How to create a page on Wikipedia (step by step instructions)

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is one of the most popular wiki platforms on the web. It is completely open and allows you to create a free knowledge base.

Originally used by Wikipedia, the site now offers backends for many other common wiki sites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata.

The biggest advantage of the platform is its impressive customization options. There are more than 1900 extensions, 900 configuration settings and support for 300 languages.

To use MediaWiki, you need a server running PHP and a compatible SQL database.

From wiki site to wiki engine

Since then, it has become interesting to also create a wiki site with an emphasis on IT projects - after all, this would be attractive to many people who want to talk about their product. And I also wanted to make my own unique site structure and design, which could be suitable for many other projects. After the site was ready, I created an admin panel and posted the code on GitHub. First of all, because you can write about an open source project and make it not just a simple directory of sites; besides, I would be glad if someone would like to make a website using my engine.

Slim Wiki

Many people don't have the time or technical knowledge to use a complex wiki platform like MediaWiki. If you want an easier way to create a wiki, check out SlimWiki. It is free for a maximum of three users, and each additional user must pay $5 per month.

Trying to fix hosting

Unfortunately, few people will choose a wiki engine for node.js; most webmasters will prefer what they have already dealt with, which is PHP, and besides, most existing hosting services are configured for PHP. And for node.js you would have to rent a VPS. I really wanted to make my product more accessible. The idea for wiki hosting came from Fandom. Wiki hosting would make my engine available to a much larger audience, and it would also make it stand out among hundreds of others (indeed, hundreds of cms for wikis alone). I wrote a ghost.sh script that raises a portal on a new domain (creates a working directory for the site, copies the default engine code into it, creates a database with a user and password, configures access rights for all this), and also added a link to cloud commander, which provides read and write access to files from the site's working directory. All that remains is to manually register the new domain in the DNS manager and add it to the launch in the main script. The hosting itself is still at the beta stage - perhaps the first clients will have some mistakes during the first launch. (In general, I have never had experience creating such a project as hosting before, perhaps I did some things incorrectly or poorly, but I started launching my first site on the engine (hosting site) and it works great, and I even uploaded it to updates).

Wikidot

If you want to create your own wiki but don't know HTML, PHP, JavaScript, etc., then Wikidot is another site worth checking out. Since its launch in 2006, it has become one of the largest wiki sites in the world.

The free version supports five users. Each user receives 300 MB of disk space. For $49.90 per month, the data storage limit increases to 30 GB and the number of users to 10.

The most expensive plan costs $239.90 per month. It offers unlimited users and 200GB of storage.

Wikipedia - what is it in simple words

Wikipedia is a free-form online encyclopedia. In other words, anyone can post information or edit it. Administrative details can also be handled by ordinary users, their capabilities differ depending on their status. Statuses, in turn, are distributed based on the number and quality of edited and verified articles.

To give a brief explanation of what Wikipedia is, it should be noted that, by and large, in this system everyone follows everyone. That is, if the information does not correspond to reality, this becomes clear in a short period of time, since the reader has the opportunity to make adjustments, which are subsequently checked by the service moderators for relevance. As a result, the article can be rewritten countless times.

On the one hand, the format of such a revision concept has a big advantage - any published information is repeatedly checked and must be confirmed by appropriate references. But, on the other hand, this is also its disadvantage - as we have already said, the correction of the material can continue indefinitely and, as a result, the original article can change radically.

We briefly looked at what the Wikipedia dot org site is and what it is. Let's dive into the history of the creation of the service to understand what the word “Wikipedia” means and how it stands for.

The meaning of the word and the history of the service

What does the word Wikipedia mean? Wikipedia stands for electronic encyclopedia. The co-founders of this service were Jimmy Wells and Larry Sanger, which was originally a subsection of the earlier Nupedia resource in 2001. In its early stages, Wikipedia was developed for the purpose of collecting and communicating information for Nupedia.

But as soon as the resource was launched, it instantly changed its purpose. In 2001, the Nudedia license was changed to a copyleft license, allowing for publication, distribution and modification of the original work. As a result, Wales and Sanger focused on Wikipedia as their main project, taking as a basis the system developed in 1995 by Ward Cunningham.

In other words, in fact, Wikipedia turned out to be a more effective resource than its predecessor, as a result of which it became a scalable project in different languages, which is known throughout the world today.

Fandom

Fandom (known as Wikia until early 2021) is another easy-to-use wiki for those who want to create a free knowledge base.

Wiki projects are based on the MediaWiki internal interface. This allows users to take advantage of many of the benefits of the platform without having to worry about hosting and other technical issues.

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Background

I once tried to create an article on a couple of wiki projects, but they were destroyed because they do not have encyclopedic value, and in general, if you write about something new and unknown, it is taken as PR. After some time, my article was deleted. I was upset at first, but in the discussion there was an invitation for me to another small wiki project about everything (and then I was offered to write an article for another site). I had never heard of him, but I was still happy to write an article for a site that someone runs. By the way, both projects are updated, they are in the search and they are read - for me this was enough to write a review of my project. Both sites seemed to be powered by MediaWiki or something similar, and looked like any other popular wiki portal.

Respect for the post! Thanks for the work!

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Result

But overall very attractive:

1. Even a person far from web development can create a website on my hosting;
2. Monitoring activity on the main page;
3. There is a preview image for the pages;
4. Beautiful design, including for mobile devices;
5. Adapted to search engines;
6. Completely in Russian;
7. Fast page loading;
8. Simple admin panel, including access to engine files from the working directory (directly from the browser, CloudCommander);
9. Simple server code (just over 1000 lines, client script code - about 500);
10. You can make changes to the source code;

I’ll immediately write what’s currently missing
, what might push you
away
, so that you don’t waste your time.
Perhaps some of the points will be implemented in the near future.

