Editing Guide

The following is a helpful guide to explain how certain website sections are constructed, as well as stylistic aspects unique to BibleStrength; as the site design differs from other public encyclopedias.

General Style Guide

• APA style format is typically (if not always) used throughout the site, and probably should be used to preserve consistency.

General Coding Guide

The following is a general coding guide showing to aid in editing BibleStrength. For more advanced formatting, see the Help sections at Mediawiki or Wikipedia. For basic table formatting, see the List Page Structure section. Areas on this page with details on formatting not mentioned here, including tables and images are bolded in red.

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Coding	Comments
:	Colons serve to indent text. They can be useful on discussion or debate pages to preserve thread order. Each colon creates additional indentation.
[WebUrl TextShown]	Displays an external hyperlink to a website, whatever follows after it, as separated by a space, will be the hyperlink text shown.
[[PageName|Text Shown]]	Displays an internal hyperlink to a page on BibleStrength, whatever follows after it, as separated by the pipe symbol, will be the hyperlink text shown. It is possible to just put brackets around the page name itself, but the page name will then display exactly as it is named.
=	Double equal signs surrounding plain text produce section headings. Each additional pair of equal signs reduces the heading/subheading level.
'	Double apostrophes surrounding plain text produce italics, triple apostrophes surrounding plain text produce bold text.
*	An asterisk will produce a bullet point. Using multiple asterisks for indented bullet points.
#	Hashtags produce numbered lists.
<span style="color: red"></span>	This will produce red text. The word red can of course be changed to other color names.
{{Reflist}}	Coding to produce sources/references cited. If this coding is not used, an error will occur at the bottom of the page if any references are cited.
<ref>LastName, InitialofFirstName. (Year, Month Day). "[hyperlink_address article_title.]" ''Site_referenced.''</ref>	Coding to produce a reference/citation in APA format that will appear in the sources/references section at the bottom of the page.
<ref name=RefName>Reference content</ref>	Coding to produce a named reference/citation that can then be referenced again.
<ref name=RefName/>	Coding to refer to a previously named reference/citation. Be aware that you cannot name a reference multiple times on a page without producing an error, additional namings should be replaced with this code so that it is only named once.
{{reflist|group=notes}}	Coding to produce a notes section at the bottom of the page.
<refgroup=notes>Note content</ref>	Coding to produce a note that will appear in the notes section at the bottom of the page.
[[Category:CategoryName]]	Coding to categorize the page.
<br>	Coding to go down a row, similar to hitting Enter on a keyboard.
{{cquote| }}	The cquote tag creates a quote box. Whatever is placed in front of the two closing brackets will be quoted within the quote box.
-~~~~	Use a dash followed by four tildes to sign your name with a date stamp on discussion forums.
-------	A series of dashes in a row will create a page break line running horizontally across the page for presentation purposes.
{{anchor|ListAnchor1}}	An anchor is just a numerical ID to allow linking to that specific part of the page.

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Typical Page Structure

The following is the typical page structure used, although this will vary for certain page types (e.g. Categories, which look better with just a minimal description and no references section).

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Coding	Comments
[[File:FileName.jpg|thumb|NumericalPixelWidthpx|ImageCaption.]]	The page's primary image. The width is determined by the number of pixels. E.g. "[[File:Treaty of Penn with Indians by Benjamin West.jpg|thumb|400px|Treaty of Penn with Native Americans by Benjamin West.]] Make sure images are in the public domain and do not have copyright restrictions. For public domain images, see Mediawiki Commons.
{{TOC right}}	The Table of Contents, right aligned. The location may need to be adjusted.
==Heading Title==	The Section Heading.
Section content.
===Subheading Title===	The Subsection Heading. Two pairs of equal signs surrounding plain text results in a main heading. Each additional pair of equal signs results in a lower heading level.
Subsection content.
==Heading Title==	The Section Heading.
Section content.
===Subheading Title===	The Subsection Heading. Two pairs of equal signs surrounding plain text results in a main heading. Each additional pair of equal signs results in a lower heading level.
Subsection content.
==Sources==	The Sources heading
{{Reflist}}	Coding to produce sources/references cited. If this coding is not used, an error will occur at the bottom of the page.
[[Category:CategoryName]]	Any relevant categories should be included.

Table Formatting

Coding	Comments
{| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto;"	Formatting for the table specifying the table type and style/margins. To make the table sortable, change class="wikitable" to class="wikitable sortable".
|-	A row break, ending the table setup formatting section.
!width="350" style="center"|Column1Title	Column heading and column width.
!width="400" style="center"|Column2Title	Solution column heading and column width.
|-	A row break, ending the column setup formatting section.
Text
|-	A row break.
|}	The pipe symbol followed by a closing bracket serves to close the table. If the table is not closed properly, the table will not appear.

Helpful Advice

The following is information you may find useful for improving research and editing efficiency:

• You can resize multiple internet windows to see multiple pages and programs at once.
• Keyboard shortcuts will greatly improve your efficiency; including CTRL+X to cut, CTRL+C to copy, CTRL+V to paste, CTRL+A to select all, CTRL+Z to undo, CTRL+Y to redo, CTRL+T to open a new tab, CTRL+N to open a new window, tab to alternate between webpage sections, etc.
• It helps to work on tasks of the same type while doing CTRL+C/CTRL+V copy/paste.
• You can easily replicate all content on a page by editing one page, clicking in the edit box, using CTRL+A to select all content, CTRL+C to copy, and then creating a new page and pasting in everything using CTRL+V. This could be used to copy all content from a list of alleged contradictions, paste it to create a new list as a new page, and then simply edit everything, replacing content as needed.
• If you need to Google for information, you can go to Tools on the right-hand side below the search bar (only works on a computer or if using Desktop view on a phone) for additional search features, including searching by date range, which is useful for checking news articles within a certain time period. Use double quotes around a phrase to search for that exact phrase or a hyphen/minus sign in front of a word or phrase to exclude it from search results. There are more features in Google's Advanced Search which can be accessed through Settings, which is just to the left of Tools, including site-specific searching. For science articles, if you do not have access to JSTOR or other databases, you can search at Google Scholar. Nature and Pubmed have some free articles that are publicly visible as well.