Advanced character page tutorial

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			Characters Guild

Using the power of the wiki, you can create a central repository for your character with detailed character information, subpages with your Academy and medical records, and even add a sim archive! Learn more by reading below.

Appearance, manner, personality

For a more detailed appearance section, consider adding any of the following items:

Length of Hair
Skin Tone
Birthmarks, Scars: How many? Where?
Tattoos/Body Modifications: How many? Where? What do they look like?
Taste in Clothing (when off duty)
Voice

Add details about personality with a "Manner" section that could include any of the following:

Carriage: Walks with purpose, saunters, moves slowly or quickly, etc.
Mannerisms: Describe habits, tics, and other notable items.
Quarters: Describe the location, decorations, pictures, etc.
Physical Limitations: Physical disabilities, diseases, ailments, or other things which could limit the character.

A detailed personality section would make sense after you've played the character for a while. Here are some ideas to start with:

Hobbies: What does the character do on their off duty time?
Religion/Spiritual Devotion: If any.
Temperament: How does the character respond to stressful situations? Does he joke often or act mostly serious?
Ambitions and goals
Personal achievements and disappointments

Adding sub-pages

As your character page grows, you may want to split off sections into sub-pages to save room and make it easier to read the overall profile.

Creating a sub-page is easy. Simply follow these steps:

On your character profile page, click the Edit tab.
Find the location on the page where you want to add the link to the sub-page.
Insert the link like you would any other, but add a / at the beginning, like so: [[/Sub-page name]].
Preview, or save the page. You'll note that the new link is made in red, which means it's blank and needs to be created.

Important note: The wiki's "move" feature breaks sub-pages. If you intend to use it on your character page, edit each sub-page and copy out all the wiki code to a text file. Then, use the move feature, edit your moved page, and save it again. Then paste into each sub-page the appropriate wiki code.

Ideas for sub-pages

In-depth personal and/or professional histories
- {{subst:Biocomplex-personal}} - more info
- {{subst:Biocomplex-starfleet}} - more info
Detailed family information
Academy transcript and diploma: more info
Medical records: {{subst:Medical Record}} - more info
Sim archive: {{subst:Bio-sim}} - more info

Advanced categorization

Once you add more than two sub-pages, you'll want to create your own character category to group all of your profile pages and sub-pages. Please do not use this method if you only have your one character page.

First, you will need to create the category itself, which is simple. Just add the category tag to the bottom of your main page, like so: [[Category:Tristan Wolf|*]] -- using your own character's name, of course. The "|*" within the tag is used to put this page in the * section of the category, which is always displayed first so that the first article the user sees upon viewing the category is the main character page.

Once you save the page, you will notice the category at the bottom of the page in red. Click on that red category name to create the category page. Feel free to add a short description of the character and a link to your main page. But you must also add the following category to the bottom of this category page: [[Category:Characters]]

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.

Ribbons and awards

As you advance in the game, you will earn service ribbons (In Character recognition for participation in particular campaigns and for heroic behavior) as well as Community Awards, which are Out Of Character recognition for your simming and investment in the community. On your character page, you can display all the service ribbons that character has earned, as well as all the awards you – the player – has received.

The ribbons display template will help you build a display case for your awards. Normally, unless you've been with the community for more than ten years and have earned a large number of awards, awards and ribbons are displayed on the main character page, and not on a subpage.

To add your ribbons to your character's sidebar, utilize the ribbons rack template and instructions.

Sidebar customization

For more ways to customize your sidebar, with a ribbons rack, different colors and pip styles, and links to your Academy and Medical records, see the sidebar template.