Are you new to IGN's wiki guides? Whether you're looking to create your own wiki or add to others, this page contains five very basic -- and very easy -- lessons you need to get started.

Making an Edit

Anyone who has an IGN account and is logged in can make an edit to a wiki page. Here are the three basic steps to editing any page.

1) Click on the EDIT button at the top of the page and you will be whisked away to the wiki editor view. Go ahead and try it on this page, if you want!

3) Any changes you make will be saved when you hit SAVE in the upper right corner of the edit window.

Getting to Know the Wiki Editor

The wiki editor (or editing interface) should look familiar. There are multiple formatting options at the top of the editing window, including extremely handy paragraph headers, bullet points, and hyperlink tools.

Note that there is a tab at the top of the wiki editor that says RICH TEXT EDITOR/WIKI MARKUP. You can write and layout a page easily with the Rich Text Editor, but you can freely switch back and forth between it and the Wiki Markup view, which shows the view of the page in wiki markup code -- which is also totally editable.

Words are boring, though. You can do so much more with the wiki editor! Like adding images...

Adding an Image

You can add images using the wiki editor. Hit EDIT and make sure you are in the Rich Text Editor view.

In the wiki editor there is a MEDIA LIBRARY for the wiki just to the right of the editor -- it's under the SAVE button. This has a tab for video and screenshots. Any existing images in the gallery can be added from the gallery by clicking on the gallery thumbnail. To upload a new image, follow these steps:

1) Click UPLOAD. This will open the image uploader box.

2) Select a file from your computer. You can upload up to 5 files at once. After selecting your files hit UPLOAD in the image uploader box. Close the uploader.

3) Your images should now appear in the Media Gallery to the right. Select your image from the gallery and click on it. It will appear wherever your cursor appears in the document.

Resizing an Image

When you add an image to a wiki page, it will automatically be resized to half page width so you can put two images side-by-side easily. To change the image size and properties, double click on the image in the wiki editor.

Here you can set the width and the image will automatically resize the height. 468px is the full page width of the wikis. You can also set the alignment -- align a small image to the right and text will wrap around it nicely!

Victory!

Embedding a Video

You can add both IGN and YouTube videos to wikis. All you need is the URL of the video page.

In the Rich Text Editor, hit the button that looks like a film strip. Copy the URL from the YouTube or IGN video page and paste it into the field here and the video will appear wherever your cursor currently is in the wiki editor.

You can copy the small SPECIAL code box around the wiki editor freely if you need to move it. You can also embed videos useing wiki markup code.

Organizing the Nav

Here you'll find a well-organized list of wiki pages and topics. The navigation can be edited freely, but any changes you make to page names will not point to the old pages, so be careful not to lose track of pages (you can always check the history page)

To add to or adjust the nav, follow these steps:

1) Click EDIT NAV at the bottom of the grey navigation box.

2) In the nav editor you can add new pages (sections) by clicking + ADD PAGE. You also can add pages to sub-sections of existing pages.

3) Move around existing pages by clicking on them and dragging them up and down. This will affect what order they appear in the navigation.

Adding a Page

(See above!) Adding a page to the Nav is the best way to add pages to a wiki. Once you've added the page to the Nav and hit "Save," you can then click on the new link in the Nav and begin editing it. 

Making Links

Linking within a wiki is incredibly important. To easily link to other articles within a wiki, you can simply highlight text in the rich text editor and hit the "chain" button.

Type in the name of the page in the wiki you would like to link to -- capitalization matters! -- and hit OK.

You can follow the same procedure to link to external sites, just enter the full URL of the site you'd like to link your selection to.

Pro tip: In the Wiki Markup View that you can use double brackets around a page title to easily link to another page. So:

Becomes: Making Links.

Just be sure your link doesn't link to an empty page. If it does, you can add a redirect to another page or fill out the new empty page yourself.

Citing Sources

Sources are a unique type of link that generally link to another reliable (non-wiki) source, like IGN!

The best way to add a source is to enter the Wiki Markup View of the editor and add single brackets around your source URL.

Becomes: The Legend of Zelda was released in 1987. [n]

A nifty link is even added as a footnote at the bottom of the page, automatically!

Moderating Wiki Edits

Anything done in a wiki can be undone -- it's easy! You have the power to undo the edits of others. But with great power comes basic politeness and a bit of responsibility!

Hit HISTORY in the top right of any page to view and/or edit history of that page. Here you can see the editor who made the change and when the change was made. On the right are three tools:

• Click the magnifying glass to view the previous version of the page.
• Click the sheets of paper to compare changes made in that revision. Additions are marked in yellow and deletions marked in red.
• Click on the blue arrow to UNDO the changes made. Clicking the blue arrow leaves a note on the page that the revision was undone -- and you can always go back to a previous revision. It's kind of like time travel!

Pro Tip: Click Wiki Tools in the Nav and then click Recent Changes to see a history page for the entire wiki!

When you undo another user's change, you are given the option to leave a note -- please do so, and explain why you made the change. It's common courtesy.

Additional Wiki Help

You can do so much more with wikis! Here are some other helpful (advanced!) wiki topics:

• Using Tables and Templates
• How to Create a New Wiki
• How to Edit Interactive Maps
• Using Wiki Markup Code
• Adding Spoiler Tags

What Links Here