Help

This is a quick introduction meant to help anyone who is new to the wiki type markup. If you would like in depth information about formatting and markup then go to mediawiki.org. Before we proceed, you should be aware that creating and editing content requires registration, a simple task.

Creating an article

To create an article, simple make a link to it in another article and click it. Or search for that article name in the search box. When search results will come up empty, they will contain a link to create the article you just searched for which doesn’t exist.

Uploading images

Please try to keep all images without spaces, using underscores instead. Preferably with the first letter capitalized and the rest not. For organization’s sake, the image file name should contain a brief description of the image, with a number if there is a series. Uploading the image is done through the “Upload file” link at the bottom of the page.

• Preferred image format for black and white diagrams is gif or png, to ensure a small image size.
• Preferred image format for color and large images is jpg so that the image is not too large.
• Resizing the image to around 600-800 pixels is usually not a bad idea, because most people won’t need to see the penny laying on the ground a mile away from your car.
• Try not to have too many redundant images.
• Try not to have large images with lots of empty useless space, cropping the image to the object of importance is recommended.

Uploading multiple images

By clicking Special Pages and then Upload multiple files, one can upload 5 images at a time saving a lot of effort. The downside is not as many errors are provided with this result. Upon completion of uploading the images the page will be blank. Simple load the url again if you wish to upload more images.

Inserting images

There are many ways to insert images into an article. They all involve the use of the image tag, for example:

[[image:Escort_reardisc.jpg|400px|right]]

That will put the image to the right of the article and make it 400 pixels wide. Another popular thing to do is make an image a thumbnail, which will automatically put the image on the right, like so:

[[image:Escort_reardisc.jpg|thumb|Rear disc brake assembly.]]

The last segment will always result in being turned into the caption of the image. This only works for images that have a frame around them, such as thumbnails or full framed images like:

[[image:Escort_reardisc.jpg|frame|Rear disc brake assembly.]]

Note that framed images cannot have their sizes set, they will always display in full size. However thumbnail images can have their size specified. If a thumbnail has to be on the left instead of the right side of the article then it can be specified like so:

[[image:Escort_reardisc.jpg|thumb|right|Rear disc brake assembly.]]

The order of the attributes does not matter, as long as the image filename is first and the caption is always last.

Inserting links

Inserting links is easy, with the following example:

[[How to submit & edit content]]

That will result with a link displayed the exact same way the article is. Links are case sensitive. Sometimes you do not want it to be capitalized or you would like to reword a link, you can do so with the following example:

Another great trick, is to [[Seafoam|run seafoam]] through the engine.

That example will display the link as “run seafoam”. If you wish to create a link to the outside world, it is done with only one braket like so:

[http://www.ford.com ford.com]

The space separates the link url from the link description. If no description is specified, and only the bare url is provided then the link will be shown as the bare url.

Formatting text

Formatting text is pretty easy. Usually the article can be divided into major sections by putting “==” around the section title, on it’s own line. If a subsection or a smaller text is desired, then “====” can be used around the title instead. Most articles do not need a table of contents. To avoid having one automatically show up based on the “==” sections used, simply add the following to the beginning of your article:

__NOTOC__

Doing lists is very easy, numbered lists have each list entry start with # while bullets start with *. There can be sub entries as well, just by placing a second character right after the first. Here is an example:

## First entry in numbered list.
# Second entry in numbered list.
#* Second entry's bullet subentry.
#* Another bullet subentry.
# Back to the regular list.

Paragraphs are extremely simple, just write them as paragraphs and separate them by lines. If you need more spacing add another line in. Keep in mind that after lists sometimes a second empty line will be required to actually create one empty line. Because the wikimedia engine considers the line as a break or an end the previous object. So it needs an extra one to actually be considered as just a plain line.

To change the color of text, wrap the effected text with the following font tag. To get a list of most font color codes see the thumbnail on the right for the full image. If the code consists of 3 sets of the same numbers/letters you can condense it. For example, FF9900 can be made into F90.

<font color="#c00">This text will be red</font>

Site functions

You can view history of articles, to see who has made what changes, and compare the revisions at any point of time as long as the records permit. You can also view recent changes overall by going to Navigation > Recent changes. Once you’ve written your article, think of where else it can be linked. The more it’s linked in other articles the better, sot hat other people can find it. The least you can do is link it on the front page for now, under it’s appropriate section until a better organization system is devised. If you wish to see how another article was formatted just click edit any time and view the source code of that article.

When you edit other’s articles, please remember to fill out the little text box describing the purpose of the edit. It’s not a requirement but it helps others understand what was done and why.

Please try to preview your article as many times as needed and then save the final result once you are happy. This will keep the article history much cleaner.

If you ever have questions about an article and something doesn’t make sense, click the talk button at the top. This is meant to be a discussion page about each article. Where things in the article can be inquired, disputed, and etc. If you have any more questions about the function of this website feel free to post them in the talk section of this article.

Content type

Let’s try to keep all the articles free of bias as much as possible, so that everyone can enjoy and benefit from them. A little bit of humor is allowed here and there but remember this is an information resource, not a chat forum. Try to always remain as logical and scientific as possible when writing your articles.