User:Robchurch/Editing Crash Course/Preparation/Making Your Sandbox

''When you're setting out to learn wikimarkup, you may find it handy to have somewhere to make your edits, where you won't be disrupting articles. In wiki terms, this is a sandbox, and this lesson details how to create one.''

Your personal sandbox will reside in your user space. User space is just that; space effectively belonging to the user. While it can still be edited by everyone, you are more or less free to put what you like in it, within reason.

The path to your sandbox will look something like this:


 * User:Joe Bloggs/Sandbox

Obviously, we replace Joe Bloggs with your username.

Create Your Sandbox

 * 1) Open a new browser window
 * 2) Enter the text  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Joe Bloggs/Sandbox 
 * 3) Replace Joe Bloggs with your Wikipedia user name
 * 4) Press Enter/Go on your browser

You will see a message similar to the one shown on the right. Click the link to create the page (an example is highlighted in the screenshot on the right).


 * 1) Enter some text, e.g. This is my personal sandbox for learning wikimarkup.
 * 2) Scroll down the page
 * 3) In the Edit Summary box, type Created personal sandbox
 * 4) Click Save

After the page is saved, you will be taken to the newly-created sandbox. You now have somewhere to experiment with, and to test out everything else this course teaches you.

Glossary

 * Sandbox
 * In wiki terms, a sandbox is a page which is used in testing new features and learning to edit pages


 * Wikimarkup
 * Wikimarkup is a simple but powerful markup language for creating and formatting MediaWiki pages


 * MediaWiki
 * MediaWiki is the software that powers Wikimedia projects, such as the Wikipedia