VideoLAN Wiki:Syntax

Please follow these guidelines when editing this wiki. There will be more guidelines later.

The basics

This "wiki" (Wikipedia entry) inherits its syntax from the MediaWiki code (official site). This means that editing this wiki will be very similar to any other wiki you may have encountered, such as Wikipedia or Wikia sites.

Wikimarkup, as it's called, is simplified HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and was designed for ease of use. You can learn the basics of it within a few minutes.

How to...

The markup might be best learned by practicing in the Sandbox page after looking over this quick list:

Lists

• Asterisks (*) at the beginning of one or more lines create a bulleted list
• Pound signs (#) at the beginning of one one or more lines create numbered lists—this is incredibly convenient if you have long lists, because the line numbers are auto-calculated

Markup

• Add two apostrophes around a word or phrase to make it italic: ''example'' → example
• Add three apostrophes around a word or phrase to make it bold: '''example''' → example
• Add five apostrophes around a word or phrase to make it italic and bold: '''''example''''' → example

Linking

• Two sets of double brackets around words, e.g. [[example]], will link to the page "Example"
• External URLs, like http://example.com, will automatically link
• The "pipe trick" enables you to link to one page but display a different text label
  • The text on the left is the target page you wish to link to
  • The text on the right is the label
  • For example, [[VLC|this totally awesome media player]] becomes this totally awesome media player

General words of advice

• Use the editing toolbar to help you; it provides buttons to help you out.
• Keep things simple, and don't be afraid to make mistakes.
• Wikipedia has already prepared a cheat-sheet for you (all of it should work nicely here): Wikipedia:Cheatsheet

Templates

• See the Documented List of Templates.
• See all templates on wiki.videolan.org