Help:Portals
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Portals provide organized visual access to articles.
Article portals
Article portals on Heroes Wiki are organized into four separate sections:
| Portal Section | Contains | Included portals |
|---|---|---|
| The World of Heroes | All articles related to Heroes episodes | Characters, Episodes, Events, Groups, Lists, Places, Powers, Things, Timeline |
| The Heroes Graphic Novels | All articles related solely to the Heroes online graphic novels | Issues, Graphic Novel Characters, Graphic Novel Locations, Graphic Novel Places |
| About the show | All behind-the-scenes and real-world articles | Cast, Crew, Production, Recurring Themes, References, Speculation |
| Heroes Evolutions | All articles solely related to the online Heroes Evolutions experience | Evolutions Characters, Evolutions Locations, Evolutions Sites, Evolutions Other |
Using Portals
To use the portals to navigate articles, simply click the 'Article portals" link in the Navigation section of any page. Click the text label or image for any article or portal to access that portal. Click the "Back" arrow to return to the previous portal. Click links on the portal navbar to jump from portal to portal, or section to section.
Editing Portals
Since portals are intended to provide a complete gateway to articles, it's important to add any new articles to the correct portal. Special:Newpages lists the newest articles, and can thus be used to find articles which have not yet been added to portals.
There are two primary "types" of portals: those which use portrait-oriented images (Cast, Crew, and Characters), and those which use landscape-oriented images.
Adding a new cell
Portals which use portrait-oriented images use template:PortalCharacter. To link to an article, you will need a portrait-sized (200x250 pixels) image and the article title.
Most portals which use landscape-oriented images use template:PortalPlotPoints. For a list of landscape portals which use other templates, see "Other Portal Types". To link to an article, you will need a landscape-sized (450x350 pixels) image and the article title.
New cells should be placed alphabetically. Be careful to match the sort of other cells on the page; some pages include (and sort by) last name, and some do not.
Once you've located the correct spot for your cell, paste the appropriate code in as a new line:
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for portrait portals: {{PortalCharacter|image=|link=|text=|nonlinktext=}}
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for landscape portals: {{PortalPlotPoints|image=|link=|text=|nonlinktext=}}
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Fill in the variables. For image=, add the name of the image. Include the file extension, but do not include the Image namespace. For example, to use Image:Sylar.jpg, type image=Sylar.jpg. link= should be set to the name of the article. text= is an optional field; it overrides the way the link is displayed. It can be used to force a line break between first and last name, or to shorten an article title which is too long. For example, to display a link to "Angela Petrelli" on two lines, set text=Angela<br>Petrelli. nonlinktext= is another optional variable; it is used primarily to adjust the height of a cell. See "Adjusting Cell Size".
Adjusting cell layout
Finally, it will be necessary to adjust the layout of the article to accommodate your new cell. Portals built with template:PortalCharacter should have five cells per row., while those built with template:PortalPlotPoints should have four. After four lines of {{PortalPlotPoints}} or five lines of {{PortalCharacter}}, insert a row break by typing |- on a line by itself.
If the last row has less than the full number of cells, close the table after the last complete row with |}. On a new line, open a new table with {| width=. The value for width= will vary based on the number of cells in the incomplete row:
| Portrait portals | Landscape portals | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Some portals contain multiple pages of characters, such as Portal:Minor Characters. For these portals, you will need to adjust subsequent pages. See "Multi-Page Portals" for more on these portals.
Adjusting cell size
Finally, press "Show Preview" and verify that the cell layout is correct. The last step is to verify that all cells are the same height. If a few cells are taller than most others, you can try to shorten the name of the link by adjusting text=. If a few cells are shorter than others, you can add whitespace to them by adding a value for |nonlinktext=. Setting |nonlinktext=<br> will increase the height of a cell by one line. Each additional <br> will add another line of height.
Use "Show Preview" again to verify that all cells are aligned and sized the same. Once the portal looks complete, add an edit summary and press "Save Page".
Multi-Page Portals
Multi-page portals, such as Portal:Minor Characters, Portal:Guest Cast, or Portal:Issues allow very populous categories to be more easily navigated. In addition to being limited to five cells per row, pages of multi-page portrait portals are limited to three rows of cells per page, or a total of fifteen cells per page. Portal:Issues is limited to three rows of four cells, or twelve cells per page.
When you add a cell to one of these pages, the last cell on that page will be moved to the next page, becoming that page's first cell, and so on until each page contains no more than the maximum number of cells. If the final page has more than the maximum number of cells, you will need to add a new page. See "Adding a New Portal".
You will also need to update the portal's subpage navigational template to reflect the new first and last cells on each page:
| Portal... | Uses... |
|---|---|
| Portal:Minor Characters | Template:PortalCharNav |
| Portal:Guest Cast | Template:GuestCastPortalNav |
| Portal:Issues | Template:PortalGNIssuesNav |
You will need to adjust image= and text= to reflect the new first and last cells. You may also need to adjust smalltext= if the alphabetical breakdown of a page changes.
Finally, if you added a new subpage, you will have to add a new cell to the subpage navigational template.
Other Portal Types
Some landscape-oriented portals do not use template:PortalPlotPoints because they require special formatting or produce special links.
| Portal Type | Template | Special functions | Additional variables |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode portals | Template:PortalEpisode | Lists airdate, episode number Widescreen image |
airdate=, number=
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| Graphic Novel portals | Template:PortalComic | Lists featured character | character=
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| Place portals | Template:PortalPlaces | Links to the place's world location | location=
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| Portal:Powers | Template:PortalPowers | Autolinks to examples | none |
For more on each of these special portal types, click the template link above.
Adding New Portals
 This section is a stub. You can help by expanding it.
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Portals on Heroes Wiki are normally implemented using wikitables. The standard format is to use table s of width 75%. Tables should be organized alphabetically, keeping the same number of cells/row (five cells/row is standard for portals featuring individual cast, characters or crew; 4 cells/row for other portals). For tables where keeping the same number of cells/row is not possible, a subtable with a custom width percentage is used to center the last row(s) of cells as appropriate. It is sometimes better to have one less number of cells/row for a table than to end up with a single cell on the last row.
Templates
| This section is a stub. You can help by expanding it.
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To make things easier, there are two main templates used to standardize the presentation of portals, PortalCharacter and PortalPlotPoints. The first is used for portals depicting individual characters, cast and crew. The latter is for everything else including groups, events and things.