Purpose

There are many different places that members and especially volunteers add page markup. While, this is a positive thing, we need to try to do so in a compatible way.

The End Result

EB Pages are XHTML 1.0 Strict. For most people, that has little to no impact. The average user needs only ensure that the XML (HTML) document is well formed.

Wiki Guidelines

In general, use as much non-HTML wiki markup as possible. Avoid using the <br/>, <p/>, <b>, <i> and <u> HTML elements just to name a few. This way we can more easily control the quality of the page layout.

Check out are easy Wiki editing cheat sheet.

Wiki Links

Wiki links deserve special attention. The number one mistake people have made is around linkage issues.

There are three kinds of links and it is important to understand the difference.

External links to other sites

[http://somesite.com/somepage.html label for link]

Local wiki links

[[Page Name |label for link]]

It is VERY important to use local links when possible as they have very special features associated with them. Notice the (|) symbol between the page name and the label.

Links to Wikipedia

Wiki's have a special ability to link internally and to other wiki's. Wikipedia is setup already for namespace en.

[[:en:Page Name |label for link]]

Don't forget about the page formatting cheat sheet.

Why

A wiki keeps track of what links to what, so on any given page you can see what links to it. If you are not using local links, this is not possible.

Also, the wiki has built in page redirection so when a page moves to a new location, your links do not break.

Also, for cleanup we can find orphaned pages (pages without any links to them) and possibly ditch them or etc. This is likely to happen for artists and bands that get deleted because there is no art that represents them (probably got entered with a bad name to begin with). So, if there is nothing linking to a page, it may accidentally get ditched.

Lastly, if we ever had to move the wiki to a new location, internal links would still function at a new web address.

For all these reasons and more, use internal links in every case possible.

Forum Guidelines

Use the forum style markup only.

HTML Guidelines

For the most part this applies to the volunteers, but it's good reading for users who wish to embed html in the wiki pages (not advised, but not forbidden).

Definitions

Element 

a.k.a. Tag, A structural part of the XML document. For example, <p> </p> is a paragraph element.

Attribute 

A property of an element expressed as name and value pair. For example, <p style="font-color:red"></p> is a paragraph element whose text will be displayed in the color red.

Well Formed Document

This is the MOST IMPORTANT thing to know about HTML editing. In the earlier versions of HTML, it did not have to be well formed, but now it does.

• For every start element there is a end element.
• Elements are properly nested
• All attributes have a value
• All attribute values are quoted with double quotes

Bad	Good	Why
This is my first paragraph. <p> And this is my second.	<p>This is my first paragraph.</p> <p>And this is my second.</p>	The element p must have a beginning and an end.
This is my first line. <br> And this is my second.	This is my first line.<br/> And this is my second.	The element br does not contain text, so we must use a slash at the end to indicate that the element does not continue on.
<b> i like <i> formatting </b></i>!	<b> i like <i> formatting </i></b>!	Improperly nested elements.
<img align=right src=image.jpg>	<img align="right" src="image.jpg">	Attribute values must be quoted

That is the important stuff.

XHTML Conformance

There is more to conformance than a well formed document. But if a document is not well formed, the rest is mute!

Conformance is a moving target as standard do change. There are rules like only using a <br/> within a paragraph block <p></p>. There is a specification of valid elements and valid attributes that change a lot from release to release.

If you know the rules, please use them. But if you don't, don't worry about it. Just stay well formed and thing will work out fine.

Browser Compatibility

The main point here is, we will do this part of the work. You can help by following these guidelines. If people do not following these guidelines, then we really do not have much of a chance of providing a pleasurable experience for everyone.

For a lists of supported systems see System Compatibility.

Most people edit with their eyes. They add formatting and test it with their web browser. There is nothing wrong with that and it is entirely logical. But the realitly is that EVERY VERSION of EVERY BROWSER on EVERY OPERATING SYSTEM does it differently. So maybe your browser looks good, but don't bet on your friend's browser.

What's worse is, a popular browser's like Internet Explorer simply does not follow the standards and we have to make special invalid code just to make it look similar to what we intended it to look like and we have to use different invalid code for each version of Explorer. It is in drastic need of improvment. It is too bad we can't get everyone to use FireFox which seems to follow the standards almost perfectly.