From EncyClanPedia
Navigating the EncyClanPedia
- On every EncyClanPedia page, you'll find four elements useful for getting around our site.
- *The sidebar to the left, which contains the navigation box, the site box, the search box, and the toolbox.
- *The top of the site which contains various tabs that change depending on the page you're viewing.
- *The top-right hand corner, where you will find your user link. Anonymous users will not be able to access the user links. So please register if you're truly serious about contributing to the EncyClanPedia..
- *The very bottom where you'll find very important information about the EncyClanPedia.
The Sidebar
While there will always be important links, such as those to the Main Page, Help Page, and the Special Pages, the sidebar is always subject to change as we continue to add more and more to the site. Please become comfortable with it's use, so that you may become a more experienced Wiki user. Also note that the logo will always bring you back to the main page of the Wiki.
The Navigation Box
The navigation box contains many links which lead you to the most important parts of the EncyClanPedia.
- Main Page: Is the hub, of which all users must begin at. The featured game, featured clan, feature player, and administrator notes are all found here. The Main Page also contains three extra tabs leading to different divisions of the main page. They are:
- The Games: Which is the hub for everybody looking for information on the latest and greatest games, or simply to discover ones they never even knew existed.
- The Community: This is where the readers get to meet the EncyClanPedia staff, as well as the more prominent editors.
- The Clans: The heart and soul of our project. This is where the people get to see the clans who seek to promote their gaming prowess.
- Community Portal: This Is where editors and readers will get to come together to both read and discuss about future projects on the EncyClanPedia.
- Current Events: This deals with the current events in the EncyClanPedia, mostly reporting on big changes being made.
- Recent Changes: This leads you to a special page, where you can view all of the changes being made to the site. More information on recent changes, can be found under the Tracking Changes headline at the bottom of the page.
- Random Page: This takes you to a random EncyClanPedia page or template, which can be very fun if you're bored.
The Site Box
The site box contains many links which lead you to the policies, and information needed to succeed on EncyClanPedia.
- Help: As you might already know, is the first place to go when you're lost. It leads you to the knowledge you'll require to excel on the EncyClanPedia.
- Rules: Is where you go if you want to avoid trouble from the moderators. I realize there are a lot of rules to abide by, but they are all required to keep the EncyClanPedia clean and family friendly.
- User List: Is the first place you go when you want to find someone. Here you can also look for an Administrator or Staff member to help if you run into any issues.
The Search Box
The search box is quite possibly the most important feature of the EncyClanPedia. This is where you go to look up information on any given subject. To use it, all you do is simply type in a word, and viola; if it exists on the EncyClanPedia, a page will come up and you'll be subjected to a wealth of knowledge submitted by the gaming community! If the page you searched for does not exist. It may be because nobody has even thought to add it yet. Help out the EncyClanPedia by clicking the "Create this page" link, and adding it. Just please make sure it's well thought out, and relevant to gaming, otherwise you might run into an Administrator down the line. Please read through Help:Editing for more information on how to get started creating a Wiki.
The Search Box: Important Notes
- Only the article content is searched - the page title itself is ignored.
- The article content is searched in its raw (wikitext) form - i.e. it searches the text that appears in the edit box when you click 'edit', not the rendered page. This means that content coming from an included template will not be picked up, but the target of piped links will be.
- Even if you enclose a phrase in quotes, the search looks for each word individually. e.g. if you enter "world war 2" it will return pages that contain "world" and "war" and "2".
- The search is not case-sensitive, so "MediaWiki", "mediawiki" and "MEDIAWIKI" all give the same result, this is why Redirecting is so important.
The Search Box: Restricting the Search
If you click the search button without filling in anything, you will then be taken to the 'Special:Search' page, which gives you extra searching options. (This is also available for any other search result.)
If you're having trouble searching for a page, you may find it useful to restrict a search to pages within a particular namespace - For example, if you were to search for a specific policy, you would tick the policy box.
By default only the namespaces specified in your preferences will be searched, which of course is only offered to logged-in users.
The Tool Box
The toolbox contains a selection of links. Some change depending on what type of page you are currently viewing. Some are just helpful beyond any and all compare.
- What links here: Is a helpful feature that allows you to view every single page that directly Wiki-links to the page you are currently viewing.
