Help:Cheat sheet

USApedia uses the MediaWiki software, which is the same software that drives Wikipedia. There are two options for editing a Wiki page:

1. Use the visual editor, also know as a "rich-text editor" or What You See Is What You Get. To use the visual editor, click the "Edit" link within the top navigation bar. You can use the visual editor just as you would edit in Microsoft Word or other word processing software.
2. Use a combination of Enhanced editor and wikitext by clicking on "Edit source" link within the top navigation bar.

There are instructions below about how to use Wikitext.

1. The section below called Basic Wiki Skills contains the most common wikitext for the vast majority of editing. This section contains information on how to:
   • make sections
   • make bullets and numbered lists
   • make links to other pages in USApedia
   • make links to websites beyond USApedia
2. The remaining sections contain links and information on cheat sheets in other locations, like Wikipedia. Please also see Help:Formatting.

Basic Wikitext Skills

Sections allow you to separate your article into logical blocks. They also are the foundation for the table of contents, which is automatically displayed after the fourth section is added.

Sections are added by putting a section title between two or more equal signs. Like this:
== This is a section heading == -- (Two equal signs on either side)
=== This is a sub-section === -- (Three equal signs on either side)
Capitalization of section headings should follow sentence case.

Bullets

To make a bulleted list, you simply use an asterisk (*) at the beginning of the line

Wikitext

* This is a bullet

* This is a second bullet
** Indented bullet

What you get

• This is a bullet
• This is a second bullet
  • Indented bullet

Numbered lists

To make a numbered list, use a pound sign, #, at the beginning of the line

1. Numbered list item
2. Numbered list item
   1. Indented numbered list

Links

File:USApedia special keys.png

There are two types of links:

• Internal links create links to other articles in USApedia. The common practice is to make key nouns in your articles into links. This is called wikifying your article.
• External links allow you to create a link from USApedia to a website beyond USApedia. Common style is only put external links on a page that are directly about the topic. External links about other topics should be put on a USApedia page about that topic.

Internal Links (Wikify)

Wikify refers to adding "internal links" to articles, which helps integrate the article into the whole of USApedia; structuring an article so that all articles have a relatively common appearance for ease of navigation and editing; and placing applicable templates and categories on articles.

Making internal links is one of the single most important types of edits you can make in USApedia and they are exceptionally easy. You can do it manually or using the edit bar:

• To use the edit bar, first highlight the word(s) you want to be a link. Then, click the chain link icon above the edit bar. This allows you to decide what article you want to link to and what text you want to display.
• You can also simply put two square brackets around the word(s), e.g. [[Congress]]. To change the displayed text, include a vertical bar | followed by the text to be displayed, e.g. [[Congress|US Congress]] becomes US Congress, linking to the page "Congress."

Example internal links:

• More needed
• [[Wikipedia:Manhattan Project]] will add a direct link to the article in Wikipedia and becomes Wikipedia:Manhattan Project. (See Interwiki links).

External Links

To make an external link, select the text you would like to hyperlink, then click the chain link icon. Enter the target URL and edit the text you wish to display, if desired. Select the toggle for "To an external web page." You may also type the URL followed by the text to be displayed inside of single square brackets.

Example:

• [https://www.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html Vatican website] becomes Vatican website

Strategies

Bad page names

Main page: USApedia:Naming convention

• Examples needed

The Four Primary Tools of linking topics

• Redirects
• Wikification
• Categories
• Navboxes

Tools to aid in linking

• Template:Breadcrumbs - explanation Breadcrumbs
• {{W}} to add a link to wikipedia.
• {{main}} or {{learn}} links
• Wikify, wikify, wikify

Best External Cheat Sheets

There are a number of other Cheat sheets and tutorials available including:

• Wikitext Examples on Wikipedia
• User's Guide on for the MediaWiki software
• Help with Editing MediaWiki
• Wikipedia's page on Wikipedia's guide for writing a great wiki page.

Related

• Help:Article history - learn about how every version of an article is always available.
• Links - examples of internal and external links
• File:Qwertykeyboard.png - an image of a Qwerty keyboard without any annotation.
• Help:Wiki markup
• Help:Formatting