Help:Basics of Editing

So, you're brand new to wiki editing, you haven't a clue how to link pages, add headers, create line breaks or put in some bullet points. Don't panic! Coding and editing pages looks pretty scary at first sight, but once you start to become familiar with different actions, it all looks rather simple. So that's what this page will do - guide you through a few simple actions that will allow you to go and do some basic editing of you driver's profile or a race report. Let's go!

Lesson #1 - creating links

One of the most fundamental parts of any wiki is the links on its pages. These bind everything together and make the wiki a single structure. If you create a page that has no links in it, and no other pages link to it, it is known as an "orphan" - i.e. it is isolated, and unable to be seen by people navigating around the wiki. Therefore, when you create a page, it's imperative that another page has a link to it!

But how do you actually create a link? Here's how.

Let's take a piece of text from the F1RWRS team, Prospec's page:

Pemberton Prospec Racing or Prospec is a British racing team, one of the most successful in F1RWRS history. The team won the first two F1RWRS Constructors' Championships as well as a Drivers' Championship with Nathanael Spencer in 2011.

Within that, there are a number of links to other pages, the blue text. Clicking on them takes you to other pages within the wiki. Let's take a section of that text and see what it looks like as it appears in the editing area:

The team won the first two F1RWRS Constructors' Championships as well as a Drivers' Championship with [[Nathanael Spencer]] Nathanael Spencer is one of the pages linked to on the Prospec page and is done so by adding two squared brackets either side of his name, as you can see in the code above. When adding a link like this, you must make sure that the name of the page you want to link to is identical to the one in the text, even down to the capitalisation of letters. For example if we tried to link nathanael spencer, it wouldn't work, hence the red text. Often however a page's name is too long and doesn't fit in well with flowing text. In these instances it may be more preferable to have an abbreviation, or shorten the name of a team for example. Using the excerpt from the Prospec page again, one of the most successful in [[Formula 1 Rejects World Race Series|F1RWRS]] history. Here we can see that the "Formula 1 Rejects World Race Series" page has been linked to, but that title is very cumbersome, and so the abbreviation "F1RWRS" has been used instead. The link however still goes to the correct page because of the way it has been written in the editing area. The original page name of "Formula 1 Rejects World Race Series" is written first, and is followed by a "|" and then the abbreviation. This second part is what actually appears on the page, whilst the first part is the actual link. Think of it as a 'mask' over the original link to make the text on the Prospec page read better. It doesn't matter what you put after the "|", as long as the first part matches the title of the page you want to link to exactly then the link will work regardless, for example, best championship ever, Mark Dagnall or SRWR1F all go to the same page. Try it! Lesson #2 - creating headers for sections and subsections Pretty much every page is going to have them, headers such as the one immediately above, to break the page into defined sections. It's remarkably simple to stick these into a page, and all depends on how many "equals" symbols (=) you want to use. The one above looks like this in the editing area: ==Lesson #2 - creating headers for sections and subsections== Come up with your title, and then depending on its importance, assign it one, two, three or four equals signs either side of the title. The fewer the equals signs, the more importance is given to the title. When you create three or four titles in one page, it will automatically generate a contents box at the top left of the page to aid with navigation, which is useful! Lesson #3 - creating bold and italic text Again, this one is nice and simple, and just involves the use of single apostrophes like you'd use on "it's" or "he's", etc. In order to create bold text like so, just write it out in the editing area as follows: '''bold text''' The text you want to make bold should have three single apostrophes either side. Don't use double apostrophes (speech marks) because they won't work, it must be single ones. For italic text, just reduce the number of apostrophes to two instead of three: ''italic text'' You can also create bold and italic text together, which just adds both sets of apostrophes together, so use five either side: '''''bold and italic text''''' Simples! Lesson #4 - creating bullet points Bullet points can be useful occasionally for creating lists of facts or summarising something for easy reading. Creating them for wiki pages couldn't be easier. Start your bullet point with an asterisk (*), a space, and then the text itself. For example: * This is a bullet point. This in the editing area would create this on the page: This is a bullet point. Repeat that as many times as you need to, what could be easier? Lesson #5 - Flag Links Okay, so you've got your templates all typed out. All the driver info is there, your stats are in order and you are about to press "save page". But wait! You've forgotten to put a flag! Oh noes! How do I put that in, you ask? Well, its usually quite simple. All of the mini-flags that we use on the F1 Rejects Alternate Championships Wiki have been uploaded onto the great file dump in the sky. To insert a flag, you must link to the flag (refer to Lesson #1 to learn how to link) in order for it to appear. Generally, all the flag links follow a simple format: [[File:Flag of Genovia svg.png]] Obviosuly, you can insert whatever country you want into the link and it should work. For example, by typing in [[File:Flag of the United Kingdom svg.png]] this flag icon will appear next to the text you have typed. The only hitch is that some flags have a slightly different submission format. For example, the file for the Flag of Finland had an extra period in between "Finland" and "svg". [[File:Flag of Finland.svg.png]] If you type that in without the extra period, the flag will not show up when you save the page. If all else fails, the users of the wiki may not have uploaded your flag yet. If you don't know how to upload a flag, just post on the Talk:Main Page discussion page and someone will respond to your request. Updated Flag System However, a new system for flag linkage has been adopted that is bot quicker and easier than what is described above. Simply type the IOC code for a country in two curly braces (template link) like so, and the flag will appear like before. Normal brackets will not work. So, for instance, for the Flag of the United Kingdom, {{GBR}} Template:GBR will be generated. Please note the old system will still work, but it is recommended to use this system for all new wiki pages.