I'd launch straight in to adding the specific season, entrant, chassis, etc. There are two very important rules to remember when putting together a table in wiki code to make sure it looks okay on the page:

* Always remember to include a line break "|-" after each row.
* Always make sure the number of columns on each row is the same throughout the table.

If you stick to them then there is no reason why your table won't look fantastic! Good luck!

If you have any problems or questions, then go to the "Discussion" tab at the top of this page and write your query there, ending it with four tildes <nowiki>(~~~~)</nowiki> which will automatically get the wiki to sign and date your comment for you, so it's clear who has written the message!