Help:Contents
General Wiki Help
Please see the MediaWiki User's Guide. If you want to experiment with wiki syntax without editing actual articles, you can use the Sandbox.
Creating a New Article
Create the Page
To create a new article (that is, add information about a new airport), you will need to start by going to the page that the article will be at, as this will automatically create a blank page. You can do this by filling in the title of your page after the title= portion of the web address in your browser's address bar. For example, if you are currently at the following page:
http://www.spotterswiki.com/index.php?title=San_Diego_International_Airport_%28SAN/KSAN%29
first erase everything after the title=:
http://www.spotterswiki.com/index.php?title=
then fill in the name of the article you wish to create:
http://www.spotterswiki.com/index.php?title=Los Angeles International Airport (LAX/KLAX)
Note that you do not need to include the _ or special % codes for the parenthesis as they will be converted for you. The format for article names should be:
airport name (IATA code/ICAO code)
Use the Newarticle Template
Once you have created the page, the first thing you should do is use the Newarticle template to fill in the basic structure of a SpottersWiki airport article. The web page will state that there is no text on the page; click the Edit button to bring up the screen to edit that page. Enter the following into the box, then click Save Page:
{{subst:Newarticle}}
Then you can click Edit again and start filling in the article. The Discussion page for the Newarticle template includes further information on using the template, and the Discussion page for the Infobox template covers filling in the information box.
Create Redirects
You should also create two Redirects, one for the airport's IATA code and one for the airport's ICAO code, so that people can find the article by typing either of the codes in the search box on the side of every page. You do this by creating an article named with the code, and adding as the text of the article, the word #REDIRECT and the name of the article on your airport. For example, to create a redirect from LAX to the article Los Angeles International Airport (LAX/KLAX), you would add the following as the text of an article named LAX:
#REDIRECT [[Los Angeles International Airport (LAX/KLAX)]]
Adding Links to Sample Photos
Templates are provided to easily provide links to sample photos hosted at Airliners.net, JetPhotos.net, and MyAviation.net. All you need from each site is the ID number for the photo, and enter it with the appropriate template. See each template's discussion page for instructions: