Help:Starting a new page

Part of the Style and How-to Series

Here is how to start a Wikipedia page. A "page" can be an article, talk page, project page, template, or help page.

You might also want to learn about:

• The Wiki Markup : How to edit a page.
• Editing tasks in general at the Editing FAQ
• Tips on contributing to Wikipedia for general inspiration, guidance, and good advice.
• Requested articles.

General principles

• Search to see whether someone has written an article before you start one yourself.
• It is highly recommended to start a page from an existing link. (These so-called "ghost links" or "red links" are links that have been made in the text, but for which no article currently exists.) See below for more information.
• Remember to establish context. Write a short introduction at the beginning of a new article. Don't just write, "This was his third novel...." While you may have followed the link from the famous novelist X, other readers may arrive at this page from elsewhere.
• Review Wikipedia's naming conventions before naming a new page. Proper naming will encourage links from other related pages and will help to avoid any need for renaming the page in the future.
• Start with a complete sentence, not a dictionary definition. Highlight the title phrase or title word very near the beginning of the article.
• If you'd like to follow-up on your article after you've created it, we suggest you create an account before creating it.

Ways to start a new page

1. Start a page from an existing link
2. Start a page by editing the URL directly
3. Start a page from the sandbox

Starting a page from an existing link

To start a new page, you can start from a link to the title of the new page. As you're reading through Wikipedia articles, you'll see clickable links to pages that haven't been written yet (like this: Sample article title note this is not an actual functioning link). Links to unwritten pages appear in red (if you are logged in you can change this to a small question mark using the preferences). Click on the link, and you'll arrive at a page that says:

You've followed a link to a page that doesn't exist yet.

To create the page, start typing in the box below:

Just start typing your article in the edit-box. When you're finished, click the "show preview" button to check what the page will look like first and to check that you haven't made any errors. Then click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.

Creating links to other pages

While you are editing some existing article, if a word or phrase you are typing strikes you as if it ought to have an article of its own linked from here, just put it in double square brackets, [[like this]]. We call that "wikifying" the text. When you save the present article, that word will either magically link to an article if one exists, or it will become one of those red links mentioned above which allow you to create the article. This is a great way to build new articles.

Editing a URL

Another way to start a new page is to enter something like the following into your browser as a page address:

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

Replacing "Sample_article_title" with whatever you want the article to be called. For example, to create an article about frumpysnarf, type:

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

This will bring up a message that informs you that there is currently no text in the article yet. So, click on the "Edit this page" link at the top of that page, and presto! you are now editing your brand new article. Your careful attention to accuracy and neutrality will be greatly appreciated, of course.

However, creating an article with this method often makes what we call here an orphan -- no other articles link to this new page. Orphans are bad -- they should be linked to (i.e. by creating a link to it in another article).

Start a page from the sandbox

Another way is to use the sandbox.

• Edit the sandbox, then create a new link.
• Then create/edit your new page by clicking on the link and writing new text.

Note: The sandbox is periodically erased, so remember to bookmark the page(s) you have created, in order to edit them again in the future. If you are a registered user, it will also appear under "My contributions" in the Quickbar. Also, note the remark above regarding orphans.

Further info

When creating pages it is also good practice to run the text through a spell checker before submitting. You may find it more convenient to take a copy of the original page, work on it, then paste the edited copy back in. Also, creating brand-new topics is a great way to help Wikipedia increase its breadth (and depth).

Note: Wikipedia is an open content encyclopedia. You are contributing to a free, publicly usable database of information. You automatically license everything you contribute under the GNU Free Documentation License; you can do that only if you own the copyright to the material (which you do if you created it), or if the material is in the public domain. See Wikipedia:Copyrights for details. Never submit copyrighted material without permission from the copyright owner.

See also:

• Naming conventions

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