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You will learn how to create a new page in this guide. Before you start on this, you should have read the Guide to creating User Pages and created a User Page for yourself. That allows you to create your own personal testing ground for new pages and rough draft articles.

We cover creating an individual page to add to the Codex below. But first, this commercial:

Overview

You are free to create new articles, but first, please read the Codex Guidelines for creating new pages and Codex Styles. Generally, if you are not sure that you can finish your new article in one sitting, consider creating a rough draft of the article first. Once your work is complete, you can mail the wp-docs mailing list informing others of the new article and requesting feedback. In this guide, you will learn how to create a rough draft, and from there, how to create a new page.

Create a Rough Draft Article

Before posting to the Codex main pages, it may be beneficial for the new article to go through some checking and editing before finding a home among the regular pages. This section describes how you can create a rough draft of an article by creating a Sub-Page of your User Page to work on the draft. If you are not sure about being able to complete what you are starting, or have questions about the article you are working on, creating a rough draft is a good way to begin. Be aware, though, these rough drafts are currently crawled by search engines, so make sure your information is as accurate as possible.

To create a rough draft article on your User Page, the process is similar to creating your User Page:

1. Creating the Draft Page Link

Edit your User Page and add a link to the title of the article. Please follow the article title conventions and guidelines as established in the Codex Guidelines. The link format should be:

[[User:Fredsmith/Title of Article]]

and would look like this when the page is saved:

Because the link is red, it means that the linked page has no content. If you haven't already, add a note to the Summary about what you've done and save your edited User Page by clicking Save Page button below it.

2. Creating the Draft Page

Click the red link of the article title and the page will open with a blank editing window. Now it's time to start adding your article content. Use the Codex Guidelines, Codex Styles, Editing Help, and the Sandbox as examples for laying out and formatting your rough draft article page.

3. Add Draft Notification

At the top of the empty page, before you enter your text, please type the following:

When you save or preview the page, the following warning will appear to warn people who find this article on a search engine that it is a rough draft and subject to correction and change.

4. Alert Codex Documentation Team

To alert the Codex Documentation Team that you've created a new document, at the bottom of your new page, please add:

This will create a "flag" that will let people know that this is a new page requiring editing. Add this only when you are ready for the volunteers to start working on the document to help you finish it. You can also post a link to the draft article on the WordPress Codex Documentation Team mailing list to let them know you are ready for inspection, editing, and move to the right section of the WordPress Codex.

5. Save and Preview

As you work, you can save the document at any time by clicking Save Page below the edit textarea. This will save the document and make the changes visible to any viewers, as well as close the Editing view. The changes in the unsaved document are only seen by you. DO NOT LEAVE THE PAGE WITHOUT SAVING. To do so may lose all your edits.

To preview the changes, click Preview. This saves the content temporarily and reloads the page so you can preview the edits you've made. THE CONTENT IS NOT SAVED! The edits are not visible to the public, and if you leave the page the edits may be lost. To save your changes, click Save Page.

Preview and save often. If you are writing code or complex content, the Preview helps you to edit and fix problems before you get too far into the document.

If you leave the Editing view, click Edit Page from the sidebar to return to editing the page. You can also click the Edit link at each header section to edit that specific section.

If you are unsure as to what you've edited and need to see the changes between versions, click Show Changes to see the version differences.

When ready to finish or leave the document. Click Save Page to save and leave the document. It is highly recommended that you make a note in the Summary form as to what you have done with the document. Only a few words are necessary. This helps the Documentation Team know what is happening with the progress of the page.

Writing and Producing Codex Content

Before contributing an article to the WordPress Codex, search thoroughly to see if something similar has been produced. If necessary, add any new content to the previously published document to enhance and improve it.

Link to other documents within the WordPress Codex throughout your document to encourage readers to find more and related information. Link to pages like the Administration Panels when instructing readers through the path of using WordPress to avoid redundant content, but also give them more information on the parts and pieces of WordPress.

