News Guide
Some of you may wish to contribute to one of the 'newspapers' that are available. First off, it is not just as easy as putting the articles in the right spot and clicking 'submit', it takes a bit of fiddling to get the layout right. If you don't think you'll be able to do it properly without messing up, it's probably better you leave your article on the talk page for the issue you want to submit an article for and let someone who knows how to do it correctly put it in for you.
Templates used for News
Major News
Major news templates are the ones for articles you would expect for a front cover of a newspaper. You can tell them apart because they have 'major' in the name of the template. Major templates divide the page into thirds, and each template deals with these columns in certain ways.
- Template:News_major_large_right places the article on the right-hand-side of the page, covering two-thirds of the page (leaving the third on the left blank, or filled with another template).
- Template:News_major_large_left does the same as above, except placing the article on the left.
- Template:News_major_small_right produces an article orientated on the right side of the page, which only covers one third of the page.
- Template:News_major_small_left does the same, except left orientated.
- Template:News_major_fullpage creates an article which is spread across the entire width of the page.
- Template:News_major_columns creates space for three articles, each in their own third of the page. The tags for this template are different: title_left, title_center, title_right and respective article tags are used to define which column each article should go in.
Minor News
Minor news templates deal with articles that are not as large or important as major articles. With minor news templates, the page is divided in different ways for each template.
- Template:News_minor_left divides the page in half, and places the article on the left hand side of the page.
- Template:News_minor_right does the same, except for the right.
- Template:News_minor_fullpage creates an article spanning the entire width of the page.
- Template:News_minor_columns divides the page into three, and each article is in its own third. The tags for this template follow the same system as for major articles in columns.
How to write a "Newspaper"
The templates above allow easy creation of "newspaper" pages, if used correctly. To put a page together, you use a number of the templates as shown above.
All the templates have various features. The header template allows you to organise the top of your newspaper, with headings, prices and issue numbers. The major and minor article templates are for determining specific positions within your page. These are further discussed below.
With templates, there are tags for where information should go. The purpose of the template is to allow you to provide this information, without having to mess around with formatting. For example, the section below:
{{Template:News_major_right|
title =Battle in Far East|
article =Today, there was a battle in a southern region of the Far East...
}}
Will give the effect shown on the right.
| Battle in Far East | |
| Today, there was a battle in a southern region of the Far East... |
You use squiggly brackets to begin and end a template section. When in between the brackets, first you name what template you want to use (in the above case, this is Template:News_major_large_right). This is followed by a pipe. A pipe determines where each section ends. Following the template, you start providing the raw data. To find the tags that you need to use, you can click to the template directly and it will show you where the tags are and what they are called. In the above case, the title tag provides the title for the article and the article tag is the article itself. Notice there is no pipe at the end of the last piece of data - it goes straight back to brackets.
Mixing and Matching templates together
Templates usually have an opposite so that the entire page is filled. For example, the Template:News_major_large_right will place that article on the right two-thirds of the page, and Template:News_major_small_left will fill the empty space on the left. It is possible, although not recommended, to mix and match minor and major templates together, as the minor left and right pages are based on 50% rather than 33% divisions, and may cause formatting errors. For example, it would be possible to make a page with a minor left and a small major right template side by side, as 50% + 33% = 83%, and would fit within the margins of the page (although there would be a large blank space down the middle). However, with a large major right template, the sum of the two would equal 116%, which will invariably cause formatting errors.
Templates need not line up 1:1. If you have a single long major article and two smaller major articles, you can use one template to put the long article on one side, then use the opposite template twice so the two smaller articles appear next to the major article, one underneath the other.