Help:Preferences



Logged in Wikia users are able to set some personal preferences which tailor the way they read, write and edit on Wikia to their particular style. These preferences are applicable across all Wikia wikis, so the same preferences are applied on every wiki you visit. To access your preferences, move your mouse over your username at the top right of a page. A drop down menu will appear, and from here select "My preferences"

What are the different tabs for?
This help page will walk you through the current preference options Wikia users have and explaining the effects of changing these options. We will address these in order from tab-to-tab.

Tabs are organized to clump together related preferences so that it is easier to find the relevant field to change. By default, there are five tabs on the Special:Preferences page.

Please realize that none of the changes you make to your preferences will be stored unless you press the "Save" button.

Basic Information

 * My username: Simply prints your username. You can not change your username through the preferences screen. If you wish to change your username, please see this page on username changes.
 * My user groups: Lists the user groups you belong to.
 * My gender: Not a required preference. By default, users are unspecified, though of course one can choose male or female.
 * The purpose of this preference is for international languages in which proper nouns need a gender form.
 * To learn how to set your gender for your User Profile, please visit Help:Profiles. Your profile gender is not set by this preference.
 * My password: If you would like to change your password, please click the link in this field, which will lead you to Special:ChangePassword

Signature

 * Existing Signature: Renders your signature, including all wikitext.
 * Custom Signature: Where your signature can be changed.
 * Wikitext you use will be converted when the signature is used unless you uncheck the "I want to use wikitext in my signature" box.

Appearance

 * Language: A dropdown menu where you can choose the language you wish to view the wiki in.
 * Note: This applies to the interface on all wikis, so while the content of a DE wiki mmay will be in German, if you have "EN - english" as your user language, you will see most of the messages and tools on the wiki in the English language.
 * Date: Allows for users to change how they wish to see timestamps.
 * Time: Allows for users to override the server time (which is in GMT) with the time zone of their own choice. Users can either select their geographical region to determine time zone from a dropdown list or can enter the offset manually using the next input box.
 * Layout: Allows for users to see Wikia with the Wikia skin or the Monobook skin. Learn more about skins.
 * Ads: Registered users on Wikia can hide most of the ads our anonymous users see. Consider it a perk of membership. Some admins, though, like seeing all the ads on a wiki so they can understand the user experience for their anonymous readers.
 * Landing Page: Users can either choose between going to the Main Page of a wiki (MediaWiki:Mainpage) or to Special:WikiActivity when going directly to the wiki's URL from the address bar.

Files
From the files tab, you can choose how to display images. Adapting the options here can improve page display if you have an especially large or small monitor or display screen.

In detail:
 * Limit images on image description pages to: allows you to choose a size that will fit on your monitor when you click on an image to see the information about it.
 * Thumbnail size: allows you to choose how big images should be when small "thumbnail" versions are put on a page. Choose a size that you like and works best with your monitor.

Date and time
On this tab, you can set time zone and date formats.

The server time (on Wikia, this is UTC) usually differs from your local time; by pressing the "Fill in from browser" button, the correct value will automatically be entered into the offset box. If the server time was 18.00 and your local time was 21.00, the offset would be  hours. Note this won't automatically adjust for any local daylight saving changes.

When you save your changes, the time in various logs and lists around the wiki will be displayed in your local time and chosen format. This does not affect signatures.

Editing
The editing tab allows you to change certain details about the editing interface or editing process, which may help to make editing smoother, more intuitive, or less error-prone for you.

See Help:Editing preferences for more details.

Recent changes
Here you can:


 * Alter the number of titles displayed in recent changes (both by days and edits - whichever comes first will be the effective limit).
 * Decide whether or not you want the list to display minor edits (do you care about every typo fix and category change?).
 * If you have JavaScript enabled, enable Enhanced Recent Changes, a method of folding multiple edits to an article into a single recent changes entry. This is popular, and recommended.

Watchlist
The watchlist tab enables you to specify what you do and do not want to see on your watchlist, one of the best methods of keeping an eye on changes to articles you care about.

"Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" ensures that every recent edit of the page is shown, not just the last edit (similar to Enhanced Recent Changes).

Search
You can choose which namespaces to search, and how many results to return, when using Wikia's internal search function.

It also allows you to turn "Search suggest" on and off - this suggests results as you type words into the search box.

In detail:
 * Hits per page: You may choose the number of results returned on each page of search results.
 * Lines per hit: Specifying a number n means "do not show any context if the search term occurs beyond line n in the page." Setting this to 5000 or more gives context for every occurrence.
 * Context per line: The number of characters of context per occurrence; however, the context is anyway restricted to the "line" (anything without a line break; usually a paragraph) it occurs in. To get the whole line, choose a large number like 5000.
 * Search in these namespaces by default: Choose which types of pages you would like to appear in searches by default. (You will be able to change these options from the search page.) For example, selecting "Main" only will return only articles, selecting "Main" and "Talk" would search articles and their discussion pages.

Miscellaneous
A few odds and ends of Wikia behaviour can be controlled here:


 * Format broken links like this (alternative: like this?):
 * Using a question mark? after a link to a non-existing page is a convention used in other types of wiki software; those used to that convention have an option to use it at Wikia too.


 * Justify paragraphs: makes text line up with both left and right margins
 * Auto-number headings: adds numbers before headings
 * Show table of contents (for pages with more than 3 headings): enabled by default; you can disable all tables of contents here if they interfere with your browsing style.
 * Disable page caching: allows you to see certain page updates quicker, but puts more strain on the database servers. Don't disable unless you know you have a reason to.
 * Enable "jump to" accessibility links: provides links at top of page which can make navigation quicker and easier for screen readers and other accessibility software
 * Don't show page content below diffs: Normally a diff view will display the entire page content, including images and templates, below the side-by-side diff comparison. If you don't need that view, checking this preference will speed up the display of diff pages.