In addition to the guidelines and tips in Codex Guidelines for creating new pages and Codex Styles, we recommend you write the majority of your article in a word processor or Glossary#Text_editor text editing program first so you can spell check and thoroughly proof your article before posting. Simply copy and paste the article into the editing window and then you can start editing and styling it to Codex standards.

Take advantage of the popup references page found on every Edit view to the Help:Editing page with all the MediaWiki code and WordPress Codex styles. Open it in a tab in your browser as a style reference page.

Take care to break up sections of information within the document into heads, to give readers an easy way to jump to the specific information they need, and to make the document easier to read.

Check and Double Check

Before saving the page, here are a few things to check:

Are there any red colored links?

These are "dead links" and will take the visitor to an empty page. Check the link to make sure everything is spelled properly and the link matches EXACTLY to the linked page, with capital letters capitalized and lower case lower. A link to "an Article On WordPress" will not link to an article titled "An article on WordPress".

Is everything spelled right?

It doesn't hurt to copy the final material and paste it in a word processor or text editor and run it through a good spell checker to be sure.

Is the content order right?

Check to make sure the explanation comes first, then the simple material, moving towards the more complex.

Are the sections in order?

Check that the sections are ordered right. If the article has more than four sections, the table of contents box will automatically generate, so check there to see if they are ordered properly as section, subsection, sub-subsection and then back to subsection or section headings. Avoid usage such as section, sub-subsection, subsection, etc. Keep the steps clean.

Have you categorized the page?

Did you put the appropriate categories on the page?

Double and triple check the code

If you have included code, be sure and do a test run of the code before you publish by copying and pasting the code into a test WordPress page. Sometimes code can get scrambled during the edit process.

Check that code is in tt and not code tags

On the Codex, style example code within a paragraph using the <tt></tt> HTML tags and not the <code></code> tags as the code tags create a blue background behind the text and the tt tags don't.

All styles match the content

When using inline CSS styles and HTML to highlight information, make sure all open HTML tags are closed, and all inline styles are working and closed, too.

Final Steps

After creating your rough draft article, post a note with a link to the article location on the WP-docs mailing list to invite people to review and edit your work, and let others thank you for contributing.

Check your article's Discussion tab occasionally to see if someone has posted a question or note about your article as part of the editing process. Do your best to help them help you create the best article possible, one that is clear and helpful to the WordPress user.

Creating a New Page

To create a new page on the Codex, create a link to the new page title on an appropriate page on the Codex. This will help keep the information on the Codex organized and easily accessible. The link should look something like this, and following the article title conventions and guidelines as established in the Codex Guidelines and Codex Styles.

[[Title of Article]]

When the page is saved, the link will be red. Click the link to access the new page and post the article contents, as listed under Create a Rough Draft above.

Delete the Draft and replace it with the following:

This removes the "rough draft" status of the article and puts it in the "draft/edit" stage, which means it has been checked over for major errors and needs some minor fixing and cleaning.

When the article is ready to leave the draft stage, a member of the Documentation Team will remove the Copyedit tag.

Check your article's Discussion tab occasionally to see if someone has posted a question or note about your article as part of the editing process. Do your best to help them help you create the best article possible, one that is clear and helpful to the WordPress user.

WordPress Codex Categories

Each article within the WordPress Codex is categorized with specific categories, as listed on the Special:Categories listing. Please use one or more of the categories listed and do not add any new categories without approval of the WordPress Codex Documentation Team.

To add a category to a page, use the following at the bottom of the page, taking care to use the exact spelling and format from the Special:Categories list.

[[Category:Category name]]

An example would be:

[[Category:WordPress Lessons]]

For non-English language documents on the WordPress Codex, please use the two letter language code before the Category Name to group language specific documents:

[[Category:fr:Panneaux_Administration]]

You may also include the language specific category for all documents in that language such as:

[[Category:Turkish Codex]]

Category pages are created automatically and customized by the WordPress Codex Documentation Team to include related and subcategories.

For more help on understanding how categories work in the WordPress Codex and MediaWiki, see Help:Editing and MediaWiki Help on Categories.