Help:Navigation

Navigation is one of the most difficult things to get right on a Wiki and it is a problem which plagues Habbox Wiki. Reading through this page should give you a better idea of how to link pages together, use nav boxes, categories and external links. Efforts to improve pages in this aspect in particular is widely praised and allows visitors to easily find information on topics without using the search box.

The Guide

Being able to implement page navigation properly is very useful, it makes finding relevant information easier and keeps visitors interested in what we have to write. This guide should introduce you to several of our navigation procedures we employ on the Wiki.

In-line linking

In-line linking is where you select certain keywords on a page and link them to a another page, for example, on the Habbox page linking words such as "Habbox Forum" and "Habbox Live" to their respective pages. You can do this by wrapping them inside "[[" and "]]" tags, this will create a direct link to a page with that name. It is important not to overdo this on a page, linking every mention of the word "furniture" "habbox" or "rare" is necessary, it is common practise to link only parent topics and related topics. If the page you would like to link to is in a non-content namespace, e.g. it's a "Help:" page but you would like the word to stay as is then you can use in example for this page, "[[Help:Navigation|]]", with the "|" at the end the namespace is removed from the link when displayed on the page. If you would like to link an alternative word to it's actual page you can put replacement text after the "|", for example "[[Furni|Furniture]] becomes Furniture.

One bizarre quirk of the wiki's linking system is that a self referring link becomes bold, for example "[[Help:Navigation|]]" becomes Navigation, it is common practise to wrap the page's title if it is mentioned at the top of the page within "[[" and "]]" tags for standardisation reasons.

Categories

Adding a page to a category is very simple, you simply create a link to the category for example "[[Category:Help]]" add this page to the help category. If you would instead like to link to the category within the pages text you must add a colon, ":", at the start of the link like so: "[[:Category:Help]]" which looks like: Category:Help.

Finding categories to add a page to can sometimes be difficult, you can search for it or you can read through this full list of categories in use at the moment: Special:Categories

Sometimes a category will not exist that you think should, if you are uncertain whether it should be added or not then please PM either Chippiewill or Nick on Habbox Forum. If you are certain then adding a new category is as simple as adding a page to that category as if it already exists. After you have created the category it is however recommended you visit the category's page and add some information to it just like a normal page describing what the category is for, otherwise the category link will show up as red (It can still be used but it is distracting).

Navigation Boxes

Navigation Boxes (Or Navboxes) are used to provide a centrally updated hub of relevant links which can be used on every page it links too, you can find one at the bottom of this page. Adding them is very simple, if you already know the name of the navbox then you can simply put {{NavBox_<INSERTNAMEHERE>}} at the bottom of the page. Otherwise you can find a list of all our current navboxes in Category:NavBox Template. Creating a navbox (Or even editing one) is very complicated, if you are competent with wiki markup and you are aware with how templates work then you can read our navigation box creation guide otherwise it's best left to the professionals. For information about how to best use a navbox can be found on the respective navbox's page.

Redirecting

Redirects are used to automatically send visitors to another page. To redirect a page you would clear the page and then add:

#REDIRECT [[target page]]

Before you clear the page make sure the information is already on the new target page.

For example if you want to redirect the page Pet to Pets you would type:

#REDIRECT [[Pets]]

Sidebar

The sidebar is displayed on the edge of the page below the site logo. This sidebar gives you access to important pages in the wiki such as Recent Changes or Upload File.

Clicking on the logo brings you back to the main page of the wiki. The links in the navigation section just below will take you to important pages of the wiki. These links can be configured by site administrators.

Toolbox:

On all pages (except special pages)

• "What links here" takes you to a special page that lists the pages on that wiki which contain a link to the current page. This is helpful when you are looking for pages of related information. The "what links here" information can also be useful when you are refactoring wiki pages and need to check whether links to this page are still relevant after changes in the current page.

• The "related changes" tool lists all recent changes in the pages linked to from the current page. Recent changes to all relevant template pages are included in the resulting page list. The "Hide minor edits" option that can be set in the user preferences applies, among other things, to "related changes".

Finding pages to improve navigation on

Now that you have read the guide you should use your new found abilities to improve wiki navigation.

• Add descriptions to categories which need them - This is a simple one, just describe the contents of the category.
• Categorise pages which do not have a parent category - Getting this done makes finding the pages easier, making this list smaller is very helpful.
• Add links to pages with none - These pages don't link to any other pages causing people to get stuck on them, adding links to them makes escaping easier.
• Find random pages and check they're properly linked - Getting through every page on the wiki takes some time, do your bit by clicking and adding links where you can.