Help:Blogs

Beta



Wikia blog articles are articles written and attributed to one person that can be voted, commented on, and organized into a listing like a typical Blog. They are different than a typical wiki article in that it they are not intended to be a collaboratively written piece of content, but instead one person's piece of work.

Some examples why a user would choose a blog article instead of a traditional wiki article:


 * Fan fiction and original work
 * Op-eds and personal stories
 * Articles that pose questions or solicit responses
 * Reviews, suggestions or recommendations

It's entirely up to each wiki's community as to how it gets used!

How the blogging system works
There are three main sections to the blogging system: the blog post itself, the user's blog page, and the blog listing page.

Blog Posts
A blog post page is created via. Votes and comments are defaulted to on, but can be switched off at user's preference.

Each post is created under the title " ", though the article itself will only show " ".

Only the original poster and administrators can edit blog posts, as it is a "personal" area on the wiki.

Comments
Blog posts are enabled with commenting functionality which takes the place of discussion pages. Each comment shows up on the recent changes list, and clicking on it will take you to the blog post.

''Admins: Comments can be removed by adding  to the comment's URL. This area is planned for future improvement.''

User Blog Page
This page is automatically generated from a user's recent blog posts. It resides under the address " " and can be accessed from any person's user page. Note: you can edit this page to add a section of test above the blog posts.

Blog Listing Pages
Blog Listing Pages allow you to create a list of blog posts by category. You can access this via, or the link on the edit toolbar on the top of any existing Blog Listing page.

A listing page is essentially a simple implementation of an Embedded Blog Listing, described below.

Embedded Blog Listing
This feature allows you to embed a blog listing within a normal wiki article. It's like a blog listing page to go, and uses the  extension.

There are a number of parameters you can define to format the embedded list to fit within different content pages - e.g. Main Page, Community Portal, Contest Page, etc.

Basic form
The basic form of the extension is as following:

 Cat1 Cat2 Wikian1 Wikian2

Note that category and author are written differently to other inputs as they can take multiple inputs. Using author and category together gives you posts by the selected authors from the selected categories.

Inputs

 * category
 * This is "or" selector - i.e. give it several categories, and it will collate posts from each category together. Defaults to all categories (even uncategorized posts).
 * To use it type:

Category1 Category2 Category3


 * author
 * This is "or" selector - i.e. give it several authors, and it will collate posts from each author together. Defaults to all authors.
 * To use it type:

Author1 Author2 Author3


 * count
 * This is the number of posts shown. Takes a number (integer) input. Defaults to 5.
 * For example:


 * summary
 * Whether a section of the blog post is shown on the listing. Boolean, defaults to false. If true, shows first 200 characters.
 * For example:


 * summarylength
 * Allows you to specify length of the text quoted in characters, if summary=true.
 * For example:


 * type
 * Choose the output style - either box or plain. Defaults to box. Plain is just the content, without box styling.
 * For example:


 * title
 * When posts are shown in a box, this is shown as the box title. If it uses multiple words, the text must be written in quote marks.
 * For example:


 * style
 * This allows the addition of extra style parameters for the listing, and works like normal CSS styling. Defaults to nothing.
 * For example :


 * order
 * How the post are sorted. Inputs are date, author. Defaults to date.
 * For example :


 * ordertype
 * What direction to sort in. Inputs are descending, ascending. Defaults to descending.
 * For example :


 * timestamp
 * Whether a timestamp is shown. Boolean, defaults to false.
 * For example :

Sample code
 Blog Glob Kirkburn Legolas Drizzt

New masthead and user avatars
In addition to the blog article functionality, we are introducing a new user "masthead", and user avatars. This is intended to bring all user-related pages together and give users more of an identity.

Masthead
The links you see depend on what page you are viewing:


 * Your own user pages
 * User, User talk, Blog, Contributions, Watchlist, Manage widgets, Preferences.


 * Other user pages
 * User, User talk, Blog, Contributions, Email user.


 * Anonymous user pages
 * User, User talk, Contributions.

Avatars
To the left of the links in the masthead, on blog posts and comments and a few other areas you will see an avatar. Clicking on the masthead avatar will bring you to the user page for that user.

Avatars have an upload size of 100x100px, and are shown at 50x50px on the masthead (and several different sizes elsewhere). They carry across all Wikia.

To choose your avatar, visit the first (User profile) tab of Special:Preferences. You can upload your own, or the options give you several default options to choose from. Administrators can customize this list of options via MediaWiki:Blog-avatar-defaults.

Summary of the new additions

 * Functionality
 * Blog posts
 * Blog post listings (pages and extension)
 * Masthead and avatar


 * Namespaces
 * "User blog:" - for user blog posts.
 * "Blog:" - for blog listing pages.


 * Special pages
 * Special:Preferences - to choose your avatar
 * Special:Preferences - to choose your avatar
 * Special:Preferences - to choose your avatar