User:Wdkarcher/Sandbox

This is a page you can work with to test out anything you want to.

There is a lot to learn.

A brief ad hoc tutorial:

If you gird a piece of text between square brackets (two per side), it will turn it into a hyperlink to a page on WP (called a "wikilink"). There are also ways to make links to Wikipedias in other languages (called "interwikilinks" or, more commonly, "interwikis"); and to pages that are external to WP (called "external links"), but they will be for later. Back to wikilinks. Here is a sentence:

The simpering brown fox is in love with the lazy owl.

Now I'm going to surround some of the words with two left square brackets on one side ("[["), and two right square brackets on the other ("]]"). The text will look like this as I type:

:The [[simpering]] brown [[fox]] is in [[love]] with the [[lazy owl]].

When I save, the result looks like this:

The simpering brown fox is in love with the lazy owl.

NOTE: "fox" and "love" are blue; and "simpering" and "lazy owl" are red. These are what are known, naturally enough, as "red links" and "blue links"; blue links lead you to a pages that have already been created; red links are pages that don't yet exist (but they may have existed in the past, only someone deleted them—a task only administrators, known as "admins", can do). Let's see what happens when I bracket "lazy" and "owl" seperately. I will type this:

:The [[simpering]] brown [[fox]] is in [[love]] with the [[lazy]] [[owl]].

which looks like this when I save it:

The simpering brown fox is in love with the lazy owl.

Aha! so there are pages for both the words "lazy" and "owl". Now lets make "simpering" in italics, and embolden "love". Just as we surround text with square brackets to make something into a link, we surround words we want to italicize with two sequential singular quotation marks (these things, after my arrow → ' ); and use three sequential quotation marks to embolden. Let's look at our sentence again, after adding those single quotes; we type:

:The ''[[simpering]]'' brown [[fox]] is in '''[[love]]''' with the [[lazy]] [[owl]].

which will look like this when we save:

The simpering brown fox is in love with the lazy owl.

NEXT.

The single colon (":") is used to indent once. Two colons ("::") are used to indent further. So, If I want to communicate with someone, but make the conversation more coherent, I use colons thus:

EXAMPLE with "nowikis"

"Hi Moe!" (no colons) :"Hi Felix!" (just one colon) ::"Hi Moe!" (two colons) :::"Felix, are you hard of hearing? I just said 'hi' back to you." (three colons) ::::"Hi Moe!" (four colons) :::::"(Arg) good-bye Felix!" (five colons) ::::::"Bye Moe!" (six colons)

EXAMPLE with "nowikis" removed

"Hi Moe!" (no colons)

"Hi Felix!" (just one colon)

"Hi Moe!" (two colons)

"Felix, are you hard of hearing? I just said 'hi' back to you." (three colons)

"Hi Moe!" (four colons)

"(Arg) good-bye Felix!" (five colons)

"Bye Moe!" (six colons)

Before each line I just added an additional colon.

NEXT.

Bullets are made using asterisks ("*"); and sections are made with equal signs ("="). Let's say I want to make a list of my favorite foods. I will type this:

==My favorite foods== ===Breakfasts=== *oatmeal *cornflakes *pancakes ===Dinners=== *lasagna **meat lasagna **vegetarian lasagna *meatloaf *garlic chicken ===Snacks=== *fruit *nuts *crackers

which looks like this when I save it:

My favorite foods

Breakfasts

oatmeal
cornflakes
pancakes

Dinners

lasagna
- meat lasagna
- vegetarian lasagna
meatloaf
garlic chicken

Snacks

fruit
nuts
crackers

NEXT.

How am I making some of this stuff display correctly, and other stuff not? For this I have used "no wikis". All I have to do is put <nowiki> on the initial side of what I type; and </nowiki> on the other side.

NEXT.

If I want something to show up only when editing (called "commenting out"), I place this "" on the other.

For example: I want to let other editors know something that isn't meant for the general reader. If I am editing an article, but I've forgotten where the reference I had for a certain fact came from, I might "comment out" the following: "I know this to be true, but have to locate the reference. It will be coming shortly". So, purely as a fictional example, I might type:

Jedidiah Brinks refutes this.

That is how it looks with "no wikis"; now I'm going to type the same thing, but with the "no wikis" removed. But you will only be able to see it when you open up the page for editing (if you do this it will be visible to you, but only then):

Jedidiah Brinks refutes this.

It is there, but only visible on the editing page.

IN CONFUSION … er CONCLUSION (for now):

Obviously, there is a lot more to learn (← Look! I just put five single quotation marks before and after the words "lot more" to make them simultaneously bold and italic), but knowing this stuff I've just put here will help you out a lot for starters. If you go to your talk page, I left you a bunch of helpful links that will help you learn how to edit, etc. I urge you read as much of it as you can bear. I freely admit, I haven't read most of it, but I do use it when I'm unsure of something.

Also, experiment away on this sub page; and if you want more sub pages just type the two left-sided square brackets, then "User:Wdkarcher" and then a slash ("/"), follow that with a new title (for example, the title "test page"), and then two more right-sided square brackets, and you will be creating red links to your own sub pages when you save (in this case, I would have made a red link to [[User:Wdkarcher/test page]]). Now, I just made this dummy red link with the "no wiki" feature. Now I'm going to remove the "no wikis", and this will create an actual red link, which can be changed into a blue link (i.e. an actual page by that name) by clicking on it, typing some text, and then saving. Here it is: User:Wdkarcher/test page. Note the "show preview", which shows how the edits you make will display, before you save. This prevents a lot of errors from showing up. "Show changes" does something similar (try it!) to "show preview". Also, as a good general rule for learning WP, take a look and see how others have done it; if you click the "edit" button, you don't have to edit; you can just look to see why the page looks, and behaves, the way it does. I learned almost everything I know how to do on WP in this way. All pages on WP are openable in this way, and no pages are off-limits, including the pages of editors (users) and their sub-pages. Anyone can edit any page. But if someone edits my page (User:Hamamelis), and I don't like what they've done, I just go to my page's "history", and click "undo". However, editing others' pages is generally not done (it's considered rude, unless you are undoing vandalism). But there is no harm in opening up another user's page and taking a look to see how they made their page look the way it looks, and behave the way it behaves!

Remember this: UNTIL YOU CLICK THE "SAVE" BUTTON, YOU CAN DO NO HARM!

Ask me anything you want to on my talk page. Good luck!! Hamamelis (talk) 01:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)