1. There is no user registration and delegation of access rights. Publishing after entering the captcha.
2. The tree of user comments for pages may not be available for indexing due to ajax.
3. If you need some unique utility functions, they may not be available. But the basic functionality is fully implemented.

Draft the page

Think back to the Wikipedia articles you've read. They are all different from regular articles or blog posts.

When drafting your page, try to follow these five principles:

1. Simplicity - Use simple sentences and avoid unnecessary jargon.
2. Neutral tone - convey information, not emotion.
3. Objectivity - Don't be biased and forget your usual marketing language.
4. Verifiability - support your information with links to sources.
5. Originality - do not copy text from sources word for word, but retell it.

Take these principles seriously. Advertising is probably the second most common reason for article removal, after lack of relevance.

Translation:

This application looks more like an advertisement than an encyclopedia article. Encyclopedic articles should be written from a neutral position and cite a range of published, independent, authoritative sources, not just material produced by the creator of the subject being discussed. This is important to ensure that the article complies with Wikipedia's verifiability policy and so that the significance of the subject matter can be determined. If you still believe that the subject is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia, rewrite your submission to comply with these guidelines.

The best way to deal with this is to send your sources to a friend who will write an article on them with an open mind, and then publish it. If this option does not suit you, control your impulses and write the text with the interests of your readers in mind, not your company.

I was well aware of this when I wrote the Ahrefs page, but some editors pointed out a few passages that they felt weren't objective enough.

Note.

You can draft an article directly in the Wikipedia CMS—no need to do it anywhere else. Simply go to the sandbox and then copy the contents for submission.

What is a VKontakte Wiki page?

Before you begin step-by-step instructions on how to create a Wiki page on VKontakte, you need to understand the concept itself. So, what is it: VKontakte Wiki page and what is it for?

A wiki page in VK is a special markup format that allows you to independently edit and format the display of information on the site. With its help, you can set the design of the group menu, select fonts, insert graphic elements, set table parameters, change themes to suit your mood, and much, much more. And all this without using the standard, extremely limited tools provided by the social network.

Why this is needed is probably already clear. Without using markup, your page/group will look quite gray and banal. To be noticed, you need to attract attention. What could be easier if you have at your fingertips a huge list of tools that will make you stand out from other authors?! Simply insert tables, use links and lists, highlight text in different fonts, create product catalogs or write posts with colorful photo collages! And all this using a layout language that is accessible to everyone! Great? Not that word!

Creation of a VK Wiki page

The rules for creating wiki markup largely depend on whether you plan to promote through a community or through a public page. We remind you that these two types are significantly different from each other. For example:

• A group can be closed for viewing by all users except its members. Or you can close individual functions (such as comments);
• the “Latest News” section is available for group owners;
• but public owners can create events, while documents can be uploaded to the community.

Due to significant differences in functionality, we will consider each option separately. So let's begin.

In the community

How to make a VKontakte wiki page for a group, let’s figure it out step by step:

• Open the VK group and select “Management”.

• Go to sections.

• Click next to the “Materials” text. You can choose open and limited. In the first case, all participants will be able to create resources, in the second - only persons with the status “administrator” or “editor”.

• In the main and secondary blocks, select the section type. Save changes

  

• Go to the main group - the “Latest News” link appears at the top, and below it there is an edit button. Click.

• You can create content in a simple text editor.
• To save a wiki page, click the button of the same name. Preview available.

With the help of visual aids you can create photo, video, audio, headings, alignment, bold and italics, quote, make a hyperlink. Everything else is done manually using markup.

Now the “Latest news” option will take you to the created wiki page.

You can create a VKontakte wiki markup in the editor: to go to it, click the “<>” icon located on the right. A detailed description of the rules, as well as the course “Creating a Wiki page on VKontakte”, examples for it, can be found in the training community.

Go to community

In public

It’s even easier to create such a Wiki page on VKontakte - it will automatically appear when you enter an address like this in the browser:

https://vk.com/pages?oid=-XXXXX&p=NAME

• oid – community identifier, taken from the address when the public is open on VK.
• NAME – a name that you come up with yourself. By the way, remember that naming the group correctly is not an easy task, and brainstorming for the evening, or even a week, is definitely guaranteed.

To create, follow these steps:

1. Enter the address and press Enter.
2. On the new screen, click on the “Fill with content” button.
3. Once everything is ready, copy the ID in the address bar and paste the link into your menu. Then you can remove it, the text will still remain in place.

The main thing is not to forget to set the conditions for editing “Only group leaders” in the access settings. Otherwise, you risk finding yourself in an awkward situation when the participants, for the sake of a joke, change the recording at their own discretion.

Thanks to markup, you can also add an image to the text of the post. If, after publication, you click on such a photo, you will see not an enlarged copy of it, but the Wiki page itself.

Menu for a group

Now let's move on to the question of how to make a VKontakte wiki menu for a group. Essentially, it's just a set of links that can be attached to text or pictures. You need to start creating by selecting a picture from your album and copying the link. After that, all that remains is to enclose it in double square brackets (for example, [[photo123456_7890]]). After this, you can start editing the image as you wish. You can add text using the text tag or insert a link using the link tag.

That is, to put it briefly, in order for a menu to appear on your page, you need to create a set of graphic buttons and place them in the content area. For each element, insert a link to another wiki page. As a result, you will see that the following type of markup has appeared in the code:

[[photo12394222_456239534|400x266px|page-43503600_44244989]]

The destination of the transition is highlighted in bold: it could be your wiki page or one belonging to another community - it doesn’t matter.

To create a link to a third-party resource relative to VK, select a picture or text and click the anchor icon. In the “Link” field, enter the address, for example https://ya.ru.