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 wikis, so the same preferences are applied on every wiki you visit. To access your preferences, move your mouse over your username 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 wiki in.
 * Note: This applies to the interface on all wikis, so while the content of a DE wiki 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 wiki in the English language.
 * Date: Allows for users to change how they wish to see timestamps.
 * Time: 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.
 * Ads: Registered users on Wikia can hide most of the ads our anonymous users see. Consider it a perk of membership. Some admins, though, like seeing all the ads on a wiki so they can understand the user experience for their anonymous readers.
 * Landing Page: Users can either choose between going to the Main Page of a wiki (MediaWiki:Mainpage) or to Special:WikiActivity when going directly to the wiki's URL from the address bar.

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.
 * Note: As of March 2012, users must be email confirmed when registering.

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

These preferences will determine when 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 wikis with message wall enabled, you will see another mini-section entitled "Message Wall" and a dropdown field to choose how you should be mailed.
 * Wikis 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

 * Send me HTML options: If you have an email client that has the capability to render HTML messages, it may be wise to check this box. HTML-rich messages from Wikia contain hyperlinks that make it much easier to go to a page you are being emailed about.
 * Enable email from other users - If you check this box, wiki users can contact you via the Special:EmailUser function.
 * Reveal my email address in notification emails - Some users are willing to share their email to aid wiki communication. That said, please do not check this field if you have concerns about privacy or are a minor.
 * Mark all pages from my Weekly Digest as visited - 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 wikis 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

 * Enable visual editing - Enables the visual editing mode for your account. By default this is turned on. If the box is deselected, you will only see the source mode (aka wikitext) editor.
 * This preference also applies to the new VisualEditor feature which may be enabled on some communities.
 * Some wikis do not have a visual editor enabled due to overall community preference. Even if you have this preference checked, you will not see any visual editing option on those wikis.
 * Widen the Source mode edit box to fill the entire screen - Removes 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 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.

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 "Create a new article" flow - Not recommended.
 * Disable Category module - Only applies if visual mode editing is disabled.

Under the hood
This tab combines a number of highly technical, specialized preferences. If you are new to wikis and wiki 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 default RSS feed behaviour. Please view this help page for an in depth explanation of this tool and its configuration.

Search
You can choose which namespaces to search, and how many results to return, when using Wikia's internal search function.

It also allows you to turn "Search suggest" on and off - this suggests results as you type words into the search box.

In detail:
 * Hits per page: You may choose the number of results returned on each page of search results.
 * Lines per hit: Specifying a number n means "do not show any context if the search term occurs beyond line n in the page." Setting this to 5000 or more gives context for every occurrence.
 * Context per line: The number of characters of context per occurrence; however, the context is anyway restricted to the "line" (anything without a line break; usually a paragraph) it occurs in. To get the whole line, choose a large number like 5000.
 * Search in these namespaces by default: Choose which types of pages you would like to appear in searches by default. (You will be able to change these options from the search page.) For example, selecting "Main" only will return only articles, selecting "Main" and "Talk" would search articles and their discussion pages.

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.
 * Hide my followed pages list from everybody - Makes your Special:Following list private.

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 wiki 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.

Once you have enabled this tool, you will see many new preferences appear. These all control if you want your contributions to Wikia to be posted to your Facebook wall. By default, none of these are checked.

You may also check the last checkbox - "Never submit anything to my News Feed" - which will override any of the above checked boxes and will prevent any information being posted to your Facebook feed.

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.