- Script for File:Tutorial on starting a sandbox article on Wikipedia.ogv. Each line is a separate slide.
This is a walkthrough of how to start an article in a sandbox on Wikipedia. You can
use a sandbox to
experiment with wiki syntax,
make practice edits,
take notes and collect material,
or draft an article that can later be moved into Wikipedia.
To make a user sandbox,
First
you need to
log in to your user account. If you don't already have one or need help logging in, type
"Help:Logging in" into the search box on Wikipedia. That page has information about creating an account and logging in--including a tutorial video.
Once you've logged in,
click on your username at the top of the page. This will bring you to your
user page. Your sandbox will be a subpage of your user page. We'll start by creating a link to the page title we want. Press the
edit button.
This will bring up an edit window. Now add
two opening square brackets, then
a forward slash followed by the name you want for the page. We'll use
"sandbox" for this example.
Then add two closing square brackets.
This is the wiki markup for making a link to a subpage. Now
Save your edit.
You've added the link to your user page. The link will be red, because the page it points to doesn't exist yet. Now
click the link. That will bring up
a page like this, which says
"Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact name", with an
edit window beneath where you can begin composing your sandbox page. Once you've
written a little bit of your sandbox article, you can
press the show preview button
beneath the edit window to
see what the page will look like.
Then,
enter an edit summary in the field beneath the edit window to describe what you've done, and
press Save.
You've started your sandbox article! You can always
press edit to make more changes.
Happy editing!