Wiki Formatting Help

This is a basic introduction to wiki syntax on this site. Please be aware that not all of these formatting options will be available everywhere you can enter wiki text. Generally, if you're entering text into a small text area (e.g. for a comment or guide step), you should only count on being able to use links and font styles. For larger text areas, where you're contributing large blocks of content, you can use lists, headings, and paragraphs, among other things.

Links are automatically created for things that look like URLs. The protocol (http://, https://, ftp://, etc.) is required. For example:

http://www.ifixit.com

Yields http://www.ifixit.com. If you want to provide your own link text, then you'll need to get a bit fancier:

[http://www.ifixit.com|iFixit]

Which yields iFixit.

Wiki links behave very similarly to normal links, but are enclosed in double square brackets. Note that you can supply your own link text by adding it as an optional second argument:

* [[Help:Wiki Syntax]]
* [[Help:Wiki Syntax|A link to this article]]

Which yields:

• Wiki Formatting Help
• A link to this article

The link is given by the article's name with an optional namespace on the front, separated by a colon. If no namespace is supplied, then the default namespace is used. The square brackets and vertical bar to separate arguments are a common pattern you'll see applied throughout our wiki markup language.

You can generate links to multiple wiki articles at once using the wikilist tag and specifying one or more comma-separated tags to select articles by. A given article must match all of the listed tags in order to be displayed. Assuming you pick tags that actually match some articles, you'll get a tabular layout of article links, each link consisting of a thumbnail image and the article title. You can also narrow the search beyond the tags, to a particular namespace. You might use the tag like this:

== Articles about Category X ==

[wikilist|category-x]

== Category X articles that are also about Category Y ==

[wikilist|category-x,category-y]

== Info articles about Category X ==

[wikilist|category-x|namespace=Info]

You can add tags to an article from the article's edit page.

Guide links automatically add in the title of the guide that they link to. Or, if you like you can specify the link text like any other link. To identify a guide, you use its numeric identifier, which you can get from the URL on a guide page. For example, in the URL below the numeric identifier for the guide is 132. The identifier will always be near the end of the URL, right after the guide title.

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-iBook-G3-12-Inch-Display/132/1

Here's an example of how you could use a guide link to link to the above guide:

* [guide|132]
* [guide|132|So you broke your display...]

Which yields:

• Installing iBook G3 12" Display
• So you broke your display...

In many places, you can just use a plain link to the guide page, and it'll be converted into a guide link for you.

Product links work very similarly to guide links; they can be used to link to iFixit's products in a more meaningful way than a bare URL. Like guide links, product links will use the product's current title as the link text by default, but they can also be customized. You refer to a specific product by its product code, which you can get from the product page. As with guide links, you can just use a bare link to a product page and it'll be converted into a product link for you.

For example:

* [product|IF145-002]
* [product|IF145-002|If you buy one tool...]

Yields:

• Spudger

• If you buy one tool...

The usual font styles are provided for:

* ''Italic''
* '''Bold'''
* '''''Super bold'''''
* ``monospace``
* x^^2^^ (superscript)
* H,,2,,O (subscript)
* ~~Strike-through~~
* ++Underlined++

This yields:

• Italic
• Bold
• Super bold
• monospace
• x² (superscript)
• H₂O (subscript)
• Strike-through
• Underlined

These styles should really only be used on plain text, and shouldn't be wrapped around newlines. It's okay to put them around things like links, but only if it's necessary for the purpose at hand (not to achieve a particular look). These styles are not intended to be used within link tags on the custom link text.

You've already seen lists in action throughout these examples (the asterisk at the front of each example line), but only in their most rudimentary form. You can create nested lists by adding an asterisk for each level of indent, and you can get numbered lists by using a pound sign (#) instead of an asterisk. You can mix numbered and unordered lists, but you must be consistent within each list.

* Macs
** Mac Laptops
### iBook
### MacBook
### ...
** Mac Desktops
### iMac
### Mac mini
### ...
* iPods
## Mini
## Nano
## ...

This yields:

• Macs
  • Mac Laptops
    1. iBook
    2. MacBook
    3. ...
  • Mac Desktops
    1. iMac
    2. Mac mini
    3. ...
• iPods
  1. Mini
  2. Nano
  3. ...

Note that exactly one new line separates each line of the list. Putting a blank line between two lines of a list will result in two lists, which isn't usually what you want.

You can create headings for sections and subsections by wrapping a line of text in two or more (up to six) equal signs (=). Each matching pair of equal signs makes the heading smaller, corresponding to a less significant subsection. You can't use one equal sign, because that level heading is reserved for the title of the entire page. For example:

== A top-level heading ==
=== A sub-section heading ===
==== A sub-sub-section heading ====
===== And so on... =====

You can see the how level two headings are rendered throughout this page. The others are similar, just increasingly smaller.

Paragraphs happen more-or-less automatically, so you shouldn't have to think about them too much. Any time you separate two or more lines of text with one or more newlines (exactly one blank line is preferred), each block of text is made into a paragraph unless it's already a block-level element like a list or a heading. A good rule of thumb is to separate each logical thing in your document with a blank line. For example:

=== A simple example ===

A simple example of preferred usage of whitespace when writing. This is the first paragraph.

This is the second paragraph. It'll be followed by a list:

* A list with a few items:
** Item one.
** Item two.
** Item three.

This is the third and final paragraph.

