From NHO Cameroon

Contents 1 MediaWiki basics 2 Utilities for editors 3 Starting a District Profile from scratch 3.1 About the Country Portal template 4 Editing and peer-reviewing 5 Editing in the main namespace

MediaWiki basics

There is extensive documentation about MediaWiki syntax on the software's website:

• The MediaWiki Handbook
• Public Domain User Manual

Utilities for editors

There are some facilities that will aid content editors, especially when writing non-English content. One of them is special quick links to pages that should exist for the language you're writing in (and do not). By editing your personal stylesheet and adding the following:

.i18nLink {
        visibility: visible;
}

This will show links after titles or content, like ^(trT) or ^(trC), respectively, which are shortcuts to get you to the translated title or content pages, respectively. As soon as you create the pages pointed by those links, they will be shown instead and the links will just disappear.

In other words, after you having set the CSS visibility option as specified above, whenever you find:

• ^(trT) — this is asking you to edit a title in your current language - you will probably be watching a default version (usually, the English version);
• ^(trC) — this is asking you to create a content page in your current language - you will probably be watching a default version (usually, the English version).

Starting a District Profile from scratch

As long as the District special name is listed in the Country List (consider it to be MyCountry), you can start a new profile from scratch by following these procedures:

• Create MyCountry:Index/en or MyCountry:Index/fr or MyCountry:Index/pt (if you plan to write in English, French or Portuguese, respectively) with the following content (replace LANGUAGE accordingly to the desired language):

{{CountryProfileIndex|LANGUAGE}}

And that should be enough to get you started. You will get a Portal instance from where you should start writing your content.

• Also consider creating a page called MyCountry:Taxonomy/LANGUAGE (idem) which will help to follow the whole Table of Contents and verify that your contents will be shown where they are supposed to. Create such page with the following content:

{{Taxonomy/LANGUAGE|country=MyCountry}}

Remeber to replace "MyCountry" and LANGUAGE accordingly.

About the Country Portal template

The template is Template:Tl and it's provided as a front page for every country's specific taxonomy sections, also referred to as "Country Portal". Since it's normalized (by means of the Template:Tl), its structure is the same for all countries, and those pages, at least, should exist.

This template is also prepared to allow front page's images, like the country's flag and location (possibly using images from Wikimedia) that should obey specific formats.

• Country Location Map: 1000px-LocationCountry.svg.png — Replace Country by the English District name; you should be able to get a 1000px-width PNG copy (not SVG!) from Wikimedia Commons;

• Country Flag: 200px-Flag of Country.svg.png — Replace Country by the English Country name; you should be able to get a 1000px-width PNG copy (not SVG!) from Wikimedia Commons;

For the special section Statistical profile, available in all countries portals, the filename conventions are:

• Dashboard: a PDF file named Country-Dashboard.pdf' — again, replace Country by the English Country name;

• Factsheet: a PDF file named Country-Factsheet.pdf — again, replace Country by the English Country name.

Editing and peer-reviewing

There are two types of editor's notes you can use on the text:

• Notes you want your peers to review, and you want the public to see them (without any highlighting) - these are Template:Tl (en), Template:Tl (fr), Template:Tl (pt);
• Inside notes you want to be visible only to your peers - use Template:Tl (en), Template:Tl (fr), Template:Tl (pt);

The general public can't view any of these because of special stylesheet parameters but, while logged, you can. Activate each by editing your personal stylesheet page with the following (choose one block or another, or both) — don't forget to refresh the page (instructions on the page itself):

.aho-highlight {
        visibility: visible;
}

This should show everyone the following note:

Template:Highlight (if you can't see anything nothing before this parenthesis, be sure you pasted the text correctly and reloaded/refreshed the stylesheet page).

.aho-review {
        background-color: #ff4040;
}

This should produce: Template:Review.

When finished saving the page, don't forget to reload it, as instructed at the top of that page.

Editing in the main namespace

All pages that do not belong to a Country Profile (that is, all pages not starting with country name and a colon) are restricted to a special group of users (so regular editors don't accidentally break visual and information layout).

To avoid idiomatic title rewriting (that's what happens when you try to access Zambia:Index while browsing with language "Portuguese" set, you're actually looking at Zambia:Index/pt), all editing should be done by experienced users with "English" language set.