Feed The Beast Wiki:Getting started

Welcome to the Feed The Beast Wiki! If you are interested in contributing to this wiki, you are in the right place; this guide is meant to get you up and editing like a pro.

This guide doesn't go over translation! If you want to translate content to other languages, please view the translation guide!

Why help?
Why should I help the Feed The Beast Wiki? A fine question.

The FTB Wiki has a lot of mod documentation. We have thousands of pages covering hundreds of mods... but there's always still a ton to do. According to OpenEye, there are over 26 thousand (as of this date) total Minecraft mods. The real number is even higher; although a fair number of the mods in OpenEye are repeats and test mods, OpenEye doesn't take into account the thousands of older mods, non-Minecraft Forge mods, mods with the same ID, and mods that just haven't been played with OpenEye for that matter (most users don't use OpenEye). With tens of thousands of mods, there are hundreds of thousands of items and other potential pages that are missing documentation. And, unfortunately (or fortunately from another perspective), mod authors release new features and new mods much faster than they are documented here. We aren't going to ask you to sink all of your time into documentation, because well, you certainly could.

Since there is an infinitely growing amount of gameplay, the editors of the FTB Wiki generally focus on documenting particular mods of their choosing, often based off of popularity, inclusion in modpacks and user preference. This means that the mod you like or use may be very far back in the ever-growing "ultimate documentation TODO list". But if you ever wished a mod could be properly documented, the best way to satisfy that wish is to start documenting it. Heck, you will probably find help along the way.

We'll be honest with you; documenting mods isn't the most fun thing in the world, especially for beginners unfamiliar with the technical aspects of the wiki. However, contributing to something, helping other users, learning and working hard are all very rewarding. There's a lot to do, and a lot of benefit that can come from helping fill in the cracks of incomplete documentation of the modded Minecraft ecosystem.

Common misconceptions

 * The Feed The Beast Wiki is for FTB mods/modpacks only. This is not true! At one point in time, this was true, but that is something that changed long ago. Mods like GregTech 6, The Mists of RioV, ArmorPlus, Aether II, Hexxit Gear and AcademyCraft have all enjoyed documentation here.
 * Only FTB Wiki Staff can edit the FTB Wiki. This is not true! However, this was true in the very early stages of the wiki, when the wiki was still being formed, but it is a clause that was changed a long time ago, as you can probably tell by the "Edit" button in the toolbar. In fact, the FTB Wiki doesn't even have staff anymore, as that system was replaced by a self-appointed (and other-appointed) role system in 2017.

Basic wiki help
For this guide, we expect you to at least have a basic understanding of MediaWiki and "wikitext". However, don't worry if you don't! Several resources exist to help, including the MediaWiki Wiki and Gamepedia's Help Wiki. If you're unfamiliar with wikis, it's highly recommended that you take a little bit of time to browse through those resources before continuing.

Your first item/block page
On this wiki, about 90% of the articles are copied from existing pages. Why? It's simple; the formatting on 90% of all articles are generally structured the same. Below is a boilerplate of the wikitext in an "average" page.

Dirt is a block added by the Vanilla mod.

Recipe
(this will produce this, although the navigation box and categories are cut out)

Components
This simple page consists of a few elements:
 * The infobox (Infobox). The infobox gives basic information on the block or item. You may notice another template being used in this section- Gc. More will be explained about grids later.
 * The lead section. This may be the only section in some articles, but it is almost always the most important. According to the article creation guideline, the lead section should describe almost all of the info described in the initial infobox.
 * The recipe section. Rather than using screenshots, this wiki has many special templates for displaying crafting recipes. Again, more will be explained about grids later.
 * The footer. This includes the navbox ("navigation box"), categories, and a language bar.

Variations
As it happens, different editors have different formatting styles. The more notable variations are listed here.
 * Section headers: two spaces are often used inside of no spaces, like in  as opposed to  . The former uses what is called "2space style", while the latter with no spaces is called "Wiktionary style".
 * The footer: various components of the footer are often scrunched together, as in below.


 * "Stacked" categories- as in below.

It is encouraged for you to experiment and use whatever variations you find to be more aesthetically pleasing. However, if everyone on the wiki already agrees to a particular convention, it is preferred to go by that convention (see also: the Manual of Style).

Your first mod page
Below is a boilerplate of the wikitext in an "average" mod page. You may notice it's somewhat similar to the block/item page.

Vanilla is a mod created by Mojang.

Components
This simple page is made of only a few parts: You may notice that it's very similar to the block/item page.
 * The infobox (Infobox mod).
 * The lead section.
 * The external links section. This should contain any important or useful links.
 * The footer.

Variations
All of the variations in the last section apply here.

The components
The following describes the components of an article in fuller detail and generally are added in the same order as given below.

Maintenance tags
These are optional and will not appear on every article.

If an article's quality is substandard you may see an "article message box" (shortened to "ambox") at the top of a page. Typically it is added because the article is a stub (very little information to adequately inform readers), a work-in-progress (article is incomplete but will be finished eventually), or does not meet the tonal standards of a wiki (informal, using second-person, etc.). These tags will show up in the Backlog. If you are able to rectify the problem, by all means do so and remove the tag once you're done.

Disambiguation
This is optional and will not appear on every article.

Sometimes a mod will add an item that happens to have the same name as another item from another mod (e.g., Chisel). In this event the article generally has the mod it is from affixed at the end of the title in parentheses (e.g., "Dirt (Vanilla)"). The About template will be used to link the reader to the disambiguation page if they happen to read the wrong one.

