User talk:DangersUntold

Welcome!
Good to see you getting started already! :)  Are you familiar with Wikipedia or other sites that use MediaWiki software?  If so, this will all be pretty familiar to you; if not, don't be afraid to ask lots of questions.

Please be aware there are lots of options you can access through "my preferences" in the upper right corner, including your signature if you want it to read "Antonicus" or whatever. You can easily sign your posts (although that's usually done only on discussion pages) by adding four tildes ( ~ ).

Good luck! — Catherine o' the ComTeam 18:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You're quite welcome, and congratulations on getting moving so quickly! One Wikia feature that might be of use to you is preloaded templates:  you can create a standard format for your character sheets/profiles, something like the one on this World of Warcraft page:  http://earthenring.wikia.com/wiki/Kyltania  We can then set it up so that when creating a non-existent page,  like http://earthenring.wikia.com/index.php?title=Flibble&action=edit, users can choose to load an easy-to-fill in template, which will put their new character sheets into the standard format you've decided on.  Would that be helpful?  — Catherine o' the ComTeam 22:06, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Customization
I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of changing the default logo and colors for your site. You may need to refresh your browser (usually CTRL-F5 or Shift-Refresh) to see the changes. These can all be modified to anything else you like; I just wanted to demonstrate some of the possibilities. :) Please let me know if you dislike the changes (or my interference), don't hesitate to say so as I want to help you have the site that you want!  — Catherine o' the ComTeam 01:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Hey there, congratulations to everyone in your community on hitting 100 articles so quickly!


 * To answer the questions on my talk page, customizing is limited only by your imagination and your skill with CSS. Don't know CSS?  Well a) it's not too hard to learn the basics, and b) there are lots of examples of code around Wikia you can copy and modify without knowing everything yet -- that's how I learned a lot of it.


 * See Wikia custom skins for some examples of what other sites have done, and click on the "style sheet" links to see how they did it. We don't yet have a comprehensive guide to customizing, but if you let me know what you want, I will tell you how to go about changing it.


 * For the sidebar menus, see Wiki_configuration for some help on editing MediaWiki: messages to change the sidebar (although I think a little of it is a bit outdated). I'll be happy to help, and of course you can always check those messages on other Wikia where you like the layout to see how they did it.  (You won't be able to edit the messages on other Wikia where you're not an admin, but on a protected page the edit tab changes to "view source" so you can still see and copy the code.)


 * Give it a try and ask for help where you need it, either on my talk page or by visiting the IRC chatroom using the "Live wiki help" link in the sidebar (or your own IRC client if you have one).  Best of luck to you!  — Catherine o' the ComTeam 02:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, you are an administrator for this wiki (which means you can delete and protect pages) and a bureaucrat (which means you can make other users into administrators) -- see Wikia:Help:User access levels for more information.


 * To copy another site's style and customize it, you can copy the CSS code that you choose from http://arsmagica.wikia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.css into your own Monobook stylesheet: this is located at http://eoa.wikia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.css (only admins and staff can edit this). Note that they use several background images to create some of their effects -- you will need to create your own images, or find freely licensed ones, unless ArsMagica gives you permission to borrow theirs.


 * If you'd like to experiment with the stylesheet before making it live for everyone, you can edit your own personal stylesheet at http://eoa.wikia.com/wiki/User:DangersUntold/monobook.css and the style changes will only be visible to you.  This is a good way to play with your design; once it's perfect then it can be copied into the site-wide stylesheet all at once.


 * Changes will not be visible until the stylesheet is saved and you have performed a "hard refresh": this is done with CTRL-F5 or by holding Shift while clicking the Reload/Refresh button in most browsers.


 * You can of course copy and paste the code without knowing how it works, but if you want to learn the basics, the site http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp provides a good basic reference for learning CSS syntax. (Be careful with punctuation: the most common mistakes I've made when editing a stylesheet is using a "(" parenthesis instead of a "{" curly bracket, and omitting or using colons/semi-colons in the wrong place for the "attribute:value;" pairs.)  That site also has a useful list of color codes (scroll down):  http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_colors.asp


 * As always, I am here to help, and can do much of this for you if you would like me to -- I just don't want to get in the way if you prefer to do it yourself. :)  I am always willing to troubleshoot if you something isn't working properly.  — Catherine o' the ComTeam 20:07, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Communication
Just wanted to comment, I see a lot of activity on creating and linking articles here on EOA, but not too much conversation going on here on the site. Is that because you have other modes of communications, or are your users unfamiliar with the wiki?

One very useful tool for keeping up with what's going on in the wiki is the "Recent changes" link available in the sidebar. Every edit that is made is recorded on this list, along with who made it. Try to get your members in the habit of checking in on recent edits, and see if there's anything they can contribute (even if it's just adding a category or fixing a misplaced apostrophe) -- this can help to build wiki community and cooperation, and allow you to quickly spot and fix any spam or vandalism edits. In addition, you can see on the Recentchanges list if there are any edits to "Talk" pages -- each article page has a "discussion" tab, which can be used to make comments and ask questions about the attached article. This is a great way to give feedback to fellow authors/players if you don't want to edit their work directly. It's common on talk pages to sign your comments by adding four tildes at the end: "~"

Another way to facilitate communication is to encourage people to create user pages about themselves -- they can get to their own userpage by clicking their name in the personal toolbar at the upper right, and you can reach other people's userpages from links in Recent changes, page histories, and signatures. Like articles, each userpage has an associated "talk" page, and any message left on a user's talk page will notify them with the "big orange bar" at the top of the wiki that you're probably getting used to by now. :)

Finally, there are links in the sidebar to "Community Portal" and "Forum" pages which you can use as central discussion points, if you choose -- again, keeping an eye on Recent changes will tell you when there's discussion going on at these pages that you might want to participate in.

Hope that's not too much information at once -- you guys are doing a great job on this wiki! — Catherine o' the ComTeam 20:07, 22 May 2007 (UTC)