User blog:Batorhos/When making a wiki...

So when I make a wiki, I usually start with some basic stuff. Here is what I would do if I were you.
 * Design theme. Usually the background is a tiled picture that looks like it's one big background, or I make it fixed through MediaWiki:Wikia.css, which is usually better for pictures.
 * Add userbox customization (ex: w:c:potcoplayers:Template:Userbox).
 * Add page banner customization (ex: w:c:potcoplayers:Template:PageBanner).
 * Make the main page. I have my own way of making it. I made an export of main page templates a long time ago, and all I do is import them and add the the code to the main page, and upload pictures if needed.
 * Start making pages (we should all know what this mean but for the new guys out there, making a page is adding a content article to the wiki).
 * Fix the list of administrator on the :Administrators.
 * Possibly find some more administrators.
 * Add colors for admin comments, and make an @Admins photo for the bottom (just like @Wikia for Wikia staff).
 * Add history highlighting for administrators.
 * Make some templates (depending on what the wiki is about). You should always have a male/female template, American, Indian, European user templates. Favorite color templates, just basic characteristics users can add to their user pages.
 * Fix the community corner.
 * Fix up the welcome messages.
 * Begin recruiting users. Advertise your wiki (ask on some wikis for it might annoy the admins).
 * As the wiki grows, come up with cool additions to the wiki so that users keep editing.
 * Encourage users that want to become admins by telling them that if you have mroe users, you will need more admins. Motivating them to invite people to the wiki, and while telling the truth.

Admin Comments Color CSS Code
.comments li[data-user="USERNAME"] blockquote { background:BG-COLOR url("LINK OF THe @ADMINS PHOTO YOU DESIGNES! SHOULDN'T BE RELLY BIG. RIGHT CLICK AND VIEW IMAGE TO FIND URL") bottom center no-repeat !important; } .comments li[data-user="USERNAME"] blockquote:after { border-color: transparent BG-COLOR BG-COLOR transparent !important; } .comments li[data-user="USERNAME"] blockquote div { background: transparent BurlyWood !important; } .comments li[data-user="USERNAME"] blockquote {color:FONT-COLOR; font-weight:bold; !important; } The above was for one user ONLY. You have to make a set of these for every user. So this is for 1 person, not 4 people.

Admin History Highlighting
table.diff a[href="/wiki/USERNAME"], ul#pagehistory li a[href="/wiki/USERNAME"], body.ns-0 a[href="/wiki/USERNAME"], body.ns-500 a[href="/wiki/USERNAME"], body.ns-501 a[href="/wiki/USERNAME"], body.ns--1 a[href="/wiki/USERNAME"] { color: HIGHLIGHT-COLOR; font-weight:bold; } If your username contains a space, always put a _ instead of a space, to where the space should originally go. This is because it's like a web address link in source mode, which if has a space starts what the link should look like, not where it should link to.

Userbox
 ==Usage== *It is suggested that you limit the size of any images in the id box to 40 pixels. *For a list of colors and the Hex triplet (eg., 007BA7) codes for them, see this Wikipedia page. *This page is to active userboxes. For userboxes you should make a page called "Template:Userbox", which will be the hosting template for userboxes. Copy and paste this code to the template and use the usage example code to create userboxes more easily.

Page Banners
==Usage== *For a list of colors and the Hex triplet (eg., 007BA7) codes for them, see this Wikipedia page. *This page is to active Page Banners, please DO NOT EDIT THIS page, if you make 1 little mistake, it can make all of the page banners not function properly until that 1 little mistake is fixed. Do the same thing you did for userboxes, but name the page "Template:PageBanner" instead of userbox. This is a host template too, be sure to protect it along with the userbox host template.

Main Page
Ok, so the main page is a little more advanced. It took me about 5 hours to develop this code, but it was worth it. The main page will eventually look something like this if you get it right. So since I don't think I can upload an eport file to the wiki (I'll try later though), you're gonna have to make some templates.

Page Sections
==Usage== I believe by now most of you have noticed that i use a lot of templates. This special template, I often use for main pages! Make a page called "Template:PageSection" and add the coding that I posted above. Then use the usage code to add thigns to the main page! I usually recommend making a template for the content part, and filling in tat tempate instead of editing the main page. Protect these templates to reduce the rist f vandalism to your main page.

Blog Listings
 plain date CATEGORY-HERE Another thing you can do is make a blog listing template, and put that template in the Page Section's content. This is one of my favorite ways to share things with the community. Simply make a page called "Template:WikiNews" and add the above doing I added. For the part that says CATEGORY-HERE add the name of the category you wish to add to blog posts to display the blogs in. You must make a blog in order for it to show up in the blog listing. For "count=4", 4 means the amount of blogs to display, so change it to however many blogs you want it to display. You must have at least 4 blogs if you put 4 for the count for it to start displaying blogs. These blogs will be arranged from latest to oldest from top to bottom.

Import Templates
You can import the templates: PageBanner, Userbox, and PageSection to your wiki by downloading this file from my personal google account, which is set to show to anybody with the link. Once downloaded, upload it to your wiki through Special:Import and you have those templates added to your wiki if you did it right!

Theme
Designing the theme for a wiki si a very important thing. Here are soem things to keep in mind for the theme designer. Luckily, I can tell you how to fix these and have better quality pictures. But this will slow site loading and is not recommended.
 * Wordmark must be 250 pixels in width, and 60 pixels in height.
 * Wordmark must be a .PNG image.
 * Background must be 100 kilobytes or smaller. Often it's 99.9 kilobytes because 100 is a little bit over.
 * Backgroud must be 365 kilobytes or smaller. Often it's 374.9 kilobytes because 356 is a little bit over.

To be continued...

If you have anything to add to this, or suggestions, feel free to comment so that new users who are making wikis can be just as familiar with this as you!


 * Sincerely,