- Related changes:Is a helpful feature that allows you view every single change made to the page that you are currently viewing. More information on recent changes, can be found under the Tracking Changes headline at the bottom of the page.
- Upload file: This is where you go when you want to upload an Image, or a Policy:Fair Use Media file.
- Special pages: This brings you to a huge list of links, each with their own function. Some are helpful beyond compare. Some are meant to only be used by Administrators. For further information on the Special Pages, please refer to Help:Special Pages.
Page Tabs
The page tabs are displayed at the top of the article to the right of the site logo. These tabs allow you to perform actions or view pages that are related to the current article. The specific tabs displayed on your pages depend on whether or not you are logged into the wiki and whether you have sysop (administrator) privileges on the wiki. On special pages only the namespace tab is displayed.
Default for all users:
- The first tab depends on the namespace the article is a part of.
- Normal articles will show as article.
- Help pages will show up as help page.
- Special pages will show up as special page
- Templates will show up as template
- User pages will show up as user page
- The second default tab shows up as Discussion which leads you to a page where you can discuss the article.
- The third default tab shows up as Edit which opens an editing box, where you can input source code.
- Edit may read as, view source if anonymous editing is disabled, the page is in the MediaWiki: namespace, or the page was protected by the Administrators. If this shows up, you can only see the source code, never edit it.
- The fourth default tab is history which allows you to see all of the recent changes made to the article.
Extra tabs for logged-in users include:
- move automatically redirects any created page to a new page. This is a good way to correct spelling mistakes, without having to lose your source code.
- watch puts your page on alert for your account. If you have an E-mail attached to your name, an E-mail will be sent to you every-time a change is made to this page.
User Links
The user links are displayed at the top far right of the article (if using the default MonoBook skin). These tabs allow the logged-in user to view and edit their user page and wiki preferences. Additionally, the user links allow the user to quickly access their contributions to the wiki and logout.
For anonymous users the user links is replaced by a link to the wiki login page or, if enabled, a link to your IP address and your IP address's talk page.
- <username>: This links to your user page which is where you can put information about yourself, store bits of information you want to remember or whatever else you fancy.
- my talk: This links to your discussion page, where people can leave messages for you.
- preferences: Allows you to change your personal site preferences.
- my watchlist: A list of all pages that you are watching. Pages can be added to this list by clicking watch at the top of the page.
- my contributions: A list of all contributions you have made to the wiki.
- log out: Click this link to log out of the wiki.
EncyCLanPedia Bottom Information Links
These links take you to pages which explain the history of the EncyClanPedia, it's disclaimers, and one of it's most important policies.
Tracking Changes
MediaWiki offers a collection of special pages and tools to keep track of what is going on in the wiki. So you can watch for example:
- recent changes to all pages
- newly created pages
- the contributions of one specific user
- the revision history: all changes made to one page
The most interesting special page is Special:Recentchanges. It displays all edits, file uploads, page moves, deletions and other actions done in the wiki. In the menu on top it offers a collection of links to customize your display: limit the number of changes shown, the number of days or restrict it to edits to a certain namespace. You can also hide edits marked as minor (don't forget that major changes can be flagged by a user as minor anyway).
One line in recentchanges consists of several links:
- diff displays the difference to the previous revision of the page,
- hist links to the revision history of the page,
- the link with the full title of the page brings you to the current version. If the title is in bold, it indicates that it is on your watchlist.
Next is a flag describing the article modification type:
- N signalizes a new page,
- m a minor edit,
- b an edit made by a bot.
Following the timestamp the user is mentioned with a link to his user and talk page and to his contributions. In italic follows a comment if the user has submitted one.
If you are logged in and have JavaScript enabled, you can also try the "enhanced" view. Simply go to your Preferences and enable "Enhanced recent changes (JavaScript)"; this will make recent changes show edits divided by page rather than being listed individually. You will now see entries like the following:
- ! 15:17 Main Page (4 changes; (+236) Page history) [Some User (2×); Some Other User (2×)]
Simply click the blue arrow to the left of the page name and timestamp to expand that page's recent edits just as they were on the normal style. You can turn this enhancement on and off at will, so feel free to try both to see which one you prefer.
Also see:
