Help:Preferences

User profile

 * Real name: This may be used to give you attribution for your work. Other users of the wiki will not see this! It probably won't be used for anything, as most wikis will credit you by your username.


 * E-mail address: Your preferred email address. It is strongly recommended that you give an email address you use and are likely to have for a long time. If you forget your password, this is the only way you can get it sent back to you!


 * Change password: Use these fields if you would like to change your password. "Remember across sessions" stores a cookie on your machine so that you do not have to enter your password every time. (If you use a public computer, such as a library or school lab computer, you probably don't want to do this. But if you're using your home computer that no one else uses, it can be convenient.)


 * Language: Which language you would like the interface (buttons, system messages) to be in. This can be different from the language that the wiki is in! The articles will stay in whichever language they were originally written in.


 * Signature: Allows you to customize the signature that appears when you use ~ . See SmashWiki:Sign your comments for details.


 * Email: Check the box if you do not want other logged-in users to be able to contact you via email. (Normally, the "email this user" link, which is on the side of the screen when you look at any user's user page, will allow users to email you without seeing your email address.)

Appearance

 * Skin: Select one of the options to decide how you want the pages to look. MonoBook is the default, and there are many things that look or work better on this skin than others. Select the "preview" link by any skin to test it out before selecting it.


 * Files: "Image size limit" allows you to choose a size that will fit on your monitor when you click on an image to see the information about it. "Thumbnail size" sets your default size for images tagged to appear as thumbnails.

Date and time

 * Date format: Choose the option that best matches your preferred date format. (Several options, including American and European date formats, are available.)


 * Time zone: Specify how many hours your time zone is away from GMT/UTC so that times show in your local time. If you're not sure which one to choose, find your offset from the Wikipedia list.

Editing
Options with "(requires JavaScript)" require you to have JavaScript turned on in your browser.


 * Size of editing window: This sets the size of the edit box for when you edit a page in terms of columns and rows.


 * Enable section editing via [edit] links: When selected, this allows you to edit only part of a page at a time by showing an "edit" link for each subheading. This makes it easier to find the part you wanted to change, though it does clutter the page with "edit" links.


 * Enable section editing by right clicking on section titles (requires JavaScript): When this is selected, right-clicking on a subheading will let you begin editing that section.


 * Edit pages on double click (requires JavaScript): When selected, this will cause double-clicking on a link to another wiki page open an edit window for that page.


 * Widen the edit box to fill the entire screen: If this box is checked, the edit box (when you click "Edit this page") will be the width of the browser window.


 * Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript): A toolbar with editing buttons can be displayed.


 * Show preview on first edit: When pressing the edit button or otherwise following a link to an edit page, show not only the edit box but also the rendered page, just like after pressing "Show preview". This is especially useful when viewing a template, because even just viewing, not editing, typically requires both.


 * Show preview before edit box: If you select this option, the preview will be displayed above the edit box when you click the "Show preview" button while editing a page.


 * Mark all edits minor by default: This option automatically selects the "This is a minor edit" checkbox when you edit pages. If you will be doing a lot of small edits, such as fixing typos or links, rather than writing new material, you may wish to select this option.

Recent changes
Options with "(requires JavaScript)" require you to have JavaScript turned on in your browser.


 * Hide minor edits in recent changes: Logged-in users may choose to mark very small fixes to pages as "minor". You may choose not to see these edits in Recent Changes, though they will be visible when viewing your watchlist.


 * Use enhanced recent changes (requires JavaScript): When selected, this feature allows you to group recent changes per day by article, display the titles of the changed articles in order from latest change backwards towards pages that had edits less recently.

Search options

 * Hits per page: You may choose the number of results returned on each page of search results.


 * Lines per hit: Specifying a number n means "do not show any context if the search term occurs beyond line n in the page." Setting this to 5000 or more gives context for every occurrence.


 * Context per line: The number of characters of context per occurrence; however, the context is anyway restricted to the "line" (anything without a line break; usually a paragraph) it occurs in. To get the whole line, choose a large number like 5000.


 * Advanced options: Choose which types of pages you would like to appear in searches by default. (You will be able to change these options from the search page.) For example, selecting "Main" only will return only articles, selecting "Main" and "Talk" would search articles and their discussion pages.