Forum:Editing the Episode Infobox

How can I change the infobox so that, for example, instead of "Airdate" it says "Original Broadcast"? Also, I'd like to change the Seeason/Epiosde line so that it is in two columns, with Season and Episode as headings and the figures underneath. If I could have a line dividing the columns, and also one underneath before the 'Airdate' line, even better.

Any help gratefully recieved TellyFan 11:39, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

I'm no expert with infoboxes. But basically, you need to go the template (should be Template:Infobox episode or something similar, you can probably search for it). From there it's set up much like a table. Changing airdate to orginal broadcast wouldn't be a problem, the rest of it could be done, but it might be a bit of work. You might want to give your wiki/find link to infobox, then maybe someone who knows a bit more about this can help you out. 13:35, July 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * You could have a look at Help:Infobox.  Manyman  (Talk)  13:44, July 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * I was about to write that I was still stuck but I've just realised I've been put of by the 'Visit Template:Infobox episode/doc to edit this text!' text and haven't actually been clicking on the 'edit this page' link! Doh! I knew it had to be there somewhere! I may want help with my box thing I was talking about but I shalln't worry about that for now!TellyFan 10:06, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

Column widths
The default setting seems to be that your headings ('Writer' etc) are in a wider column than the name of the writer. I have experimented with a writer with a long name and see the right hand column gets wider to fit the name in one one line, but coud I make the default wider? Not having a heading any longer than "Original Broadcast", the current default leaves a lot of empty space in the middle of the infobox. TellyFan 02:13, July 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * That sounds strange. Please link to the template you're talking about. Unless you do, we can't know what the heck you're talking about and personally, I find this annoying. The default Template:Infobox in the starter Wikia defaults the 1st column to 30% of the width of the box and the 2nd column to 70%. So whatever infobox you're talking about has clearly been modified from the base start one or is completely custom. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 8:04 PM PST 12 Jul 2010
 * The clue was in the title of the thread! Template:Infobox_episode has white space in the middle. The 30%/70% thing sounds good. Perhaps the default should be changed to that for consistencies sake?TellyFan 08:43, July 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * I've suggested on the template wiki that it be modified so that there is less white space. TellyFan 11:05, July 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * TellyFan - please note that Fandyllic and others who try to help are not psychic as to which wiki (of the 100,000+ odd Wiki's to chose from) to look at for the template (many wikis can have a Episode Template) & as said above it gets very frustrating trying to reply in general terms and then users just come back and say - It dont work - when a quick look often reveals the problem & it can be fixed easily with out entering into great long Q & A string of posts with both sides getting frustrated (as you found when you tried to help in one of the other forum posts recently). Also even though Infoboxes are relatively straightforward in the basic principles there are many different ways of creating them, especially if 'borrowed' from other established wikis or wikipedia & the underling formating (styling) can/is done differently. People often think they have created an Infobox template when they have only added the 'input list' of parameters to a page & no template actually exists (Wikia's RTE does not help people in this respect as it hides templates normally).


 * The best way of understanding templates is to look at other examples and figure out what does what, but be wary of over complex wikipedia & some of the very big Wika sites ones that are built from multiple sub templates. If in edit mode you see a huge list of other templates at the bottom of the page be careful. Also a lot of the default 'style' (colours, borders etc) info is added by classes in the Mediawiki:monaco.css  for more complex templates - BulldozerD11 11:35, July 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I assumed people would take "Episode Infobox" to mean 'the standard episode infobox template that comes automatically with the wiki'. I hadn't created anything with lots of empty space, I just wanted to know why it came like that, and can it be changed.
 * I've looked at the general template and saw that the 30/70% column indicators were before title 1 and info 1 repsectively, but doing it like that on the standard episode infobox doesn't seem to work - it put the ENTIRE infobox in the 30% column except for what is entered into "info 1"! So I have had a go. Do you not agree that the standard template would be improved by the removing of so much empty space?TellyFan 12:03, July 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi TellyFan you can modify them by adding extra parameters for just about ANY of the 'style parameters' to your base infobox template with default values set so if it is missed out it has a 'reasonably consistent look'. Fandyllic has been developing one at the templates wiki Here that allows most style elements to be customised but you then have a large list of parameters that can be set.


 * Some wikipedia infobox templates use the core wikipedia:template:Infobox code called by the customised versions to simplify the article specific templates then you only need set the within the Template code (Custom infobox) and the Input required on the Article page is just the labels and data to be displayed. The Starter wiki Episode infobox was deliberately kept simple to act as a very basic example of the principles when people start wikis.


 * Heres one on my wiki that was developed over the last 2 years but started as a wikipedia one Here it still has several minor faults but when updated it updates 1000's of pages automatically other than adding new input items to the article pages (but they show up on early pages as a missing style item so they can be  when the page is edited and thus updated. (they can be suppressed but then people do not know they are missing from the page). I've never got round to fixing the heading /date width problem fully as the tables width varies depending on the size of image used. In some cases labels are better forced to wrap by adding a   within the line of text as is done with data to stack multiple entries on one data row (item). It includes automatic categorised based on some of the data cells & sections that only display if data present etc. - BulldozerD11 15:46, July 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Bulldozer. I think I got the general gist of what you wrote, though I'm not sure what a lot of it had to do with my querry? You did say the episode infobox was deliberatley kept simple. That's fine, but if the BASIC infobox can have widths, I don't see how adding them to the episode one makes it any more complicated? As it happens (now I've found out how to do it), having changed 'Air date' to 'Original Broadcast', 30% is too narrow, so I would recommend the infobox is changed to 40%/60%.
 * By the way, do you know about the "Unknown" template? Instead of having, it displays it in grey as 'unknown', and the article gets added to an 'articles with incomplete infoboxes' category. It might make the box look a little nicer rather than having curly brackets on show. See it in use at the Shrek wiki.TellyFan 11:55, July 16, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that tip TellyFan, I'll have to look at that one. There are so many different ways of doing things and usefull templates that have evolved as wikia & wikis have developed its allways usefull to find others to look at.


 * Trying to pitch an answer to explain things can sometime lead me to rambling off at a tangent ;) Some of my long answers are probably as confusing as some of the overly brief 'questions' & some of the brief replies that also appear on here (the forum in general) at times. Anyway at least you found a solution eventually to your problem indirectly. - BulldozerD11 21:00, July 16, 2010 (UTC)


 * Although the starter gives you default templates, one can never know if people at a particular wiki have modified them until you actually get a link to the template. As they say, "when you AssUMe, you make an Ass of U and Me." -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 11:20 AM PST 13 Jul 2010
 * Hi, Fandyllic. You sounded just like my dad there lol! I take your point, but I did refer to 'default' settings. Though in actual fact I see I claimed the left column was 'wider'. I think that's cos it LOOKED wider with all the empty space lol! So maybe I confused things there. Nonetheless, it seemed odd that you showed a link to a different infobox to the one I referred to, and then said what I had described didn't match this infobox, so must have been modified or custom (also an assumption). Anyway, I got there in the end. :) TellyFan 11:55, July 16, 2010 (UTC)
 * Uh oh. I hope yr dad is a nice guy. I just mentioned the don't assume thing, because depending on when your wiki was created, the "defaults" may be different. As Wikia changes their starter, so do the defaults. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 9:58 AM PST 16 Jul 2010