Help:Contents/Editing The Aquarium Wiki/Creating an Article

An article is virtually every page on this Wiki system. In general, when you want to add content to this web site you will be adding an Article.

There are three steps to create a new article, please follow them.

Think about your Title

Search for the article you wish to create to ensure it has not already been created. Be careful with the wording and letter-case as this will be its initial title and eventual URL you may use to refer to it.

Tip: The Wiki system forces all articles to start with a capital letter. Though there are special cases when you'll not want this. Say you want a title of 'pH of water'. To make this appear with a small 'p', add at the top of the article the phrase '{{Lowercase}}' and the system will force the first letter to lowercase.

• Remember over time people will probably refer to your page on other web sites. So they'll link to the Aquarium Wiki via the URL based on this title. So try to avoid characters like ( ) & or ? in them.

• The Aquarium Wiki prefers titles to start each word with a capital letter, though it's acceptable to make short words lower case. For example: 'How I Made a Snail Trap'. But species names are always Genus capitalised with the species part in lower case. For example: Hymenochirus boettgeri.

• If your article is going to be a new plant or animal profile then please use the current full species name as the title. You can always add common names articles to redirect to the full species name later. For example Goldfish. Otherwise it's acceptable to use the most common name within the title.

• If you come across a title that's already in use and yours is the same then you'll need to do more work and create an ambiguous page and rename the original page to a new title. See Tetra article as a good example of this.

Getting Started

On the page displaying the search results, you will see a link which says "create this page", click on it. A empty box will appear on the page that you can now edit to create an article.

Start writing away.

• Tip: Internet Explorer will lose your work if you accidentally move away from the edit page before you save it. Editors often use the Firefox web browser as often it saves the contents of the edit page when you go back to it.

If you wish to create an animal, plant or product profile, then you need to pop up the Standard_Templates and choose the appropriate profile template. Copy and paste the text from the chosen template into your new page.

Previewing your work

To see what your work will look like before committing it to the Wiki, press the Preview icon. You can then re-edit and preview as many times as you wish.

Units of measurement

We use International units of measurement on this site as these are the scientific units of choice across the World. Where possible the author should use them and then optionally followed by their local unit. For example 250 Litres (66US G.).

• Temperature - We use °C: But we provide an easy to use conversion template to show Fahrenheit as well on the Edit page. Just click on the corresponding link and fill in the numbers. {{F|temp1|temp2}} for a range or reduce to just {{F|temp1}} for one Fahrenheit number and the site will show both types. Similarly for Centigrade use {{C|temp1|temp2}} or {{C|temp1}}

• Volume - We use Litres. But we provide an easy to use conversion template to show US Gallons. (UK gallons is technically obsolete but some people in the UK do use it.) If you must specify volume in gallons you should indicate if it is US or UK gallons ie "15 US Gals" otherwise people may get confused. Use {{L|vollum1|vollum2}} or {{gal|vollum1}} from the conversion template on the Edit page and edit to suit.

If you need to specify small quantities of liquid, use millilitres and fluid ounces together (there isn't a conversion template for this yet). Once more specify if you are using the US or UK imperial system. ie 16 US fl. Oz.

• Lengths - We use meters and centimetres. But we provide an easy to use conversion template to show inches too. Use {{in|length1|length2}} or {{cm|length1|length2}} from the conversion template on the Edit page and edit to suit.

Saving your work

The great thing about any Wiki is that you can't destroy any page permanently. Once you click on that save icon it is saved and becomes a part of the history of the site. Therefore any person can view the history of your page and simply click on 'rollback' to reverse your changes. So if you're afraid of messing up a page, please don't be! You or other Editors can come along and reverse the changes instantly.

These two features mean you can experiment on any page to improve its look. But feel free to try beginner alterations on your own User page. Click on the link on the top of the page containing your username and you'll be taken to your own personal page when you can tinker to your hearts delight!

That concludes this part of the tutorial, please move on to another of interest or proceed to the next article in this series Intro to Templates