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# Using The Wiki

Welcome to the Unreal Wiki. This page explains how to get the most out of the site.

## The Wiki Concept

> The Wiki is a real-life "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the black thing with "Don't Panic!" written (in big friendly letters) on its cover, only that anybody can edit it. It occasionally also represents the chaos of all the discussions in the Wiki, resembling the random recipes to the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster and similar things.

> In other words: If you can't find it, ask somebody to add it. If nobody can help, find out and add it. Let the discussions go chaotic, but clean it up later.

A Wiki is a kind of website where anyone can edit pages. At the foot of every page you'll find a link "Edit text of this page." Clicking this will load a new page with a form containing the page text.

The idea is that everyone can easily and quickly contribute information and ideas (and stuff). You may add to or reorganize any page, except some where the original author has requested otherwise (such as personal contributor pages).

- Everybody can edit. That's a feature, not a security hole. So, yes, with very few exceptions you can just go ahead and overwrite a page full of content with some random garbage (and in fact that happens every once in a while). But all changes are logged, old revisions of a page are kept by the system and can be restored by anyone with only a few clicks. If you want to know more about how and why this site works, see the Wiki FAQ.
- The raw text you edit is not HTML, but plain text with simple markup to produce features such as headers and lists. See Wiki Markup for more.
- The Sandbox has been established for practising Wiki markup editing. If you want to get a feel for how the Wiki system works, go there and try it out. Please don't make practice edits on other pages.

For more about contributing to the Unreal Wiki see New Contributors Quick Start. The rest of this page is about using the site to find information.

## Wiki Etiquette

Contributing etiquette aside, there are a few points we'd like visitors to consider:

- Please don't use "harvester" or "offline reader" downloading programs to grab the entire contents of the Unreal Wiki. Offline Wiki explains why and suggests alternatives.
- Please don't send emails with general mapping and coding questions to site contributors (such as tarquin or Mychaeel). What we know we tend to write here. What we don't know, we don't know. We recommend BeyondUnreal's [Unreal Development] forums: posting here means that more people see your question, and the answers you get are also available for other people to read (if you add what you learn to the Wiki, even better).

## Finding Things

The Unreal Wiki has over 1,500 pages. That's a lot of stuff. This site is a WikiWikiWeb, and thus it's a web of pages rather than a hierarchy. Like other wikis, don't expect to take it all in at one sitting. Take some time to wander round.

There are various "ways in" to the Wiki:

### Topic Pages

The Home Page is the starting point for the site. Rather than list hundreds of links there, we've organized articles into topic pages, such as Architecture, Lighting and Texture Topics. Topic pages give an overview of a subject, and links to both tutorials and reference articles.

See also the Wiki Roadmap.

### Search Engine

You can easily perform a full-text search of the Unreal Wiki. Just enter some terms (separated by blanks) and hit `Enter`. The Wiki will show you the pages that match your query best. (Enclose terms that contain blanks of their own in double quotes.)

Search the Unreal Wiki:

There is a search field at the bottom of every page on the site. You'll find further tips on searching on the dedicated Search page.

### Browser Tabs

The Wiki Integration page has tabs that plug in to most browsers. These allow you to create your own personal sidebar of frequently visited pages on the site. There are mIRC scripts too.

### Backlinks

You can backtrack with your browser's back button like with any other site. But you can also get a list of all the pages that link to the page you're reading. To do this, simply click the page's title text (the big bold heading right at the top).

### Related Topics

Most pages should give a list of "related topics" at the foot. If you think we've missed some, please add them!

### Categories

Some pages are grouped in Categories. This is a sort of tagging system, where the "tag" is just a link at the foot of the page of the form "Category {topic}".

This is actually just an application of the backlink feature: we create a page called "Category Bob", and put a link to it on articles we want to be in that category. On the "Category Bob" page, clicking the title produces a list of all the pages that link there – which is those pages we chose to put into the category.

Any Category page it itself a member of the Category Category. So go there to get a list of all categories.

## Helping out

So you've found more Unreal Engine info that you can shake a stick at. Want to help us get even better?

- New Contributors Quick Start

If you've got a minute to spare, take a look at UnrealWiki To Do

## What Next?

More on the site at Project FAQ and Project Aims.

You can ask about the site at:

- Project Discussion
- [Project forum]
- irc://irc.enterthegame.com/unrealwiki

The MetaTopics page has links to all the pages about the site.

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