How To Make Wiki Categories

Categories are a type of wiki page that make it very easy to navigate between pages of similar topics! You just add a code to pages that should be put into a category, and when you go to the category page, those pages are listed nice and tidy in alphabetical order! A basic example of a category is the Compendium For Beginners, where all the related wiki help articles can be found under the main category page!

Making a category is very similar to making a regular Compendium page! Follow the same instructions, but you'll need to put "Category:" after the /wiki/ followed by your page name. Including "Category:" tells the Compendium that your page is a Category.

Example: If you wanted to make a Category of Quests With Kobolds, you could use
http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Category:Quests With Kobolds

Hit enter and you'll be taken to a page that says:
"There is currently no text in this page, you can search for this page title in other pages or edit this page."
"Articles in category"
"There are 0 articles in this category."

This lets you know that no one else has made the category yet. That's all you need to know to start placing pages in the category! Above the "Articles in category" area, you can add and format information just like a regular wiki page! An introduction paragraph is great to help people understand what the category is about. Click "edit this page" and you're ready to start adding some text to your category. Then it's time to start putting pages in your category!

How do you place articles inside your category though? Find a page that you'd like to include in your category. You need to edit that page and include the following code somewhere in the page (most people like to put it at the very bottom or very top of the page so it's easy to find): [[Category:Name]]

Example: If you found someone's build page that you thought would make a good addition to the Character Builds category, you would put the following code in their page:
[[Category:Character Builds]]

Now when you go to the Character Builds category, you'll see their page listed in alphabetical order!

If someone else already made a category with the name you wanted to use, you might want to continue to add to the existing category. That way you don't have multiple categories for the same thing. If your category is vastly different than the existing one, just pick a different name for your category. Remember that the name you pick is how your category will display in category and subcategory lists! So "This Category Is For Everything And Everyone Ever In All Of DDO" is probably not going to be a very good category name because it is very long! Keep your category name simple and to the point. Also be sure to check around to make sure someone else didn't already create a category that matches the same purpose as yours!

You can also place a page in multiple categories. Let's say you wanted to place a two weapon fighting rogue build page in "Character Builds", "Two Weapon Fighting Builds", and "Rogue Builds"... you just add each one that you want it to be a part of:
[[Category:Character Builds]] [[Category:Two Weapon Fighting Builds]] [[Category:Rogue Builds]].

The page will be neatly listed in all 3 places!

You can find more great tips and help from other users by visiting the Compendium Discussion forum!

There are many fun things you can do with categories, so click here to learn more about how you can use them!