Creation and Upkeep of a Character Page

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While the UPDS is a great organizing tool for our group, it's difficult to really create an in depth look at your character using that area. Using the wiki, you can create a very rich and detailed character page with information about your character, an archive of SIMs, and much more. The tutorial below will teach you more about this.

Character Page vs. User Page

First things first. As you may already be aware, you automatically have a user page when you register on the wiki. If you look to the top of the page you're on right now, you'll see a small list of links, at the left of which is a link to a page called "User:Username" (with your username in place, obviously). Just as with the UPDS, we need to create a distinction between the "User" or "Writer" and the "Character". There's only one of you, the user, while you can have many characters. As such, it's not very efficient to use your user page as your character page, because you may have more than one character. And creating more than one username is also not very efficient.

So, use your user page to give information about you, or at the very least, to create a LIST of characters you write for, and then link to them from there. But you will want to actually create a specific page for each character.

Creating the Page

There are two good, important pages about creating, and naming pages. Please read these first:


Templates

We have created a number of templates that you can use to start your user page with. Using these templates, you can quickly and easily have a "form" to work with.

Keep in mind: You are free to add and edit as much as you wish, once you have these templates on your page. These are just "starting points" to work from.

Simple Template

This template is pretty bare-bones. It's similar to what's on the UPDS, and just gives you a basic character page to start with.

  • To see what this template includes, click the link: Template:Biosimple
  • To use this template, put the tag below into your character page and save the page. Then click the "edit" link to fill in the results.
    • {{subst:Biosimple}}

Advanced Template

This template gives you a fuller profile for your character.

  • To see what this template includes, click the link: Template:Bioadvanced
  • To use this template, put the tag below into your character page and save the page. Then click the "edit" link to fill in the results.
    • {{subst:Bioadvanced}}

Complex Template

This template is for those who practically live, eat, and sleep with their character in mind.

  • To see what this template includes, click the link: Template:Biocomplex
  • To use this template, put the tag below into your character page and save the page. Then click the "edit" link to fill in the results.
    • {{subst:Biocomplex}}
  • Notes:
    • Sub-templates: Here are some templates that go with the sub-pages used in this main template:
    • The category has not been added to this template, because it's assumed you're going to create a sub-category for your entire character profile including sub-pages. See the section below on "advanced categorization".


Sub-pages

If you have a good deal of information for your character, and plan to put more than just your character's basic information on their page, then you can create a number of sub-pages to make the "main" page a little more lean and easier to read. The "complex" template above utilizes some of these methods.

Creating a Sub-page

Making a sub-page is simple enough. From your main page, just use a link like so: [[/Sub-page name]].

Keep in Mind: If you have to move your page, using the "move" function on the wiki, the link to this sub-page will break, and you will have to save the main page again, then copy/paste all of the text from the original sub-page into the new sub-page.

In-depth Personal and/or Professional Histories

You can create a sub-page for your character's personal or professional history (or both), to include just about any information you can think of. Take a look at the templates above in the "Complex Template" section for more ideas.

Family Pages

If you have thought out a lot of information about the character's family, create a sub-page and do sections on each of them to flesh them out more.

SIM Archives

If you're interested in bringing together all of your SIMs, you can create a section for your SIM archives. Archives should be broken up into logical groups of SIMs, like vessel missions. If using that scheme, name missions by the "official" vessel mission name, or by the how it relates to the character. Example links below.

  • Atlantis Mission 4 - Joe joins the Atlantis on her fourth mission, exploring the Horsehead Nebula.
  • Joining Atlantis - Joe joins the Atlantis on her fourth mission, exploring the Horsehead Nebula.

We have a template that you can use to organize each page of SIMs. To use this template, put the tag below into your character page and save the page. Then click the "edit" link to fill in the results.


Adding Categories

All pages on the wiki should be categorized. The category tag(s) should be the last text on the page, one to a line.

The first tag you should add is as follows: [[Category:Characters]]

Occupation

Is your character StarFleet or Civilian?:

  • If your character is a StarFleet officer, add: [[Category:Starfleet personnel]]
  • If your character is a Civilian of some type, add: [[Category:Civilians]]

Next, what does your character do?:

  • S/he is an Engineering officer: [[Category:Engineers]]
  • S/he is a Doctor, Nurse, or Medic: [[Category:Healers and doctors]]
  • S/he is a Counselor: [[Category:Mental Health experts]]
  • S/he is a Security officer: [[Category:Security personnel]]
  • S/he is a Helm, Com, or Ops officer: [[Category:Helm/Comm/Ops Officers]]
  • S/he is a Science officer: [[Category:Scientists]]
  • S/he is a StarFleet Captain: [[Category:Starfleet Captains]]
  • S/he is a Marine of some type: [[Category:Starfleet Marines]]
  • S/he is an Intelligence officer of some type: [[Category:Intelligence members]]

More occupations found in the Individuals by occupation category.

Species

Many races already have categories available. Simply head to the Individuals by species category and find yours. Add that category, like so: [[Category:Vulcans]].

If yours is not represented, seek assistance from an Admin.

Traits

Does your character fit one of the following traits?:

  • S/he is a Reader: [[Category:Reader Characters]]
  • S/he is Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgendered: [[Category:GLBT Characters]]
  • S/he holds a noble title: [[Category:Nobility]]
  • S/he is a Secondary Character for you: [[Category:Secondary Characters]]

Current simming installation

You'll need to add yourself as a member of the current crew you are on. Head to the Ship Histories page and find your current ship. Now scroll down to the bottom of your ship's page and click on your ship's category name. This should bring you to a list of sub-categories, and pages in your ship's category. Usually there is a category like "Enterprise PCs" or "Enterprise Crew" or "Enterprise Characters." Add that category to your character page.

Advanced Categorization

If you have "filled out" your character page, and are including a SIM archive, in depth personal and professional histories all on their own pages, etc., then you will need a more complex category set-up to make it easier to navigate. Please do not use this method if you only have your one character page and less than two sub-pages.

As mentioned, it is best to do this only if you have a number of pages. Your first task is to create a sub-category for your character. To do this, you would put the following category tag at the bottom of your main page: [[Category:Wolf, Tristan|*]] -- using your own character's name, of course. This creates a separate category for your character. The "|*" within the tag is used to put this page in the * section of the category, which is always displayed first. So the first article the user sees upon entering your category is the main character page.

Now, once the page is saved, click on the category link, which should be red. This will take you to a page where you can edit the introductory text for the category. Add something like this:

"For information pertaining to [[Wolf, Tristan|Tristan Wolf]]."

Then, put this tag at the bottom of the page: [[Category:Characters]] and save the page. This category now becomes a sub-category of the main character category.

Now it's time to categorize each of your sub-pages. This is similar to categorizing your main page, but you need to change the section each page is organized in. With the main page, we added "|*" to the end of the category page so that it would be organized into the * section of the category. With category pages, they're going to be named something like this: "Wolf, Tristan/Personal History". So, we'll want to make sure that each page is organized into a section according to what the page's name is. For the example above, we'd use the following category tag: [[Category:Wolf, Tristan|Personal]]. Now it'll be categorized in the "P" section of the category, and will be properly alphabetized if there are other pages in that section.

Finally, if your vessel has a category for active characters (do not put your character into your vessel's NPC listing category), you can include your character's sub-category into your vessel's active characters category. To do so, go to your character's sub-category. Click on the "edit" link, and include the category tag for your vessel's active characters category there. This creates a new sub-category in your vessel's active characters category with your character sub-category in it. Confusing, huh?

Examples

Below are hand-picked examples of well written, in-depth bios:

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