Making VaultWiki look more like Wikipedia

**vhlinks** · February 21, 2015

So forgive me if this has been asked a million times or is just a dumb question, but I've done some searching and can't really find the right answer. I just recently bought version 4 for vBulletin and it works great. But I notice some VaultWiki's where people have it set up like Wikipedia, like a page below for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Van_Halen

Is there a manual or something about how to do this. I've seen a few VaultWiki sites that do this but they were version 3 ones. Just trying to get some direction on this, as I think this format would be much more beneficial to me with the infoxbox, the chapters on the front page. I just really need some direction on where to go with this.

Thanks for any help!

**pegasus** · February 22, 2015

Even with Wikipedia, you had to make infoboxes yourself, by floating boxes to the right side of the screen and typing content into them.

Wikipedia has standardized the implementation of many kinds of infoboxes by creating "templates" with fill-in values to make it easier to create many infoboxes that look similar. The same process is possible in VaultWiki, but I would advise that you make a few non-template infoboxes first, just to get an idea how you want them to look.

Templates are an advanced function and may not be straightforward to someone who is not used to programming. I would advise against using them until you have already started getting used to everything else. I would liken making a template to writing a mad-lib, except for the web. A simple example is available here: https://www.vaultwiki.org/pages/Spec...eList#template

There are a number of ways to do it, but the easiest way is to use a TABLE BB-Code. vBulletin 4.1.4+ has its own TABLE BB-Code, VaultWiki comes with an alternative TABLE BB-Code with syntax similar to MediaWiki tables, and there are other TABLE BB-Codes available through add-ons.

As for that "Contents" box you like, some users get it confused with the book/chapter functionality that is available in VaultWiki, which allows for multi-page content. This is not the same thing. What you are seeing in Wikipedia is simply a list of the main sections on the current page.

VaultWiki will make a similar "Contents" block listing sections of a page automatically after you create a few sections. You start a new section by making a headline (using the H tag): https://www.vaultwiki.org/pages/Special:WikiCodeList#h

**vhlinks** · February 22, 2015

I actually figured out a lot of it yesterday just by really playing around with stuff. So I think I'm making some headway, it looks a lot more than like I want, thanks for the suggestions, that will help.

Am having one issue with the infobox I created. When I go to edit it, I lose all the formatting. The link to the page is below and I pasted the infobox code too. What could be the issue, why I keep losing the formatting? It's the like the nested table goes away.

http://www.vhlinks.com/vbforums/wiki...ddie-Van-Halen

Code:

[TABLE] style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 0.5em; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: middle; background-color:#F9F9F9; clear: right; float: right; font-size: 90%; border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;"
|- 
| [TABLE] 
|- 
|  colspan="2" align="center" style="background-color: #000000; font-size: 175%; color: #E6E600" | [B][noparse]Eddie Van Halen[/noparse][/B]
|- 
|  colspan="2" align="center" style="border-width: 0px" | [FILE]Special:EVH Pic|thumb|310px|center|Eddie Van Halen live in 1984.[/FILE]
|- 
| [B]Birth Name[/B]
| Edward Lodewijk [noparse]Van Halen[/noparse]
|- 
| [B]Nicknames[/B]
| EVH, King of Ten Fingers & Six Strings
|- 
| [B]Born[/B]
| January 26, 1955
Nijmegen, Netherlands
|- 
| [B]Origin[/B]
| Pasadena, California, USA
|- 
| [B]Occupation[/B]
| Musician, songwriter, producer, arranger
|- 
| [B]Instruments[/B]
| Guitar, synthesizer, piano, vocals
|- 
| [B]Years Active[/B]
| 1971-Present
|- 
| [B]Labels[/B]
| Warner Bros., Interscope
|-
[/TABLE]
|-
[/TABLE]

Sorry for creating two threads yesterday, I didn't realize the new threads were moderated and just thought I didn't submit the first one.

Thanks the for help!

**pegasus** · February 24, 2015

Change the outer TABLE to a DIV tag.

Code:

[DIV] attributes | [TABLE] table contents [/TABLE] [/DIV]

There may be a problem with nested TABLE tags when converting WYSIWYG input, which I'll need to review.

**vhlinks** · February 25, 2015

Originally Posted by pegasus

Change the outer TABLE to a DIV tag.

Code:

[DIV] attributes | [TABLE] table contents [/TABLE] [/DIV]

There may be a problem with nested TABLE tags when converting WYSIWYG input, which I'll need to review.

It seems to work fine when I turned it into a template and just inserted it in that way. Then of course I had no issue. Which in the end is the way I need to do it anyway.