Editing Help:Getting Started and Making a Player Character Page

So you want to put your character onto the Celestial Compass Wiki? 
That's great! We're glad to have you and we're glad you chose us.

First off, let's define a few things. Celestial Compass Wiki is mostly admined and moderated by solely Koi, but with some help by others, if there are any issues, talk to Koi (Myself) and me and you can work together to sort things out! 
I'm pretty open and flexible to things, and I'm very leaniant. I will mostly come to you if I have an issue aswell! I'd reccomend being in the discord to do this, as then we can chat quicker and easier than other methods. (https://discord.gg/kzrYXj4y)

Secondly, Although I have some standards upon what normal wiki pages should look like, and the detail and fidelity of what they should be like, what's on your character pages is entirely up to you. I may come through and do some spelling adjustments and grammar, but if you leave a comment at the top stating, "Do not touch!" I'll honour that, so don't worry. 

I also will be outlining here what you could and should include, in terms of importance, there are some things that will be very important to the page displaying and functioning like a normal page, and other things that are entirely optional and that you don't need to include if you don't want to. I'll try to be upfront with that.

So without further ado, let's get started!

== Step 1: Signing up for an account. ==

On the default theme for this Mediawiki, there should be a little person-shaped icon in the bottom left corner, if you click it, it should bring up a menu that has a bright blue band at the bottom that says 'Log in' and above it says 'Create Account', you're going to want to click 'Create Account'.

From there, you're going to want to enter a username, password, and have an email adress and real name. I suggest you don't use a real name, as this is mainly an internet roleplaying thing and not a Super Serious Wiki, but I suggest maybe putting in a name that I (Koi) or others in these circles might identify you by, for instance, if your usual username is IncomingTransmission, but I mostly know you as Iza/Izayoi, I'd put that as your 'Real name'. I'm not very smart and it helps me realise who you are.

Disclaimer, I can't see your passwords, I don't know what you've put there, it's not stored in plain text, but I reccomend you pick one that isn't related to other passwords, just incase.

Once you have an account, we move on to step 2.

== Step 2: Making the page. ==

Alrighty, you've got your account, you're hopefully signed in and ready to go, right, now what?
Now, you make your character page. There's probably a better way to do it than my way, and if you're more familliar with how Mediawiki works, you can do it in a way that's more efficent, but if you don't know how, I suggest.

- Searching the name you intend to use as a character. 
 >> For Example, if you are infact Izayoi, and you want to make a character for Gansetseg Oronir, you would search 'Gansetseg Oronir' into the search bar. Yes the whole thing. 

- If it comes up with 'There were no results matching the query.' and 'Create the page "Gansetseg Oronir" on this wiki!" Great! That's the intended result. Click the red text.

- You should be led to a page that says 'Creating /Whatever name you chose/' that's great. Keep this page open, we're going to move on to step 3.

== Step 3: The Infobox Template. ==

=== Part A : Inserting the Infobox ===

In order to relay quick and easy information to whoever's reading your page, we're going to use what's called an 'Infobox', it's basically a little box that gives quick stats, like a top-trumps card.

To be honest with you, most of this is already done, and I've made a template to make it easier for you, the layman, to do this, instead of seeing and struggling with the code that I did. (Having a template also means that it's standardised, and everyone has the same information for easy comparison.)

So if you search Template:Infobox Player Character and you make sure that you have the PLAYER CHARACTER one selected, and not the Character one (as I intend to have both Player Character and Non-Player Character (NPC) versions, and also the Character one was just for testing.) you should find a template. I hope.

You can also just, copy and paste this template into your newly-created page, and you'll be good.

=== Part B : Filling out the Infobox ===
Now, as long as I haven't updated this template and not this guide and made everything obsolete, the template should be working. Now, what to we put into the Infobox? It seems simple, but like hear me out, as some things work a little odd because of functioning links and stuff.

==== Name ====

This one is pretty simple, arguably the simplest. You just need to put in your name, I'd advise in putting the name people will most likely recognise your character as, and some form of First name and Last name if they're a humanoid being within a culture that has that. I know there's some edge cases, like for instance Side-Characters or Companions such as Chewy, Tulatha, Lacy, Paz, etc. that's fine, but for humans, you most likely have a last name. Include it. If anything, for my sake.

