User:KingOfYou115/Guide to Using Source Editor

Hey, insert name here, KingOfYou115 here!

On Wikia (er, "Fandom: Powered By Wikia"), every user has access to two different editors to choose from: the overly simplified, usually broken Visual Editor (also stylized as VisualEditor) and the overwhelming and complex Source Editor.

Out of both editors, Source is by far the better of the two, and is used by every veteran of the site (as far as I'm aware). Because of this, asking an administrator or site patroller for assistance will generally only yield code you can incorporate into Source, which is useless if you use Visual for whatever reason you can muster.

Because Source is more difficult to grasp than Visual, I have decided to create a guide to help new users such as yourself understand the Source Editor.

This is that guide.

Part I - The Visual Editor
You may be asking yourself, "I thought this guide was on the Source Editor; Why is this moron talking about the Visual Editor instead?"

Well, that's because, in order to understand why you should use Source, you first need to know why you shouldn't use Visual.

One limitation of Visual to note right away is the inability to use it in most places on the wiki. Such places include the initial creation of a page, template pages, and talk pages, all of which force the user to use Source. There are no locations on Wikia that restrict the user to only use Visual.

Visual is also quite broken and, while you can't see it, tends to leave odd broken bits of code within pages whenever you write. Stuff from unnecessary  tags, misformatted/messy template parameters, and unnecessary parameters for embedded files and internal links.

Source allows the user to make the page exactly how they want, and keep the code clean in the process.