User blog:Face Monster/Face Monster's Guide to Source Editor

I noticed that most of this wiki's contributors use the Visual Editor, which is really bad. I can't see how this thing can be comfortable for an intelligent person, so I assume that people just don't know that there is the great and lovely Source Editor. So, I decided to write this guide, which is more like a "cheat sheet", to improve the contributions on BlazBlue Wiki.

Why you should use the Source Editor
The Help page states that "Editing on Wikia is generally as simple as clicking the 'Edit' button on a page".

It's not.

When clicking the 'Edit' button, most users will see VisualEditor, or sometimes the Rich Text Editor. Both of them are shit. You see, Wikia works on the MediaWiki engine, and uses MediaWiki's wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit the pages easily. And this is great, but...

Wikia decided to go even further, and make it so people would not need to learn even wikitext, by inventing the Visual Editor. As every other Wikia feature, 'fluid layout' for example, it is terrible.

Some examples:
 * 1) Here, you can see that the Visual Editor doesn't know how to use the internal links properly, and it also lets unnecessary symbols into tags. (My browser has a bugged spellchecker.)
 * 2) Here, you can see that the Visual Editor doesn't care if there are any source users and just turns all of the infobox code into unreadable mess. Yes, that is the User Infobox.
 * 3) And this is from the Russian wiki, a really extreme example of what horrible things can do a stupid contributor with the use of Visual Editor. Please don't do that.

For people, who use the Visual Editor, it is not really a problem, they just don't see this awful code. The source users see it, and suffer from it. But the Visual Editor is very limited, e.g., you can't create an advanced table with it, like the "Musical themes" or "Stages" tables on this wiki, you have to use the Source Editor for such stuff.

So, the Visual Editor makes mess of everything and has limited capabilities. That is why we should use the nice and sweet Source Editor.

Switching to Source Editor
You can actually edit the page's source code in VE or RTE, I think there were options for it, but why would anyone use these awful editors to switch to the source mode and then edit, if you can start editing the source code right after you click the "Edit" button?

To use the Source Editor, you should choose it as your default editor on the Preferences page, third tab, first section, third item in the dropdown list.

It's in Russian on this screenshot, but you should see the page in whatever language you chose for you.

You have to be logged into your Wikia account to access this page, and if you don't have it, but you actually want to be a regular contributor of this wiki, you can create an account here.

Using the Source Editor
After you set this sweetie as your preferred editor, when you click the 'Edit' button, you'll see this, minus the bugged spellchecker. It looks cute, right? They even made it easier by highlighting some parts of the code!

Now, let's learn the wikitext. The Help page states that "Wikitext can be used to add photos, tables, bold styles, links, and other visual changes". Below is a "cheat sheet" that shows you what things you can do in the Source Editor and how to do them.

Headers, line breaks and indents
{| align="center" border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="2" class="darktable" style="width: 100%; " ! style="text-align: center; width: 50%"|You type ! style="text-align: center; width: 50%"|You get ! colspan="2" style="text-align:center;"|Headers (work only when used at the start of a line of code) =Level 1= This header is automatically used for the page's title. If you use it in the article, I'll find you and rip your heart out

Level 6
! colspan="2" style="text-align:center;"|Line breaks Single line breaks do not affect the code Line one

Line two ! colspan="2" style="text-align:center;"|Indents (work only when used at the start of a line of code) One
 * Line one Line two
 * Line one Line two
 * Line one Line two
 * Two
 * Three
 * Four


 * }

Customization options
Of all of these options I prefer to use this: .

Conclusion
Now that is a very long list, but it is actually very easy to memorize this stuff. And if you looked at some pages before and asked yourself "What sorcery is this?", now you know how to do this sorcery yourself! Just don't be afraid to try it, and use the preview buttons to make sure you did everything properly. If you have trouble with something, you can use the already existing pages as a reference, and if this doesn't help, you can ask questions on the Forum, or on my message wall. I don't bite, as long as you don't ask me stupid questions like "will Mei and Touya be playable in CF?" .

If someone here is interested, I can also write a couple of blogs about templates of this wiki, and some useful scripts from the Dev Wiki. Sometime later.