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 communities, so the same preferences are applied on every community you visit. To access your preferences, move your mouse over your avatar 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. You can also reset your preferences to the default settings you had when you registered for Wikia. This can not be undone, so choose wisely if you wish to reset.

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 community in.
 * Note: This applies to the interface on all communities, so while the content of a DE community still will be in German, if you have "EN - english" as your user language, you will see most of the messages and tools on the community in the English language.
 * Date: Allows for users to change how they wish to see timestamps.
 * Time zone: Allows for users to override the server time (which is in UTC) 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.
 * This will not affect the timestamp in user signatures.
 * Layout: Allows for users to see Wikia with the default Wikia skin or the Monobook skin.
 * Landing Page: Users can either choose between going to the Main Page of a community or to WikiActivity when going directly to the community's URL from the address bar.
 * Ads: Registered users on Wikia can hide most of the ads that our anonymous users see. Consider it a perk of membership. Some admins, though, like seeing all the ads on a community so they can understand the user experience for their anonymous readers.

Email
The email tab allows users to change their email address on record with Wikia and then control the type and volume of emails they receive from Wikia.

Address

 * My email address: The field in which you see what current address you have on file. If you type in a new email address and save the page, you will be prompted to confirm your new email address.
 * Email Confirmation: If you need to confirm your email address, you will see text informing you that your email is not confirmed and then offer a link to resend your confirmation email if it has been misplaced. If you are already email confirmed, you will be told you are confirmed and given a timestamp of when it was done.

Followed pages
To learn what followed pages are, please consult this help page on followed pages.

These preferences will determine if your account will automatically watch the page when you make one of four major changes to a page:


 * When you edit a page
 * When you create a page
 * When you move a page
 * When you delete a page

Email me when...
Now that you have managed your subscriptions to a page through the followed page feature, you can also choose how much communication you receive about those pages. These are fairly self explanatory. Some quick notes:


 * "Minorly changed" - means a user making a change to the page has checked the "minor edit" box.
 * For communities with Message Walls or Forums enabled, you will see another section entitled "Message Wall and Forum" and a dropdown field to choose how you should be mailed.
 * Wikias with the old user talk page system rely upon the previous box of "my user talk page is changed" for those followed pages emails.

Advanced options

 * Mark all pages from my Weekly Digest as visited - This option is only available if you're an admin of the community you're currently on. If you do not visit pages outlined in a Weekly Digest, you may be presented with the same list on your next Weekly Digest.

Disable all emails
Email communication is a critical tool that allows you to stay attuned on what is going on your favorite communities as well as on Wikia as a whole.

We presented you on this Email tab with plenty of options to suit the types and volume of emails you receive from Wikia. If you have concerns about email, we would suggest you review your general email preferences first.

That said, Wikia does respect your right to not be emailed from our network if you do not wish to be contacted by us. As such, if you check this box, you will not receive any emails from Wikia until the checkbox is unchecked.

Editing experience

 * Preferred editor - see Help:Editing
 * Widen the Source mode edit box to fill the entire screen - collapses the modules normally displayed to the right of the editor such as the button to add a photo or gallery and also moves the edit summary to the top of the editing bar.
 * Mark all edits as "minor" by default
 * Prompt me if I leave a blank edit summary
 * Do not show syntax highlighting in Source mode
 * Do not show link suggest in Source Mode - If you start typing an internal link ( [[ ) followed by a few characters, a pop-up will appear that will let you autocomplete the page name you are trying to link to. Checking this box will disable that feature.

Advanced editing options
This option allows you to choose which font style you'll see when you edit.

Starting an edit

 * Show section edit links - Enables/disabled a clickable "edit" button for appearing next to any H2 or H3 headline.
 * Edit sections by right clicking on section titles - Again applies to H2 or H3 headlines.
 * Edit pages on double click - A JavaScript shortcut that allows you to simply double click on the body of a page to open the editing window.
 * Disable Category module - Only applies if visual mode editing is disabled.
 * Use a blank page as default for creating a new page
 * Disable "Create a new article" flow - Not recommended.

Under the hood
This tab combines a number of highly technical, specialized preferences. If you are new to wikis and editing, you may want to leave this tab alone until you understand how most of these tools perform normally.

Recent Changes, Histories, and Logs

 * Days to show in recent changes: - Default: 7 days
 * Number of Edits to Show by Default: - Default: 50 edits
 * Use advanced recent changes - Must have JavaScript enabled.
 * Hide minor edits in recent changes - suppresses all edits on the feed marked with "m".

Followed pages feed
This will control followed pages behavior.

Advanced display options

 * Hide page content below diffs - By default, when viewing a history diff, the newer of the two versions will have its full page text and rendering displayed as well.
 * Hide diff after performing a rollback - Removes an auto-redirect for users with the rollback right.
 * Enable personal JavaScript - In order to use personal Javascript, this option must is enabled.
 * Enable Go-Search - If your search term matches an existing page, it'll take you straight there.
 * Search all namespaces by default
 * Show hidden categories
 * Hide my followed pages list from everybody - Makes your Special:Following list private.
 * Enable View source on threads

Facebook Connect
The Facebook Connect extension has its own tab on your preferences. It is a tool that can help log in you to Wikia with the click of a button as well as more easily share information about your wikia to your Facebook friends and feed. Please click here to learn more about this tool.

If you have not yet connected your Wikia account to Facebook, one of the ways you can do so is going to this tab in Preferences and follow the link to start the connection process.

This is also the tab where you can choose to disconnect your account from Facebook Connect.

Non-default tabs & sections
In addition to the default tabs & sections listed above, some extensions add extra preferences to your Preferences page. Please view the help pages linked to learn about these special preferences.


 * Gadgets - The Gadgets extension will add a completely new tab to your Special:Preferences page.
 * Patrolled editing - Adds a few options to your "Under the Hood" tab.

Further help and feedback
de:Hilfe:Einstellungen es:Ayuda:Preferencias fr:Aide:Préférences ja:ヘルプ:個人設定 ko:도움말:사용자 환경 설정 nl:Help:Voorkeuren pl:Pomoc:Preferencje pt:Ajuda:Preferências ru:Справка:Настройки uk:Довідка:Налаштування zh:Help:參數設置