User talk:Nick R 2007

Hi Nick R 2007 -- we are excited to have VSide Wiki as part of the Wikia community!

Starting a new wiki can be overwhelming, but don't worry, the Wikia Community Team is here to help! We have put together a few guides to getting started. They say imitation is the best form of flattery so absolutely check out other wikis on Wikia for ideas on layout, ways to organize your content, etc. We are all one big family at Wikia and the most important thing is to have fun!


 * Our guide to Getting Started gives you 5 things you can do right now to set your wiki up for success
 * We also put together some Advice On Starting a Wiki which provides a more a in-depth look at some of the important things you should consider when building a wiki
 * If you are new to wikis in general than we recommend checking our new user FAQ

If you need help (which trust me we ALL do) you can access our full in-depth help at Help Wikia, or email us through our contact form. Also, you can visit our live #wikia chat channel any time. A lot of the veteran "Wikians" hang out here so its a good place if come if you want to get some advice or simply make friends.

Now, go edit! We look forward to seeing this project thrive!

Best wishes, Catherine Munro

Questions
Hi Nick,

To answer the questions you left on my talk page: you can add accent graphics by using this code in Monaco.css:

background-image: url(URL_TO_YOUR_IMAGE); height: 155px; width: 300px; }
 * 1) accent_graphic1 {

background-image: url(URL_TO_YOUR_IMAGE); height: 155px; width: 1000px; top: 20px; right: 20px; }
 * 1) accent_graphic2 {

To get the URL_TO_YOUR_IMAGE, upload the image to the wiki, go to the "Image:Imagename" page for it, then click the hyperlink underneath the image that's displayed on the image description page, so that you see the full-sized image all by itself on a blank page. The url in your browser's address bar is the one you want to copy into your CSS.

Also, the page title can be hidden using CSS which targets the page name. Here's what Speed Racer Wiki uses -- substitute your own main page name after the hyphen (please only use this on your main page):

/*** Hide the page title (firstheading) and subtitles on the main page****************** .page-Speed_Racer_Wiki * .firstHeading, .page-Speed_Racer_Wiki * h3#siteSub, .page-Speed_Racer_Wiki * #contentSub { display:none; }

/*

Speaking of main page titles, I note you moved yours from "Vside Wiki" to "Main Page" -- that's your right of course but we have found from experience that using the site topic and the word "wiki" in the title of the main page significantly affects the site's placement in search engine rankings. It will be much easier for your audience to find your wiki if you move it back.

Also, we strongly suggest that you don't protect your main page from edits -- it's where many new users may be inclined to do their first editing and if they can't click the edit button there, they may think the whole site is protected and never click an edit button again, and you may lose potential community members. While it may mean a little more work undoing test edits, or even the occasional vandalism, reverting is easy so the cost is low, compared to the benefits of maintaining an open project.

You've done some really nice work on the wiki so far, and I look forward to seeing it grow! Please let me know if you have more questions. — Catherine (talk) 18:31, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The delay in seeing the effects of your edits to Monaco.css are simply due to your browser's cache storing previous versions of the page for quicker display. To see the changes, use "CTRL-F5" to force your browser to get the page directly from our server instead of from its cache.


 * The message on Star Wars is stored in a template -- a page starting with "Template:" like Template:Welcome -- any text or graphics on the template page can then be displayed on any other page by using curly brackets like .  (The welcome template is something you can use to say hello to new visitors, if you see a new name on Special:Recentchanges -- this is a great way to encourage them to keep coming back.)  You can use templates for messages, warnings, page or image layout, or anything else you find yourself typing over and over again.


 * Note you can sign your posts using four tildes (~) -- it automatically provides a link to your user page, and the date and time of your post. Hope that helps!  — Catherine (talk) 20:34, 18 June 2008 (UTC)