How to use basic wiki markup to format on Wikihowto and other MediaWiki sites

Most text formatting is usually done with wiki markup, so you don't have to learn HTML.

Bold and italics
Bold and italics are added by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('):


 *  italics  is rendered as italics. (2 apostrophes on either side)
 *  bold  is rendered as bold. (3 apostrophes on either side)
 *  bolded italics  is rendered as bolded italics. (2 + 3 = 5 apostrophes on either side)

Headings and subheadings
Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see two or more distinct topics being discussed, you can break up your article by inserting a heading for each section.

Headings can be created like this:
 *  ==Top level heading==  (2 equals signs)
 *  ===Subheading===  (3 equals signs)
 *  ====Another level down====  (4 equals signs)
 *  =====Another level down=====  (5 equals signs)

If an article has at least three headings, a table of contents (TOC) will be automatically generated. Try creating some headings in the sandbox and see the effect on the TOC.

Indenting
To indent text, place a colon (:) at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline (pressing Enter or Return) marks the end of the indented paragraph.

For example: This is aligned all the way to the left.</tt>
 *  : This is indented slightly.</tt>
 *  :: This is indented more.</tt>

is shown as: This is aligned all the way to the left.
 * This is indented slightly.
 * This is indented more.

Bullet points
To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (*</tt>). Similar to indentation, more asterisks in front of a paragraph means more indentation.

A brief example:
 *  * First list item</tt>
 *  * Second list item</tt>
 *  ** Sub-list item under second</tt>
 *  * Isn't this fun?</tt>

Which is shown as:
 * First list item
 * Second list item
 * Sub-list item under second
 * Isn't this fun?

Numbered lists
You can also create numbered lists. For this, use the number sign or hash symbol (#</tt>). Using more #</tt>s will affect the level of indenting.

Example:
 *  # First item</tt>
 *  # Second item</tt>
 *  ## Sub-item under second item</tt>
 *  # Third item</tt>

Shows up as:
 * First item
 * Second item
 * Sub-item under second item
 * Third item

Links
Links are important on wikis to help readers navigate your site.

Internal links
You can extensively cross-reference wiki pages using internal links. You can add links to existing titles, and also to titles you think ought to exist in future.

To make a link to another page on the same wiki, just put the title in double square brackets.

For example, if you want to make a link to, say, the Wikia page, it would be:
 *  Wikia </tt>

If you want to use words other than the article title as the text of the link, you can add an alternative name by adding after the pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards).

For example, if you wanted to make a link to Wikia, but wanted it to say "home page" you would write it as such:
 * View the home page ...</tt>

It would appear as:
 * View the home page...

When you want to use the plural of an article title (or add any other suffix) for your link, you can add the extra letters directly outside the double square brackets.

For example, you would write:


 * <tt>Add questions to the Wikia for quizzes .</tt>

It would appear as:


 * Add questions to the Wikia for quizzes.

Interlanguage links
Some Wikia are available in multiple languages. To add a link in the sidebar from an article on the English Wikimac to the German version of the same article, type:
 * <tt> iPod </tt>

"De" is the language code for German. The link will appear in the sidebar as "Deutsch" and link to The German WikiMac iPod article. This only works on wikis with multiple languages on different sites.

See Help:Interlanguage links

Interwiki links
To link to another Wikia, you can use its title followed by a colon and the article name, instead of using the full URL.

For example, the creatures wiki home page is at Creatures:Main Page, which can be typed as
 * Creatures:Main Page
 * rather than as http://creatures.wikicities.com/wiki/Main_Page

This style of link works for any wiki in the interwiki map, not just for Wikia. See Help:Interwiki link.

Redirects
To redirect automatically from one page to another, type #REDIRECT and then put in brackets the name of the page to be redirected to.

For example, you could redirect from "Cats" to "Cat". That way, anyone typing either version in the search box will automatically go to "Cat".

Wiki variables and templates
Use to see the current Wikia. For instance,   on this site prints out as .

That and a few other templates are common to MediaWiki sites.

Check the current list of all templates specific to wikicities.

You can create templates. After you create the page Template:XXX, using the command  will include that content in your current page. So, if you have something that needs to be included on many other pages, you might want to use a template.

Most templates available on this Central Wikia can be used on individual wikicities with just "wikicities:" prefixed to the name. See Help:Shared templates.

From HowTo Wiki, a Wikia wiki.