The MyHeritage Wiki project is a collaborative encyclopedia for family history and DNA. Articles can be created, edited, and translated by members of the MyHeritage Wiki contributor community. If you're not part of the community yet, we encourage you to join and share your knowledge with the world! Click here to get started.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create, format, and edit articles on the wiki.
Creating an article
Once you are logged in to your contributor account, you’ll see a toolbar on the right. To create an article, click the “plus” button at the top of the toolbar.
If you don't have a contributor account, you can apply to join the contributor community here.
After you click on the plus button, this popup will appear. You can choose a template for your page from the menu on the left:
- Blank page: an article without a specific template
- Ethnicity: an article about a type of ethnicity
- Surname: an article about surnames from a given region or culture
- Contributor and Portal are for administrative use
Then, click on "Create item."
Your page has been created! To get started writing the article, click “Insert paragraph” and begin typing.
Formatting headings & text
The toolbar
The toolbar located at the top of the page allows you to format your text with headings, add links, insert images, special characters, widgets, and more. The arrows on the left allow you to undo or redo an action.
Headings, sub-headings, and the table of contents
The paragraph format menu allows you to select the format for the paragraph you’re working on.
We recommend inserting headings and sub-headings into your article to help organize the information into smaller, more digestible pieces and allow readers to skim and navigate them more easily. Headings and sub-headings will also automatically create the table of contents that appears on to the right of each article (after you save and refresh the page). Readers can navigate to different sections of the article by clicking on the headings that appear in the table of contents.
To create a section heading, select “Heading.” This will automatically make the text bigger and bolder and create a thin underline beneath the text. Remember: headings should be written in sentence case, just like page titles, with only the first word and proper nouns capitalized.
Once you've entered the title using the Heading format, you can just hit enter and the formatting will automatically switch back to plain text.
If you'd like to divide the section into further subsections, you can use the “Sub-headings” for the titles. Simply click "Paragraph" again and select "Sub-heading 1." This will also make the text bigger and bolder, but smaller than a heading and with no underline. If you'd like to nest more subsections within this subsection, you can select "Sub-heading 2," and so on down the list.
Note that subheadings will appear nested under headings in the table of contents; the reader will need to click the arrow next to the heading to reveal the subheadings nested underneath it.
Text formatting
The text format menu allows you to format your text in bold, italics, and more. Click “More” to reveal additional options.
The main topic of the article should generally be bolded in the opening paragraph.
Adding links & citations
This button allows you to add a link to text you have highlighted.
There are three types of links you can add to your text: links to existing MyHeritage Wiki articles, red links to wiki articles that haven’t been created yet, and links to external sites.
Blue links
To add a link to an existing MyHeritage Wiki article, begin typing the name of the article in the search bar, then select the correct article from the menu that opens, and click “Done”. Internal links look like this.
Red links
If the article doesn’t exist yet, you’ll see an option that looks like this. Select it and click “Done” to add a red link. It is recommend to add red links for topics you believe should be added to the MyHeritage Wiki. This will help the community see what content might be missing.
External links
To link to an external site, select the “External site” tab and add the address of the site you’d like to link to. Then click “Done.” External links are indicated with this icon: orange for a MyHeritage website, and blue for everything else. (External links to a MyHeritage website should turn orange after you save the article>
Citations
Citations are key to keeping the information on the wiki accurate and reliable, and we encourage you to add them to every fact you state in your articles. To add a citation, click “Cite”. You can create a new citation by clicking “Basic,” or re-use an existing citation by clicking “Re-use.”
Enter your citation here. Be as detailed as you can, including links if available. Then click “Insert.”
To re-use a citation you’ve already used on this page, click the “Cite” button, then “Re-use,” and select the citation from the list.
The list of references will be created automatically, and it will appear at the bottom of the page once you’ve saved it. If it gets deleted or removed accidentally, you can always add it back in manually by selecting Insert>Template and searching for the "Footnotes" template.
Creating a list
The structure menu allows you to format your text as a bullet list or numbered list, as well as increase or decrease the indentation on the page.
When your list is finished, simply select it again to return to paragraph format, or press enter twice.
Adding media, templates, and widgets
The “insert” menu allows you to add images and media, templates, tables, and more.
Media
Images help illustrate the points made in your article, but they also make the article more pleasant to the eyes and easier to read. Every article should contain at least one image.
You can either add an image from the Wikimedia Commons database, or upload your own image.
To look for an image from Wikimedia Commons, enter a search term into the search bar.
Click the image you wish to use
The image will open with all its details listed below. Click “Use this image” to proceed.