==== Image ====

Hoo boy. Okay. So this has to be a specific way, because it's a bit of cheat to make the code in this god-forsaken wiki work, so please bear with me while I explain it. So basically in a new tab (if you haven't saved the page yet, you will loose your work if you click away) you want to navigate to the three lines (hamburger menu) on the top left and click it, then go down to Upload File. You then will... upload the file.

So, the Source File is simple, that's the file. I reccomend of a square image for this as it'll be much easier for things later, and you're going to want something bigger that 100px by 100px, but if you want to be a deep fried spec, I mean that's up to you.

Destination Filename means the file that it will become, if your source file is kgskljhlkjrsljjklh26029090.jpg, you might want to change it to GansetsegProfilePicture.jpg to find it easier and to help with the next part. 

Summary and Licensing isn't fully important here, you can put notes in Summary if you want to remeber something about it, or if you want to denote that it isn't fully accurate, is temporary, or isn't canon / in character. I really don't mind what you put there, but if you don't have anything good or useful to put there, I'd advise on maybe not putting anything.

As for upload options, Watch this file means you'll get updates if someone changes the file, I like to keep this ticked so that I can check for griefing or conflicts, but that's, again, up to you. 'Ignore any warnings' should be kept blank, unless you messed up, uploaded the wrong file, and want to overwrite the one you messed up.

Once this is done, make a note of the filename, and tab back to the page you're working on. Once you're back in the saddle, you want to format it like this <nowiki> [[File: Name of the file and prefix you just uploaded ]] </nowiki> and to use our above example, should look similar in format to this <nowiki> [[File:GansetsegProfilePicture.jpg]] </nowiki>

==== Gender ====

This is the gender of your character. It's a difficult subject but I'd go with the closest word to what'd you think your character is, for most people it'll be a binary Male or Female, but for some characters you may want to denote Non-Binary or Other.

This will place your character into a category made of characters of this gender, so I'd advise following the same writing/formate as above. However, you can skip this entirely by not writing anything or write 'Unknown' or 'Other' and go into more detail in the page itself.

==== Race ====

Now, for race I've set up pages for the main races in-game which should cover most if not all cases, if you are not of the main races, then I'd try and find a page on the wiki that has your race, to use an earlier example, Sylph or Faerie for Tulatha or Carbuncle for Lacy or Paz. For this, I'd prefer you pick the race your character actually is, for example, Escher was raised by Amalj'aa and believed, for a long time that he was one, but he still was phsyically an Au Ra, so he would be denoted as Au Ra. For minions without a clear denotation just yet, such as Chewy, either put 'Minion' or leave it blank. 

I'd also like to note that for this input, spelling and proper capitalisation is important as it will be linking to a wiki page, so for quick reference and also for the ease of most people using Copy and Paste :

Au Ra
Elezen
Hrothgar
Hyur
Lalafell
Miqo'te
Roegadyn
Viera

These will get linked to the pages explaining the race, and also place your character within the categories of the same race, so it's very important the spelling is standarized. Please do not pick more than one.

==== Subrace ====

This follows alot of the same requirments as above. For non-standard races that don't have subraces, just leave this blank. You don't need to put anything here. For normal player races, the subraces are as follows :

Xaela
Raen

Keeper of the Moon
Seeker of the Sun

Midlander
Highlander

Wildwood
Duskwight

Plainsfolk
Dunesfolk

Sea Wolves
Hellsguard

Rava
Veena

Helions
The Lost

For those whose subrace isn't exactly like ingame, please pick your in-game denotation for easy comparison, and please only pick one, even when two apply because otherwise it messes with the code and the categorisation.

==== Nameday ====

This is your character's birthday, If you don't know, please write 'Unknown' into this box, as if the code doesn't see anything it won't put your character into the 'Living Characters' category, when they are infact a living character. 

Also, if you've forgotten, Protip, you can check your character's nameday on the lodestone. 

