Revision as of 21:30, 1 September 2011

First of all please take the time to read and understand this guide thoroughly before starting. It will provide lots of information on how to create your content and how to fit it into the site to avoid it disappearing into obscurity. Before you go about editing your first page can we recommend that you either open this page in another window/tab print it out etc. etc. so that you have a reference when editing!

Site Organisation

First off a brief note on how content is orgainised so you are familiar with the concept

Everything that's user added is placed into a specific category based on it's content. From each category there are a number of related sub categories.

As a example Maintenance is a category. Under this are sub categories for engine maintenance, brake system maintenance, etc. etc

The top level categories are all listed out on the main site entry page

Car Related content

Nearly all of the vehicle related content on this site is fitted into categories

A Category is a notional grouping of material which covers a particular type of subject

There are currently 4 categories for articles :-

• Maintenance :- All articles related to maintining the car
• Modification:- All articles involving modification or upgrading the car
• Information :- Information on the car itself, relevant general background info
• Media  :- Articles from around the web, magazine articles etc etc

User Related Content

There are two categories for user information

• User_profiles :- Personal info page about the user.
• User projects :- Information on a users ongoing projects

How to add technical content

Technical content is content that explains how to do a particular job on the car.

This guide is the only way that is recommended for adding content. Following this guide will add your content to the correct place and ensure that it is visible to others even if you miss some steps

• Decide what the basic type of your article is
  • Maintenance, modification information etc
• From the main site page navigate into that category
• You should now see a page for that category with a number of sub-categories listed
  • engine, chassis, brakes etc
• Next to each sub-category you will see an edit link (if you're logged in). Click it
• The edit page will open and you'll see something like

== [[:Category:Engine_maintenance|Engine Maintenance]] ==

[[ST215 engine rebuild|Rebuilding a ST215 3S-GTE engine]]

[[ST205 engine swap|ST205 Engine removal guide]]

[[:Category:error_codes|Check for error codes]]

[[Change cambelt|Change The Cambelt]]

• The text in the middle of == == is the category title
  • Copy or make a note of the Category:xxxxxxxxxxx text from this line
• The text between [[ ]] is a link to an article
• Add a new line with the title of your article between [[ ]]
• Hit the preview button. You should see a preview of the page.
• There should be a new red link with your article title in the section you edited
• If everything looks OK hit the Save button to save your changes to the page
• You have now added your article to the page. But you haven't actually created the article.
• Now to create the article itself.
• Click on the red link and you'll be taken to a blank edit page. Add your text
• Keep editing and previewing until you're happy with the content
• The last act is to add your article to the correct sub category
• Remember the Category:xxxxxxxxx line you noted above?
• Add it to the very bottom of your article contained in [[ ]] to categorise your article
• Hit the save button to finally save your page
• It should save everything then show you your page. This will look exactly like the preview you saw before saving
• At the very end of the page should be a line Category:xxxxxxx
  • Make sure the category link is not red.
    • If it is you typed the category wrong in the article. Correct it to use the correct category

That's it. It sounds complicated but when you try it it's not difficult. You're welcome to view the source code for existing pages (click the edit button at the top of the page) but please don't accidentally save them!