This code produces:

Infobox
An infobox is a table-like template that appears in the top right corner of almost all standard pages. It is used to provide quick information, and it's sometimes used for the creation of automatically generated lists. The most common infoboxes are Infobox and Infobox mod. Infobox is used on block pages, item pages, entity pages, concept pages and other pages that don't have specific infoboxes. Infobox mod, Infobox biome, Infobox author, etc., are more specific. A full list of infoboxes can be found here.

An example infobox can seen below-

This code produces: (on your right)

On some wikis, infoboxes are invoked with spaces between the parameter name, equals sign, and the value. However, that is not considered proper convention here.

Infobox templates (or at least most of them) are created using Lua modules, like Module:Infobox/thing. Since many infoboxes are used on hundreds or even thousands of pages, a few of the infoboxes modules are protected from editing by regular users, so any desired changes may need to be requested on the corresponding talk page.

All of the parameters an infobox can take are listed on their documentation page (like Template:Infobox/doc). We're very good at maintaining documentation of our templates, and in fact almost all templates have a complete documentation page. It's worth noting the infobox doc is generated through the corresponding module, although the docs for other templates may not be.

Lead section
The lead section is just that, the lead section. It introduces the article and sometimes it is the only section. Very often it is the only "content" section if you exclude the "Recipe" section.

Usually the first sentence gives a simple definition of the page, like "Dirt is a block added by the Vanilla mod". The title/subject is in bold ( Dirt ), and links are added where useful, typically the mod where the item/block/entity/mechanic comes from. ( Vanilla ). Usually for block and item pages, the first sentence has the syntax of "  is a added by ". For mod pages, the first sentence usually has the syntax of "  is a mod created by ". This first sentence, however, is certainly not concrete to this syntax.

The rest of the lead section contains the rest of the most important information on the article, or all of the information if it is a small article (as most articles are). Very large articles should be broken up into sections if possible. Many of the elements of the infobox should be described here if possible.

Recipe
The recipe section gives the recipe of the block/item. The crafting grid guide goes into further detail, but we'll summarize it here.

Rather than using screenshots, we use crafting grid (Cg) templates to display recipes. The recipe section usually contains at least one Cg template, like below.

Each Cg template starts with "Cg/". Cg/Crafting Table is the most used Cg template, but there many others, like Cg/Furnace and Cg/Macerator. A full list can found here.

Each grid in a crafting device has a corresponding grid in a Cg template. In the case shown above, there are ten grids- 9 for the input (A1-C3) and 1 for the output (O). In Cg/Crafting Table, letters are used for marking the columns and numbers are used for marking the rows. The order is A1 to C3 and then O, and then the "shapeless" parameter if necessary. Any empty slots should be skipped over (like done with B2 in the above example).

The template Gc is used for each individual grid/item. Usually it has three parameters- the mod, disambiguation and the name of the item. The mod abbreviation is defined by Module:Mods/list. The "dis" parameter, when set to true (which it is per default) will change the link to add " (Vanilla)" (or whatever the mod name is) to the end of the it. The item name is just that. Often times there's another parameter- the stack size of the item, which is the second parameter, usually listed after the item name. It's only required if it's not 1.

The template O is often used instead of Gc. It is used for Ore Dictionary entries. It only takes only one parameter, the Ore Dictionary name. A list of these can found here and defined here. Currently, only Editors (as in the user group, not anyone who edits) can add Ore Dictionary entries, but if you post a request someone will probably respond fairly quickly.

If an item or block can be created without going through a crafting interface of some sort, write the steps down on how to acquire it.

Usage
This section is optional and will not appear on every article.

Sometimes if an article is large enough to be divided into sections, further details on how to use the block or item can go here. This does not include its use as a component, or what items or blocks it can be crafted into. Most articles don't need a Usage section; don't divide the article into sections for the sole purpose of dividing it. Only divide it if it will really help. If the article would be just four sentences without the section, it's probably not needed.

The Usage section can be either before or after the Recipe section.

Footer
The footer is made of three parts: the navbox, the categories, and the langbar. You can probably guess which part is which.

Navbox stands for navigation box. Navboxes are used on almost all pages. Articles should link to its mod's navbox, and if it is a part of a group or concept which has its own navbox, those navboxes should be added as well, preferably underneath the mod's navbox.

Categories are a feature added by MediaWiki used to make special indexes/lists of pages (see Help:Categories for more info). Category hierarchy has a mostly complete list of all the categories. Make sure to not add your pages to any "top level" categories—categories that are used to categorize categories, but not to categorize articles, like.

Last but not least is the langbar, or language bar. It doesn't really do anything in an article if the article is not marked for translation, but we usually include it anyway.

A few final tips

 * Join us on our Discord or our IRC: . It's more or less the primary form of communication for the editors across the wiki. Both are bridged, so all Discord users will be able to see what IRC users are saying and vice versa.
 * HuesoDeWiki is a utility mod that you can use to save a lot of time while creating pages. It will create the base page for you in the clipboard just by clicking a button! Now, maybe it's a bit cruel that we only mentioned this utility just right after you've gone through the entire guide, but it's important that you know what you're doing rather than simply copying and pasting.
 * And one more thing before you go—this guide doesn't go over everything you could ever need to know about wiki editing. A lot of it you'll have to learn just by experience. But, if you need help, feel free to ask around, either on another editor's talk page or on the two aformentioned online services. We'll try our best to help out if requested. And if you want to experiment, feel free to play around in the wiki's Sandbox or in your own personal Sandbox. Lastly, it's highly recommended that you look through a few more of the guides and guidelines and maybe a few other pages of interest. Don't be shy to edit and have fun!