Help:Editing
From ClawsOrPaws
Please note that you have to be a registered user of the ClawsOrPaws Wiki in order to be able to edit the Wiki pages.
Comprehensive help on editing is here. Information on how to use HTML in wikitext is here. (Please use Wiki markup rather than HTML whenever possible!)
These are external links to the MediaWiki Handbook, so you might want to right-click and choose to open in a new window or a new tab, so that you don't lose your way back to ClawsOrPaws!
Basic editing of existing pages is easy. Click the "edit" tab on top. That will load the whole page in editing mode for you. On pages that contain more than one section, you can also click "edit" in a section. That will load only that section in editing mode for you. If you change your mind, and do not want to apply any changes after all, just click the back button in your browser, or click some link in the sidebar (the menu to the left). There will be no changes made to the Wiki unless you click the "Save page" button.
Once the edit text box is open, all you need to do is find the part of the text you want to edit, and start typing. Please use the "Show preview" button to check what your edit looks like before you save the page. That way, you can keep adding small changes, or correct mistakes, and stay in control of what you are doing. (You also make reading the page history a lot easier.)
When you are about to save the page, please add a comment in the "Summary", below the text box. Please tell others what you have done with the page and why.
So far so good. It has to be admitted, though, that Wiki formatting/markup can be confusing at first, if you have not encountered it before. Text formatting, such as bold or italics, is made by using apostrophes ( ' ). Headings are made by using equals ( = ). A single linebreak will be disregarded - you will have to hit enter twice to start a new paragraph, and once more to insert a blank line between the paragraphs. Links are made using square brackets ( [ and ] )... There are buttons on top of the text box to help you with some of this as you edit your own text, but reading the Editing Overview from the MediaWiki Handbook will help you understand what you see in editing mode, too.
We have a sandbox here at the Wiki, so that you can practice editing without fear for damage or embarrassment. Leave the results of your practising for all to see, or wipe the sandbox clean before you leave it. It is up to you!
If you want to add a new page, see Help:Add new, and also Help:Categories for information about the way we structure the ClawsOrPaws Wiki pages.
