wikiHOW..?? HOW do I create on this website?

   Making a wikiHow page is a new experience for anyone who has never been involved in creating or editing a website. There are several steps that are involved. You must come up with an interesting, unique topic that has not been taken, you must write up an outline, you have to code your page and lastly you have to take or illustrate your own photos. How well you do those steps will tell you if your page will get published or not.

    Coming up with a topic is difficult since there are no limits on what it can be. The only problem is that you have to make sure it hasn’t been taken by someone else in the wikiHow world already. If the topic was taken you can give it a twist to make it your own. The topic of “Space Buns” was already taken when doing a wikiHow so “SpaceBuns with Glitter Roots and Highlight” is a way to give the topic a whole new outlook.  After you finish focusing in on your topic, you must then construct an outline. This may be difficult because you have to figure out how to explain directions to someone so that it’s possible to redo or to remake. Redoing the topic or remaking the topic is an easy way to ensure that the topic is a good one to create a page on. Being able to recreate the topic is the whole point of the wikiHow page.

    When you construct an outline you have to break the topic up into steps, they must be simple and straight to the point. You don’t want to lose your audience when you’re explaining a step to them. It has to be stress free and easy so that they don’t go somewhere else for a tutorial. You don’t want your reader to leave your wikiPage. It’s important to remember that each step that’s outlined should be a part of the tutorial to get you to the final product. 

    After you redo your topic to make sure that it’s explainable and you make your outline you must include illustrations or photos. You have to take your own photos for your topic because you don’t want to run into any copyright issues. It may be difficult to take photos of yourself for your topic. Taking photos of yourself doing your hair in space buns is difficult because most times you need both of your hands to do your own hair. You either should have a tripod or have someone take photos of yourself for you. You want your photos to be helpful looking. Each step that is provided by you should have a photo to go along with it. This will make for easier understanding on what the outcome of each step should be. For example, “Brush one side of your parted hair into a ponytail…,” and the photo that would illustrate this would be right above. In the photo you can clearly see the instructions that needed to be followed in the step. After you take your photos you must edit them to fit a website. You want your photos to look polished and professional. Using Photoshop you resize the image suited to a website and you change the levels of the photo. Once you do this your photos are wikiHow ready.

     The final step of your wikiHow is putting all of these steps together in a finished outline. Once you put all of the steps together, one of the hardest parts of creating a website comes. You have to code your outline to format it to wikiHow’s standards. There are certain codes for spacing, headings, steps, numbering, and bullets. If you don’t correctly code your page it changes the way your outline looks on their website. Each wikiHow page has the same format. Wikihow does this so that you know what to expect on every page that you go on. The steps are easily outlined for the viewer. This last part is very important in getting your wikiHow page to be published.

     Make sure you’re saving your work in new documents outside of wikiHow each time you edit it. WikiHow seems harder to go back into and edit unless you’re editing for the first time. WikiHow deletes each section of your drafts when you go back in to edit. If you’re saving each new edit you can just paste it onto their website later. This ensures that your work is being saved somewhere outside of wikiHow so that you don’t have to keep restarting.You don’t want to lose all of your content once you hit the publish button.

   After you submit your wikiHow draft to be published several wikiHow administrators will be on top of it to edit it and give you feedback on it. If you don’t properly follow each of these steps your wikiHow will not get published until you make changes to your post. According to a wikiHow administrator you can’t have two topics under one title. You must split them up into separate posts to make it easier for the users to find content on their website.They prefer you to talk about one topic at a time.          
  The wikiHow administrators won’t reread your post if you don’t fix anything on it after they have given you feedback the first time. The administrators are there to give you help while keeping their website easy to use. Since most of us are not professional website editors and content creators, we need the help of the wikiHow administrators. Each time that you edit your wikiHow and republish you get a new admin. 

   It’s important to put out work that you’re going to be proud of. You also want to put out work that follows rules and guidelines of other websites if the work isn’t going on your website. Communicating with professionals such as wikiHow administrators and professors help with the process of having successful content. You want to take the constructive criticism and use it to better your work; after all people all over the world are going to see it and it’ll be on the Internet forever.