Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-765166-20130704073349/@comment-4815503-20130722162838

Wolvenboy wrote: heres a bright idea first.. how about we make some kind of manual that clarifies the armor template? (this one: http://monsterhunter.wikia.com/wiki/Template:ArmorSection) that way, i can atleast start working on those FU armors ^^ its all cool and stuff to have templates, but its useless if barely anyone knows how to use them..

This is a good point, because although templates are extremely helpful and easy to use once there's an established precedent, trying to understand them from scratch can be very intimidating. There are a few articles about them in the Wikia help section, but as someone who has used them pretty often, there are a few rules of thumb I can share that hopefully will be helpful.

First off, when it comes to templates, it's best to get used to working with source code rather than visual editing. Source code can look extremely messy and unintelligible when you're making things from scratch, but once templates come into play, the roles are reversed. Source code becomes remarkably simple and precise, while trying to mess with visual editing becomes a hassle. This is because with templates, all the things that would normally make working with source code so unpleasant, such as tables and cosmetic touches, are already taken care of and folded into the identity of the pre-made template.

Next, when you want to make use of a template on a page, copy/paste is your biggest ally. Looking at a template page, such as the one you posted, you can usually see a section below the visual example of the template that's entirely made of text, which is called the documentation. Amazingly, this text, aside from the placeholder names after each equal signs, is exactly how the source code for your use of the template is going to look. All you have to do is select it all, copy it, go to your page and switch to source code, then paste. Then you can begin to replace the placeholder text with the appropriate information, which is what your only real work is going to be. Usually, the documentation of the template has some level of instruction on how to do this, so if you take not of that, your template should look fine. As always, you can make sure that it does by pressing preview.

Now, once you've used the template in at least one page, you no longer have to go back the the original template page to copy the documentation. All you have to do is go to the page you already used the template in, say you're going to edit it, then just copy the source code for the template from there to use in your next page. Better yet, you can save the source code to a text document on your own computer and pull it off of that everytime you want to use it-- just change the necessary information, paste it into the source code of the new page, and viola, you're done.

So, since you're interested in doing armor pages, which is where I'm working mostly as well, I would suggest you take a look at the source code of a page you think looks good, copy it, then paste it either directly into the new page's code or a text document and edit it there. As long as you don't mess with anything before the equal signs, it should come out looking exactly the same, save for the changed text information or pictures.

Anyway, I hope that helps for now. I'm no template expert, but if you have any other questions, I'd be happy to try to answer. Hopefully somebody with more experience than I will weigh in if necessary, though.

(Sorry if this is the wrong place for a long reply, I'll move it if necessary, but I just wanted to answer more or less directly.)