I wouldn't put a year or an age here, I would simply put the 'x Sun of the x Umbral/Astral Moon', I will later add a age collumn, but for now, we have this.

Spelling and sorting isn't fully important here, you can just put whatever you want as long as, you put something.

==== Died  ====

Okay this is just a parameter to check if the character is dead or not. If they're not dead, leave this blank, skip to the next option, if they are dead, you can put the year the died, or the word 'Deceased' or even just 'Yup' the wiki doesn't care, it just wants to see something to categorise your character as dead.

<b> DO NOT ENTER ANYTHING FOR THIS IF YOUR CHARACTER ISN'T DEAD. </b>

==== Birthplace ====

This seems self explaniatory, and it is, but there's some specifics to it that help the sorting. Firstly, the scale of it is up to you. If they came from the Steppe, put the The Azim Steppe, if they came from Sharlayan, put Sharlayan.

This will link to a page, so if you're unsure, try looking up the place and seeing if we have no page for it, you can still type something and it'll come up as red text, don't worry about it, just tell Koi and she'll add it to the list of places to get around to.

Don't worry too hard of the scope of this, but try to stick to ingame places if you can. Such as North Shroud or Gridania or Ishgard, or such. If it isn't an ingame place, you can choose to make the place yourself, but that's a seperate tutorial I haven't made yet, so just leave it blank for now.

You can leave this blank and it won't appear.

==== Homeland ====

Okay, for this I'm generally looking for the City-State OR Region your character is from, and/or considers their home. So, Ishgard, Coerthas, Kugane, Hingashi, Sharlayan, La Noscea, Limsa Lominsa, etc. Basically where your character comes from / grew up in. 

Again, this can be skipped by not putting anything, but if you do, please be aware of spelling as it will create a link.

== Step 4. The Body of the Page. ==

Alright, Whew, that was alot of explaination. You can click Save now just so all that work is done, and it should have made a funky little box at the top of your page. Great. Now we have to go back in.
Click 'View Source' to edit your page.

Alright back in, so, most of this step is going to be up to you and what you'd like to put on your page, however I'm going to overexplain what I do to help you if you have no idea, you can skip this part if you already know what you're doing or have a rough idea of what you want to put, but I would reccomend atleast skimming it to understand some of the syntax and general guidelines.

Firstly, no matter what, the Infobox should ALWAYS be at the top of the page, as it's the first thing that the Mediawiki software should read. We will work underneath it.

=== Opening Paragraph ===

So, for people who just need a quick snippet of who your character is, you'll probably want to write an opening paragraph so that people get a gist of the vibes. I like to follow the following process.

(Character is -Amount of years old- -Race/Subrace- who -What they do, so jobs or day/to/day hobbies, ect- . They were Born/Raised in -Place- and currently are - whatever they're currently doing, or working on, or where they're currently living-.)

To put it all together as an example:

Hanako 'Koi' Inazuma is a 25 year old Raen who finds her gil by work by wandering and painting the realm and selling her paintings for the money to continue. Hanako was raised in [[Hingashi]], and only has memories of her childhood in Kugane with her brothers despite being born elsewhere. Hanako currently lives in Gridania within the residence of the Celestial Compass' Free Company house, along with her cherished dog, Chewy.

Of course, this entirely subjective to your character and their cirumstances, and if you have a better way to word or explain things, then do that, but please, for god sake ROSE, Don't start with PROSE. Two sentances? Fine. You can put that in italics, but an entire short story? Rosemary. ROSEMARY.

Issues with Rosemary aside, once you're done with this you can move on to the next, optional part of the body.

=== Appearance ===

Okay, now you can get fancy with images and fun things here, but to start off with, i'd advise just describing your character. If you're really lost, just link in the obvious parts of your character such as hair colour, hair-length or hair style, eye colour, height, fitness, and for specific races, shapes of tails, fins, cat ears, ect. General rule of thumb is just, what disguishes this character from Joe Midlander, from other characters of their race, and what their general style is.

