Hello, guys!
My name is Ross, commonly known as taralej around here. I'm a veteran WoW (2004) and Warmane (2010) player. On this server I am known as the author of the Combat Rogue guides (you can check them in my profile signature) and an active member at the Rogue section.
The purpose of this thread is to teach you the basics of making a nice, reader-friendly guide. As MoP has been released recently, I feel like this is the perfect time to share my experience and knowledge with you on this exact topic.
Contents
1. A Guide's purpose
2. DOs and DON'Ts
3. Hyperlinks
4. Formatting
5. Advanced
6. Conclusion
Disclaimer: * will be used in the 3. and 4. section for technical reasons. Simply omit it when following the instructions.
1. A Guide's purpose
This one is going to be short. A guide serves to shed light; to guide the newbies and refresh the veterans. It also serves as a beacon, a rendezvous for any player interested in the topic of the guide, be it for learning or just for discussions. These are the thoughts that should be on your mind constantly while writing your guide.
2. DOs and DON'Ts
Over the course of time (approx since my birth, in 1990), the Internet has proven itself as the world's biggest bragging scene. Many people forget what a guide is made for and who it is aimed at, and instead turn it into an e-peen contest of knowledge about a bunch of pixels.
2.1) A Guide should be aimed at other people. Not you. Probably the only place where you can mention yourself in a guide is the start, as a point of credibility.
2.2) A Guide should be readable. This means it should not have long walls of text, but it should not be cut down and scattered either. It should not be plain and "dry", but it should not be as bright as NYC's Christmas tree either. It should be a pleasure for the eye to read.
2.3) A Guide should be comprehensible. Guides are mainly made for newbies, so if you are going to include abbreviations, make sure that you have an Abbreviation section above, where these are explained. Avoid the excessive use of abbreviations or complex denotations. And please, mind your grammar... There is spell-checking everywhere now, so you really have no valid excuse.
2.4) A Guide should be comprehensive. If you're gonna do something, then do it right and finish it. You can teach someone how to make the perfect bow and arrows, but if you don't teach him how to shoot, then you did nothing.
2.5) A Guide should be structured. Think about what you want to include in the guide. Don't just start typing random words like a raw expression of your mind - people simply won't understand it. Make points, bullets, paragraphs and important notes where needed.
2.6) Save your work! I've lost countless hours of work because of my forum session ending, power outages or miss-clicking the Backspace. Keep a simple notepad file opened and periodically copy-paste your work in it and save the file. Notepad does not support links or formatting, so it is the perfect way to save your guide in its raw form.
2.7) Take constructive criticism and improve your guide. It will probably not be perfect the first time. Like many things in life. However, you should already be mature enough to not be taking everything said against you as offensive - instead try to draw the best from other people's opinions and try to improve your work. Read their opinions and try to see it from their point of view.
2.8) A Guide should be up-to-date. Don't just throw your guide out there and leave it. Patches change, bugs get fixed, new content gets released and old gets closed, and if any of this has an effect on the topic of your guide, then you should also update the guide to reflect this change.
2.9) A Guide should be relevant. Sometimes even information can come to be too much of a good thing. You don't need to jam your guide with every single piece of information that possibly exists on the Internet. You also don't need to share your life story in your guide - it's not a novel. What you need is a guide, which will fulfill its purpose - nothing less and nothing more.
2.10) Above all, a Guide should be credible. All that is in it is taken as truth by newbies, so if the information you're providing is incorrect and/or not backed up by sources, facts and figures, then you're just a troll.
3. Hyperlinks
There are links, and there are hyperlinks. A link is just what you copy-pasted from the address bar. A hyperlink is a link embedded into text. Hyperlinks are essential for guides, as they allow you to maintain a much cleaner and neater guide, instead of having a thread jammed with confusing links all over it. By default, Warmane forums will detect links in text and script them with [url*] on one end, and [/url*] on the other end. This turns the normal pasted text into a link. In order to make hyperlinks, you can use [url*="your_link_here"]your_text_here[/url*].
A link to Warmane website: https://www.warmane.com/ - (notice how Warmane's forum platform does not wrap the link with [url*]_[/url*], because of the S in the protocol, which stands for "secure")
Here is a hyperlink to Warmane's website again.
A link to Shadowmourne: http://www.wowhead.com/item=49623
Here is a hyperlink to Shadowmourne.
4. Formatting
Text formatting is also an important part of making your guide more reader-friendly. Formatting lets you separate paragraphs, titles, and it lets you highlight important details in your guide. There are several basic formatting scripts that you can use in your threads:
Text size - [size*="put_size_number_here"]your_text_here[/size*]
Text color - [color*="put_color_name_here"]your_text_here[/color*]
Emphasis - Bold: [b*]your_text_here[/b*]; Italic: [i*]your_text_here[/i*]; Underline: [u*]your_text_here[/u*]
5. Advanced
- When you want to make it so a direct image link appears as an image on the forums (instead of just a link), you can use the [img*]your_image_link_here[/img*] script.
Example:http://i.imgur.com/SdwtgtL.png
Spoiler:Show
- When you want to make a YouTube video watch-able from the forums, you can use the [yt*]your_video_link_here[/yt*] script.
- When creating guides and introducing links into them, OpenWoW is probably going to be your first place to stop. This website contains database for every non-live expansion, making it the best point of reference for private servers. Notice that links from OpenWoW appear as mouseover links, such as this: http://wotlk.openwow.com/item=49623.
There are a LOT more formatting options, but these are just the basic ones, which I've been using for the last several years.
6. Conclusion
With the dawn of MoP on Warmane, I expect a lot of new guides to pop up for almost every single class, talent spec, PvP and PvE content. I hope that my work will positively influence and refine those of you, who are willing to spread knowledge and experience to the community though your guides.
Below you will find a small collection of some of the better guides on this forum:
Spoiler:Show
Cheers! ^^ :)
pro tip: if you want to see all the formatting a post contains, simply "Quote" it.
