User talk:Markustay5000

Thank you for making useful maps that are also cartographic art. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 14:35, September 11, 2017 (UTC)

Hi
Hi, Markustay! Glad to see you here. If you need help, just ask. :P--Zero (talk) 01:05, September 14, 2017 (UTC)

Help with references
Hi Markus!

References are the trickiest part of making an article, we all trip up on them. I'll try to break it down for you. First, when you edit, I strongly recommend using the Source Editor. It lets you see the raw MediaWiki code and gives you an idea of how things work. The Visual Editor and Rich-Text Editor try to be what-you-see-is-what-you-get, but obscure how things actually function and make it very difficult to do anything beyond basic text. Don't worry about the code, it's a little HTML like you'd have Candlekeep and other forums, and the rest is much easier. In the default Wikia skin, you should see an arrow next to "Edit" where you can get different options. Otherwise, you can go to your Preferences and under the Editing tab you can choose your default editor.

Starting at the end, the section heading. ==References== just goes down the bottom, and makes the big "References" header. After that, a simple tells the page to load the references on the page. If in Visual Editor, go to Insert, then Template, then "Refs" should be the first option. All pages should have this on them.

Now, to make a reference, insert something like. Which is rather lengthy, but I'll break that down.

First, is a call to an existing template page we've created for most of the sources being referenced. These automatically generate the reference details. For example, this one is based at Template:Cite book/Ruins of Zhentil Keep/Campaign Book. You can find them all at Category:Citation templates, but if you're not sure, you can usually start typing and the site will start automatically suggesting.

Included in that is '|14, 28'. The bar, or 'pipe', marks a new part of the template. The numbers are the page numbers. You can list them with commas, or indicate a range, "6-8".

Wrapped around the template call are tags. These mark what's inside as a reference and turn it into a footnote. The template catches them and lists them at the bottom.

Included in that is name="RoZK-pg14,28". This names the reference, so rather than repeat the full reference if we want to cite the same source again later in the article, we can simply write or better yet. Note the slash at the end to close the tag. This is vital, otherwise you get hideous red error messages through the text. The name is arbitrary (I don't think it even needs quotes); we usually write a short abbreviation for the book, edition if needed, and the page.

In Visual Editor, go to Insert, then Template, then search for 'Cite book/Ruins of Zhentil Keep' and it will bring up Template:Cite book/Ruins of Zhentil Keep. That's just an umbrella cite for the box set, as "Get info..." will show. Appending '/Campaign Guide' will give the specific book. Unfortunately, Template search is useless: you need to know the exact name of the template in order to find it. It doesn't work at all well for us, unfortunately. Anyway, when you finally find it, put the page number in the "1" box.

Once the is put in place, it will generate a footnote in the finished article. In Visual Editor, go to Insert, Reference, then start typing {{ to get it to go Template search, as above.

I hope that explains things. Go back to Citadel Ankhalus, then use the Source Editor to how we've revised things. To make things much easier, go to your Preferences, and under Appearance change the layout from Wikia to Monobook. This goes back to the old style for Wikia and it looks more like Wikipedia. It's clean, ad-free, faster, and much easier to use, IMO. — BadCatMan (talk) 02:43, September 14, 2017 (UTC)