Also, this is probably the first time you want to use the headings system so you can get a table of contents and nicely organised sections. To make the highest form of heading, you go with == and then from there, add an = to step down a step. I believe it has 7 or so levels, I'm not fully sure, but I seriously, SERIOUSLY doubt you'll get there with a genuine serious article.

=== History ===

Now we're getting spicy! 

Okay. I like to divide my history section into subheadings, so following the point above, we'll create a <nowiki> == History == </nowiki> section and then divide it further into tinier parts of their life. I usually divide it as <nowiki> === Early Life === </nowiki>, <nowiki> === Teenage years === </nowiki> and then from there divide it according to prominent events/chapters of the person's life. If you're stuck, you can use the expansions, or follow current events such as the Fall of Dalamud as headings. Usually you can just describe the general gist of the event such as <nowiki> === Escaping Kugane === </nowiki> or <nowiki> === Arriving in Eorzea === </nowiki> .

Once this is done, or during it, you'll want to actually add in the story/backstory that happened to your character. How much you write is up to you, if shorter than a paragraph you may not even need the subheadings, I cannot help you further than just, write this how you see fit.

=== Other VERY OPTIONAL HEADINGS! ===

Okay here you can add things that make sense to you, I usually add a Trivia function using the html list format of ul and li tags, but that's entirely optional. You can include a screenshot or art gallery using the Gallery format <nowiki> {{Gallery|Filename.png|Filename.png|Filename.png|etc}} </nowiki> and by uploading images the way shown above. There's many options for this, it's entirely up to you what you include, you can even include Roleplaying Hooks, or describe custom jobs, companions, weapons or other things that you might not want to make a Whole New Page for.

=== Optional: Linking Pages ===

Now, I intend for this wiki to have pages for venues, as well as information from the actual lore, and fan lore compiled into one, and I wish for these pages to link to eachother, you can take part in this by putting <nowiki> [[ and ]] </nowiki> around a word or set of words that has a page on this wiki that it's related to. Such as, mentioning Kugane you can put <nowiki> [[Kugane]] </nowiki> or if you were talking about another person you can link to their page (if it's made) with a <nowiki> [[Hanako Inazuma]] </nowiki> you can even append the word with a | mark to write your own description of this, such as if you're mentioning a character but don't want their full name you can put <nowiki> [[Rosemary de Lenoire| Rose]] </nowiki> and it should appear like this: [[Rosemary de Lenoire|Rose]] !

How you use links is up to you, but remeber that capitalisation and spelling is important, as the wiki needs to recognise the specific page you are using.

For external links, such as linking out to another profile or such you can instead just use <nowiki> [ and ] </nowiki> around your link, and add the name or words you want to use on the end, such as <nowiki> [https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/freecompany/9279948507173619390/ Celestial Compass Free Company] </nowiki> and it should appear like this: [https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/freecompany/9279948507173619390/ Celestial Compass Free Company]

== Step 5. Search Engine Optimisation Metadata ==

<b> DO NOT SKIP THIS. </b>
At the bottom of each page you want to put the SEO Metadata using this template.
<nowiki>
{{#seo:
|title= 
|title_mode=replace
|description= 
|image=
}}
</nowiki>
It's pretty simple, but I'll explain it.

=== Title ===
Title is the title of the page, since it's set to replace, you'll have to add the Celestial Compass Roleplaying Wiki at the end, if you want, but you can also just, write the page name you want.

=== Description ===
This will show up when someone links the page in discord so just, write a quick, one-sentance summary of your character. "So and so is an (age) (race/subrace) from (homeland)." Specifically how this is written it up to you.

=== Image ===
Use the same image you put into your infobox. If you want an alternate image to appear when you link it, that's fine, but for clarity's sake, if you use the same image link and url then if you change the picture later by overwriting the file name, you will only need to press edit and save for your page to update, and both pictures to update. 
This does not need the same <nowiki> [[File: ]] </nowiki> surroundings. Just put the file name and the extention such as, GansetsegProfilePicture.jpg

== Step 6. Done? ==
I believe we're done, hit save and see how it looks. From here, you're on your own, but contact Koi if you need help.