User:The Transhumanist/User page design/About user pages

Welcome to the user page design center. Here you will find resources for developing your user page. Enjoy!

If you are an absolute beginner, you might consider using the standard article format for your userpage. That should suffice while you're learning the ropes. If you don't have a user page yet and don't know how to create a page, then click on your user name at the top of the screen and follow the instructions (if the page already exists, your username will be blue instead of red). If you don't have a user account, then click on "log in" at the top of the page, and then click on "Create an account" and fill in the boxes. Write your password down somewhere in case you forget it, and whatever you do, don't forget where you put your password!

Eventually, active Wikipedians turn their attention to their user pages. Creating a nice user page can be a daunting and time consuming task. One can spend countless hours searching the User and Wikipedia namespaces for ideas on what to include and design features to add, and even longer trying to figure out how to put them all together. Many resources and examples have been gathered and presented here to save users time which they can in turn apply to improving the encyclopedia. Simply cut and paste the wikicode of the design elements you wish to use on your userpage; and then modify them if you like, to create your own personal style. Browse the example userpages to see what others have done with their pages.

[edit] User pages

User pages serve several special purposes on Wikipedia. First, they are tools which provide areas for personal sandboxes, workshops, and page storage, to experiment and build pages before placing them in article namespace, and to store tools and pages the user finds particularly useful. User pages are perfect for building and storing reading lists, Wikipedia bookmarks, and navigation bars, to assist your Wikipedia-based research, study, and navigation. Your user page also provides a place to express yourself, and any practice you get designing your user page may be applicable as skills upon making the encyclopedia itself better. Each user page has a discussion page, which makes it easy to communicate with each editor directly; Wikipedia even notifies you when you receive a new message. User pages also provide a place for programs or projects not suitable for other namespaces. A Wikipedian's user page can tell us a lot about him or her; their record of contributions to Wikipedia, their wikiphilosophy, their strengths and interests, etc; and gives us a place to put userboxes! The userbox system, which is integrated into Wikipedia's category system, automatically enters the user who uses one into the category that userbox represents, and serves as a directory of Wikipedians for finding users who have an appropriate skill or knowledge-level that you need applied when you yourself do not have it. Programmers, for instance are listed by skill-level. See Category:Wikipedians.

[edit] See also

• Wikipedia:WikiProject User Page Help - the WikiProject dedicated to assisting users with their user pages.
• Wikipedia:Template messages/User namespace - various messages for use on user pages.