Poste/How to add a new issue

From MoongatesWiki

This guide (or howto) will teach you how to add a new issue of the Poste to the MoongatesWiki archives.

Step 1: Checking if you're logged in

First of all, make sure you are logged in to your account. Although this is strictly not necessary, we recommend that all contributors are logged in, so that all revisions can be signed, easing the wordload for the moderators. To check whether you are logged in, see the yellow text in the upper right corner of the page. If you are indeed logged in, it should display your account name.

Step 2: Editing a new article

Go to the Poste Portal. This will give you an overview of todays edition and yesterdays edition. Please note that the archive uses dates to store the issues, not issue numbers. This means that if an issue of the Poste was published three days ago, it would not (normally) appear on this overview.

If you're adding a new issue for today (or for yesterday, provided that has not been archived yet), click the red text reading todays (or yesterdays) date, indicating that no page yet exists with that name. This will take you to the editing page where you can archive the issue. Sometimes Poste issues are not stored for days (and even weeks). If you wish to go back to add earlier issues than the todays or yesterdays issue, you will have to browse the archives. On the top of the Poste Portal, you will find a few useful links to the archive pages. Using them to navigate to the right year, month and day will pretty much let you follow the same set of instructions as in this guide.

Step 3: Templates and headers

We usually like to style our issues with a set of templates and categories. First of all, you will need to include the Poste's top menu (the logo/banner and links). You can do this by entering the code

{{The Poste-menu}}

Step 4: Today's Edition is brought to you by...

Following this, you would most commonly like to add the person responsible for putting together the issue. This is done by entering the following code to the succeeding line:

<center>''Today's Edition is brought to you by Amber "The Wicked Witch" De'Crowley''</center>

The two

''

will emphasize (or set your text in italics).

Step 5: Entering news stories

After you've done this, you're ready to enter (or copy/paste) the news stories. All news stories should start with the following header:

==This is the news header==
'''This is the subheader of the news article'''

Step 6: Entering the text of the news stories

Then enter the text of the news story, dividing the paragraphs with an emtpy line.

(Optional) Step 6b: Images

It sometimes happens that the Poste comes with images. If you wish to include images in the issue, you enter the following command:

[[Image:Theposte-010408-1.jpg|thumb|Description comes here.]]

It is very important that the images follow this structure. All images primarily used for the Poste should start with "Theposte". Then comes the date in the format DDMMYY (the example shows 1 April 2008). After the date it should specify which image in the issue it is. Here you simply start with 1 for the first image, 2 for the second image, and so on. thumb will tell the wiki that it's to size the image down and put it on the right side. After that comes an optional comment. If you're not sure what to write here, just type in the subtitle of the news story.

Step 7: Sub-sections

If you need to make sub-sections, for instance for letters or adverts, this is done by the follow example:

==Adverts==
===John Bowyer creates the finest bows!===

==Letters==
===Letter from the Sheriff of Trinsic===
Letter comes here.

===Letter from the old hag of Yew===
Letter comes here.

Step 8: Lists

In the What's On (or Events) section, you normally want to make items a list. This is done by marking each event with a star. This is an example:

* This is the first event
* This is the second event

Step 9: Links and URLs

Sometimes you also wish to include an URL (website link) to the event. You can do that by following this example:

* Swaggers Inn: [http://www.example.com/ Children's Day] at 8 pm GMT

This will make the text Children's Day be the title of the link. Note here the difference between [] and [[]]. The first will create external URLs, and the latter internal links to other MoongatesWiki-articles. You could for instance have done this instead:

* [[Swaggers Inn]]: [http://www.example.com/ Children's Day] at 8 pm GMT

This example would look like this:

• Swaggers Inn: Children's Day at 8 pm GMT

Step 10: Categorising

The last thing you will need to do is to make sure your issue is categorised correctly. Please add this to the very bottom of the article:

[[Category: The Poste]]

Then you're done. Click save! Once the Main Page is purged, the issue will appear there.