Here, you can enter a caption and an alternative text, which is a verbal description of the image. We recommend filling out both; it’s okay to copy-paste from one to the other.
Under the “Advanced” tab, you can select a position for the image within the text as well as its type and size. Then click “Insert.”
To upload your own image, click the “Upload” tab after selecting “Images and media” from the “Insert” menu, then click “Upload file” and select the file from your computer, or drag and drop it here.
Please note that any image you upload must either be owned by you or belong to the public domain. If you’re unsure of the image’s copyright status, it’s best not to use it.
Check this box to confirm,
Then click “Upload.”
Here you can enter a name for the image. When you’re ready, click “Save.” Then you can enter a caption and alt text and customize the image settings as shown previously.
When you’re done, click “Insert”, and the image in the text will look like this
Tables
To create a table, select “Table” from the “Insert” menu.
A table with a header, four columns, and four rows will be added to the article.
You can add more rows by clicking the arrow on the left and selecting “Insert above” or “Insert below.” You can also move rows up or down by selecting “Move above” or “Move below,” or delete them by selecting “Delete row.”
If you leave a row or column blank, it will disappear once you save the page. Here’s what the table looks like once you’ve saved the page.
Widgets
Widgets are additional objects with varying functions that you can add within the article. The search widgets in particular are important to add to relevant articles because they allow the reader to search historical collections and surnames on MyHeritage straight from the article, which is more convenient than simply following a link.
To add a search widget, Click Insert>Templates
Then search for the relevant widget:
- For surnames, "Surname search"
- For historical record collections, "Collection search"
The "Collection search" widget has a number of customization criteria:
- Collection to search: This is a required field. Select a specific category or collection from the list by copying and pasting it into the text field. (You can also type "All collections" if there's no category or collection that's particularly relevant to this article.)
- Place to search: If your article relates to a specific location, it's a good idea to add that location to this field. This will automatically fill the "Place" field in the search widget with the location you've entered.
- Year type: By default, the widget contains a field for entering a person's year of birth. If your article relates to a specific type of record, you can specify the "year type" that is most relevant to that type of record by typing in one of the listed options: birth, marriage, death, publication, or military. You can also type "hide" to remove the date field from the widget. If you leave this field empty, the default "Year of birth" will appear.
Note that widgets will appear in your draft as a code that looks like this:
You can click on this code and select "Edit" to make changes to the widget. Once you save the article and exit edit mode, it will appear like this:
Search historical records from Germany
The above is a "Collection search" widget with "Germany" in the "Place to search" field and the "year type" field left empty.
Please add a heading (e.g. "Search historical records from Germany") above the Collections search widget (the Surname widget includes its own heading).
Adding authors and contributors
To add yourself or someone else to the main contributor or “Other contributors” sections, double-click on the orange “Authors template” link at the bottom of the page.
Begin typing the contributor’s user name in the appropriate field and select it from the menu that appears. The system will automatically display your first and last name separated by a period (e.g. John.Smith); edit it to remove the period and replace it with a space. When you’re done, click “Apply changes.”
Once the article is published, the main contributor will appear under the title of the page, while other contributors will appear at the bottom.
Moderation
You can save your article anytime by clicking “Save page” at the top right. This will send any changes you’ve made to our moderators for approval, so the changes you made will not show up until they’ve been approved.
When your article is done, be sure to remove the “draft template” from the top of the page. Simply select it and hit “Delete” on your keyboard.
Tagging your article with categories
The final step is to tag your completed article with the appropriate categories on the wiki. Click the tag icon on the right-hand toolbar
Then select the category or categories this article fits under. You can select more than one per article.
Note that selecting the subcategory (e.g. United States, Australia, Russia) will automatically nest the article under the main category (e.g. Genealogy research by location).
Here is a brief explanation for each main category:
- Genealogy research by location: Articles relating to specific locations, e.g. "United States Census: Federal Census records," "Australian military records," "Russian immigration," etc.
- Primer on historical records: Articles that explain what different records are in general, but are NOT location-specific, e.g. Newspaper records, Death records, Birth records, etc.
- How-to guides: A broader category for practical guides to researching genealogy and analyzing DNA results, e.g. How to research in an archive, How to get started with genealogy research, How to understand DNA matches, etc.
- Naming traditions: Articles relating to names, including given names, surnames, patronymics, etc. from different locations and cultures. Note that at present, we do not have articles on specific surnames (e.g. Elboym), but rather articles about surnames in a given culture (e.g. Ashkenazi Jewish surnames.)
- Genetic origins: Articles relating to DNA and ethnicity, e.g. DNA segment, Centimorgans, Italian ethnicity, etc.
References