This yields:

A simple example of preferred usage of whitespace when writing. This is the first paragraph.

This is the second paragraph. It'll be followed by a list:

• A list with a few items:
  • Item one.
  • Item two.
  • Item three.

This is the third and final paragraph.

You can add images to Q&A posts and wiki articles (guides have images as well, but they're added via a different mechanism). The easiest way to add an image is to position the text cursor in the wiki text where you want the image tag to go, then to drag the image from your image library (there should be a tab at the bottom of the page that says "Images") onto the wiki editing text box or Q&A post. You can also drag an image from your library into the "Image Manager" box in the sidebar, and then hover over it to get the image identifier. Once you have the identifier, you can manually add the tag, which has the format below, to the wiki text. Dragging the image directly into the text box just copies the image identifier for you automatically and inserts a basic image tag.

[image|<id>|size={standard,medium,original}|align={left,right,center}|caption=<text>]

The size and align arguments are optional, and the defaults are standard and right respectively. The caption argument is also optional, and defaults to no caption. If you add caption text, it should (for now, at least) be plain text that doesn't make use of wiki markup.

[image|<id>|size={thumbnail,standard}]

The size argument is optional, and the defaults is standard.

Currently, we support embedded videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and Screencast.

In addition to images, you can also add videos to wiki articles. The tag format for videos is similar to that for images, but rather than identifying videos by a numeric identifier specific to our site, we identify them by a link to the video on the service where the video is hosted (e.g. Vimeo). So to add a video to a wiki article, you just need to manually create a tag that looks like the following:

[video|<link to video>|size={small,large}|align={left,right,center}]

As with images, the size and align arguments are optional, but for videos they default to large and center respectively. You can add a caption to a video, but the formatting is different than that for images, and consequently you can add wiki markup to the caption text. Here's an example use of the video tag, complete with caption text that includes a link:

[video|http://vimeo.com/6659283]A video about [http://ifixit.com|iFixit].[/video]

Note that without a caption, there's no closing [/video] tag, but that to provide a caption, a closing tag is added and the caption text is nested between the opening and closing tag.

You'll need to do a little extra work to embed videos from Screencast. You can't just copy and paste the URL for a Screencast video, because the URL to view a video on the Screencast site is very different from the URL to embed the same video. The URL you need is the last one in the big block of text you'll get if you copy and paste the Embed on your page HTML. It should look something like:

http://www.screencast.com/users/.../<long identifier>/embed

Copy that URL and paste it as the first argument to the video tag:

[video|http://www.screencast.com/users/.../<long identifier>/embed]

In both guide introductions and wiki articles you can supply a summary that will be used to summarize the guide or article in search results, lists of popular items, and so on. Because the summary text shows up in different contexts and in very tight spaces, it can't contain any wiki formatting (including raw and code tags). Here's an example summary:

[summary]Model M6497 or A1005 / 500, 600, 700, 800, or 900 MHz G3 processor.[/summary]

This text will show up in a number of places, but will not show up where you put it in the wiki text. The actual summary tag usually renders to nothing. Instead, the text it contains is pulled out and used elsewhere.

You can add a table of contents to wiki pages with the tag. The table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in the document.

Code:

You can escape wiki formatting with a [raw]...[/raw] block. The text between the raw tags will be completely left alone and won't be interpreted as part of any wiki markup. It won't be displayed any differently, though, as the purpose is just to escape wiki formatting (conversely, the ``...`` font style just displays text as monospace and does not escape wiki formatting).

If you want to display a block of raw text differently for purposes of explanation, you can wrap the text in ``...`` if you want it to display as monospaced within a line, or you can wrap it in [code]...[/code] if you want it to display in a block of its own (like the examples on this page). For instance:

* [raw]``This text is not monospace``[/raw].
* Links look like ``[raw][http://www.ifixit.com][/raw]``.

[code]
An example within the example!
Nested code tags are okay, so long as they match.
[/code]

This yields:

• ``This text is not monospace``.
• Links look like [http://www.ifixit.com].

An example within the example!
Nested code tags are okay, so long as they match.

You can leave comments on your wiki with a block. Any text in between the comment blocks will not be visible on the wiki page.

[comment]This is product #239[/comment]

You can create a line break by using the [br] tag.

This line has a [br] line break.

Example:

This line has a
line break.

You can visually highlight a quote or piece of text by using a [quote]..[/quote] block.

[quote]To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape. -Sun Tzu[/quote]

To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape. -Sun Tzu

[quote|format=featured]To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape. -Sun Tzu[/quote]

To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape. -Sun Tzu

The Guidelist wiki syntax will allow you to create a list of all guides with the same tag name. You can use the Guidelist syntax on Category pages, wiki pages, and item pages.

Parameters:

• Tag
• Device
• Type
• Title (Optional)
• Include Prereqs (Optional)

[guidelist|tag=issue27|type=project]       
[guidelist|device=iPhone 3GS|type=teardown]
[guidelist|tag=issue27|title=Issue 27]
[guidelist|tag=issue27|include_prereqs=true]

Example:

[guidelist|tag=Guidelist]

How to Add Tags to a Guide

You can also create lists of wiki pages.

Parameters:

• Default: comma-separated list of tags
• Namespace
• Title (Optional)

[wikilist|robotics]                
[wikilist|robotics,technique]      
[wikilist|robotics|namespace=Item]
[wikilist|robotics|title=Robotics]

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