Help:Blogs

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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 they are not intended to be a collaboratively written pieces of content, but instead a single user's composition. The idea is to create more of a community feel for a wiki, and give users more outlets for their endless creativity.

Some examples of 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 and solicit responses
 * Reviews, suggestions or recommendations

Of course, 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 " " in the title area. Only registered users can make blog posts.

Blog posts can only be edited by the original poster and administrators, as it is a "personal" area on the wiki. When editing blog posts you can turn comments and voting on/off again using tickboxes shown just above the edit summary.

Posts are automatically categorised under. The name of this category can be changed at MediaWiki:Create-blog-post-category. A blank message means no category will be added.

Comments
Blog posts come with commenting functionality, which takes the place of discussion pages. Note that comments use wikitext-style input, so you can link other articles as normal. For posts with large numbers of comments, a comment entry box appears at the top of the comments as well.

Each comment shows up on the recent changes and user contributions lists, and clicking on it will take you to the blog post.

''Admins: Comments can be removed by using a delete link, shown next to the comment's timestamp.

''To access comment's own page, you will need to bypass the redirect. You can do this by adding  to the comment URL. For example: ''

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. RSS feeds are also provided, and should be picked up by your browser.

Note that you can edit this page to add a section of text above the blog posts, or to add a category. It's up to you!

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, which are described in more detail below.

Please note that the listing pages and extension do not update immediately upon creation of a new blog post. Either you can wait for the cache to clear (a couple of hours), edit the page, or add  to the URL of the listing page.

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. the main page, the community portal, a contest page, etc. - and it is extremely customizable.

For more information on how to use this extension, see Help:Blog article/Bloglist.

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 masthead shows both the user avatar and links to user-related pages. The links you see depend on what page you are viewing:


 * Your own user pages
 * User, User talk, Blog, Contributions, Watchlist, Widget Dashboard, Preferences.


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


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

If you wish to customize the color of the masthead for a custom skin, use .

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

Avatars have a size of 100x100px when uploaded, and are shown at 50x50px on the masthead (and several different sizes elsewhere). While the wiki can resize and crop images, you may want to do this offline to ensure best quality. The uploader accepts images up to 512kb, in PNG, JPG, GIF and BMP format, and any resolution. Avatars are carried 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. The avatar selection is only saved when you click "Save" on the preferences page.

''Administrators can remove bad avatars via a special page at. The option to delete avatars also appears as an option when hovering over other user's avatars.''

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