Help:Wiki University Article Anatomy

To see a labelled "map" of a typical article, click here.
There are many useful features of a typical Wiki article. Below you will find definitions of each, with links to other information, such as how to create that feature, or how to get into the feature to edit corrections.

Access history
At the very bottom of the page, you will find some statistics about the page which are produced automatically: when was the last time this page was updated, and how many times the page has been visited. You will never have to create this; it is built in to every page.

Breadcrumb trail
United States Missouri   Adair County 
 * The above is an example of a breadcrumb trail. You are probably familiar with the story of Hansel and Gretel. The children were taken by their evil step-mother and abandoned in the dark woods, but they left a trail of breadcrumbs so they could find the way back home.  We use "breadcrumb trails" to get us back to the main article we left to get to the page we are now on.  It is a sequence of links.
 * To learn how to create a breadcrumb trail, click here.

Categories

 * Categories work much like indexes. They are for grouping articles under similar subjects, localities, or topics. Categories help users find information, even if they don't know that the information exists or what it's called. A user can click on a category to be taken to a list of similar or related articles.
 * For more information on Categories, click here. To learn how add a category label to an article, click here.

Header

 * Simply, headers are the titles and subtitles of an article. Using wikitext, you can make them different sizes. See Headers.

Infobox
Infoboxes are quick lists of important facts. Infobox templates are like fact sheets, or sidebars, in magazine articles. They quickly summarize important points in an easy-to-read format, in a table form. Infoboxes are used to display brief information typically about organizations and/or administrative divisions like US counties, but in a table form. They are in template form, and once you create an infobox, you can reuse it on other pages with only minor changes. This page shows a good example of the effective use of an infobox.

Navbox

 * A navbox is a type of template placed at the bottom of articles to enable the reader to navigate easily to related articles, subcategories and images under the same category. It is really a sidebar, only placed at the bottom of the page, and containing links not quite as central to the topic as the main sidebar.
 * You cannot edit from the navbox as it appears in the article itself. You have to find it on its site as a template, then edit the template.
 * See FamilySearch Wikitext Navboxes.

Navigation Tabs
Every page has four navigation tabs at the top left: User page, Edit, Talk, and History.
 * "User page" shows the "normal" view of the article.
 * "Edit" works the same as the "Edit This Page" button. It opens up the wikitext so corrections or additions may be made.
 * "Talk" allows you and others to make comments about the page.
 * "History" shows all the changes made to the page over time. From here it is possible to undo a change you have saved, or even to return the page to an earlier version of itself.

News and Events
The top section of the left side bar has a field which can be changed to show news such as newly available records, and events such as conferences. This section can be changed without going into the code for the sidebar. See Adding News and Events.

Reference and Footnote List
This list has two uses.
 * Use reference sources for information on a page copied from others or their writings--giving credit where it is due.
 * Add information at the end that might give additional insights. This is like using an asterisk (*) to add afterthoughts.
 * Click here to learn how to create this list.

Search Engine
Like a browser search engine, this searches for wiki articles, by either location or topic. It is a very weak search engine, which we hope to improve in the future. It can fail to find an existing article because of capitalization, order of words in a title, or because you did not name the title exactly. Generally, users are advised to try a Google search for a topic, by putting the words FamilySearch Wiki in a Google search request, for better results.

Section edit
Each new header creates an editing box icon to the far right. This makes it possible to open and edit just one small section without opening the whole article.

SEO (Search Engine Optimizer)

 * A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) paragraph is used to help get a page noticed by the large search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, when they go out looking for matches to a query they receive.
 * It should contain the terms genealogy, ancestry, or family history, and the geographic location of your article, all in bold. It should be 25 words or less in length.
 * The first paragraph of an article automatically becomes the SEO. There is no special coding or wikitext necessary.

Sidebar

 * The light gray elongated box to the left of an article is a sidebar.
 * Sidebars contain a quick list of links to other pages that go into greater detail on the sub-topics of the page you are on. From a sidebar, you can navigate to the other closely-related pages without having to search for them.
 * To learn how to create a sidebar, click here. Usually, you will not have to repair a sidebar.

Table of contents

 * A table of contents is generated automatically as an article is created. The wiki just uses the headings and subheadings you write in the article to create an outline of the article.
 * You can click on any term in the table of contents to jump to that topic in the article.
 * If you just feel like the table of contents is in the way or too long, you can click on "[hide]'.

Whole page edit
The "Edit This Page" link near the top right of the page opens up the wikitext coding for the entire page, so you can make corrections or additions.

Wiki sidebar
The light purple elongated box to the right is a special sidebar just about the wiki. This sidebar contains a quick list of links to wiki functions, tools, and organization. You cannot change this sidebar.

Try these out
 Quick Quiz
 * The history of Mayflower voyage would be allowed in the Wiki.
 * True
 * False


 * Listing of genealogical items from a catalog is ok.
 * True
 * False


 * The life of Abraham Lincoln would be ok in the Wiki.
 * True
 * False


 * A long history of the Shoshone Indians is not ok in the Wiki
 * True
 * False


 * a brief description of the resources of a local genealogical library is ok.
 * True
 * False


 * It is better to list the items in a local genealogical society than to link to it's catalog.
 * True
 * False

Check your answers