Media Wiki crash course

WebPlatform Docs uses Semantic MediaWiki as its underlying engine, and has adopted certain conventions in the syntax that you should use when editing pages. This is the same wiki engine used by Wikipedia, and thus has the same basic coding characteristics. For general guidelines, see:

• the Wikipedia Cheatsheet or
• the MediaWiki formatting guide
• the Media Wiki Help gives good detailed instructions

Short version

• (Almost) no tags needed
• * and # for bullets and numbers
• =x=, x, etc. for heading levels
• ‘’x’’ and ‘’’x’’’ for bold/italic
• [URL link-text] for external links
• [[relative-URL|link-text]] for internal. Note that spaces are accepted (e.g. [[WPD/Style Guide/Wiki markup crash course]] )
• [[file:filename.xxx]] for embedding files
• Tables are horrible - see /docs/WPD/Style_Guide/Gotchas
• <syntaxHighlight></syntaxHighlight> for code blocks
• <splist /> for sub-page listing
• <code></code> for inline code
• Use <div> to hang style=”” off, for bespoke styling
• Use proper list markup for complicated lists
• Use proper list markup for complicated lists

Related tutorials

For help with some specific WPD coding issues, see:

• WPD/Style Guide/Tables
• WPD/Style Guide/Lists
• WPD/Style Guide/Gotchas describing common Gotchas for WPD editors