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# New Contributors Quick Start

This page should be a quick and easy guide to contributing to the UnrealWiki. Ideally, it should give a newcomer enough information to get started right away. If it doesn't, change it! Feel free to visit the [Unreal Wiki forum] if you have questions, or irc://irc.enterthegame.com/unrealwiki

## Quick Start

Background
  You might want to read Project FAQ or Project Aims for info on the site.
Registration (optional)
  Go to [Preferences] and give yourself a username and password. This is so your name appears on the Recent Changes list; nothing else (you don't even need an email address). The Category Personal Page page has a list of all people who have contributed to the wiki; you can also add your name to this list if you like.
Exploring
  Browse around the site. If you find a page you'd like to add something to, click the Edit text of this page link at the bottom of the page. This will load up a form containing the text of the page. Make additions or corrections and press Save.
Editing Pages
  You can make practice edits on a page without risk of damaging existing material on the Sandbox page. (Please don't practice on the Home Page. It works just alike, but somebody else will have to clean up your mess afterwards, and that's always a bit annoying.) Don't worry about making markup errors on a page – someone else is bound to come along and correct them.
Adding New Material
  You can edit existing pages to add information or ideas, fix mistakes, or create links to other relevant pages on the wiki or elsewhere. If you're unsure of what name to give a new page, or you want to add something small but aren't sure where, add it to the Inbox.
Creating Pages
  To add a new page, first find somewhere to link from – somewhere like Mapping Lessons or UnrealEd Tips for example. Edit that page, and in a suitable place write the title of the page you want to add, surrounded by double square brackets like this:
  `[[name of your new page]]`
  Press Save. The page will reload. The new text will be rendered with a ? link after it – this means it's a link to page that doesn't exist yet. Clicking the link will take you to the edit form for this new page. Write some text, press save, and the new page is created.
  Please don't start new pages by just typing in a URL into your browser. Pages created like this won't be linked to anything else in the wiki (hence they're called orphans). The idea is to build a web. Find somewhere to link from first.
  Note that admins can rename pages: if you create a page and then it vanishes, this is probably what has happened. Find the link you made for it or look on Recent Changes: the page name will have been updated there too. More: Guidelines On Tutorials.
Making Rough Starts
  You don't need to write an entire article for a new page. It's fine to just make a start on something, or write what you know, or even a list of things you think the article should cover. You can come back to it later, and in the meantime someone else may have made additions to the page. Articles don't need to be rigidly defined topics. It's very easy to re-organize material later.
Don't submit material that is copyrighted...
  ...unless you have express permission. If you own the copyright (ie if you wrote it yourself), then obviously it's fine. If you already have tutes on the web you are very welcome to add your technological and cultural distinctiveness to our own.
Use existing resources
  and don't reinvent the wheel. Most simple tasks are explained on Basic Procedure pages: you can link to those from tutorials.

## Wiki Markup

Wiki has its own markup, but it's very very simple and you can pick it up by following what's on a page so far. The reference page is Wiki Markup, and on Sandbox there are examples: Edit the page to see how they are done and experiment there.

## Community

(brief notes...) Checking Recent Changes is part of the responsibilities of being a good Wikizen:

- check for vandalism,
- see what other people have written and help out if you can,
- check if you have messages,
- check what people have been doing on pages you've worked on recently

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

## What Next?

- You can create a personal page for yourself, and get a smug sense of satisfaction at the increasing number of people who are working together on the project.
- Recent Changes is the nerve center of the site. It's what the hive mind is currently thinking about. It's also rather a large page, so you may want to change the number of displayed days in your Preferences. It's also where important news about the site is posted.

## See Also

Some general guidelines for pages:

- Guidelines on General Style
- Guidelines on Page Creation
- Guidelines on Page Links
- Guidelines on Technical Names
- Guidelines on Tutorials

More about the project and what contributors think of it:

- Project Aims
- Project FAQ
- Project Copyright

More information about Wiki:

- Wiki FAQ

Discuss:

- Project Discussion
- Visit #unrealwiki on irc.enterthegame.com
- [Unreal Wiki Forum], hosted by Beyond Unreal forums.
- [BeyondUnreal's General Editing Forum].

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