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wikiHow:Change User Preferences

wikiHow allows many settings to be changed based on what you want to see. Your preferences are found by clicking on "My Pages" on every page until you see "My Preferences". Alternately, you can go to Special:Preferences.



EditUser Data Options

  • Your e-mail: You may optionally register your e-mail address (it will not be shown publicly on the site). This will enable you to reset your password if you forget it by clicking the "Mail me a new password" box on the log in screen. Additionally, it will enable other registered users to send e-mail to you from the "E-mail this user" link on your user page unless you've checked the disable box (see below).
  • Disable e-mail from other users: If you check this, users will not be able to send you e-mail by way of the "E-mail this user" feature.
  • Your real name: How you wish your real name to be displayed; if you wish, you do not have to enter this, or can simply use your first name followed by the first initial of your last name. This name, if set, will be used on your user profile page and in the list of contributors in articles you have helped edit.

EditEditing Options

These options are for editing for the "Advanced Editing" page only.

  • Use Advanced Editor By Default: Selecting this will ensure that each time you edit a wikiHow article that you will use the standard editing (free-form) interface that you usually see on Wikipedia (vs. the Guided Interface that inserts numbers for your steps and stars for your tips, etc). The Guided Interface is still required when creating a new page from scratch however.
  • Rows, Columns. Here you can set up your preferred dimensions for the textbox used for editing page text.
  • Edit box has full width. If this box is checked, the edit box (when you click "Edit this page") will be the width of the browser window, minus the quickbar width.
  • Show edit toolbar. In compatible browsers, 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 and not after it. 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.
  • Add pages you edit to your watchlist. If this option is selected, any pages that you create or modify will be automatically added to your watchlist.
  • Mark all edits minor by default. This option automatically selects the "This is a minor edit" checkbox when you edit pages.

EditTime Zone Options

  • Time diff. This is the number of hours to be added or subtracted from UTC to find your time zone. This time zone is used when calculating displayed page update timestamps, and may become temporarily incorrect from time to time if you observe daylight saving time -- don't forget to update it to match your local time, because the Wiki doesn't know where you are or precisely when you celebrate DST. (Also, the server's clock may be slightly offset from reality, much as Wikipedia articles may be.) A scattering of typical (and possibly incorrect!) time diff values are below. If yours isn't listed, try this link or add and subtract a few hours as needed.
  • -10 Hawaii, western Aleutians (Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time)
  • -9 (DST -8) All of Alaska, except for western Aleutians (Alaska Standard Time)
  • -8 (DST -7) California; Washington; almost all of Oregon, Nevada, and British Columbia (Pacific Standard Time)
  • -7 (DST -6) Colorado, Arizona (no DST except for Navajo Nation), Alberta (Mountain Standard Time)
  • -6 (DST -5) Chicago, most of Mexico, Central America, Saskatchewan (Central Standard Time)
  • -5 (DST -4) New York, Toronto, Quebec (Eastern Standard Time)
  • -4 (DST -3) Canada's Maritime Provinces, plus most of Labrador
  • -3.5 (DST -2.5) Newfoundland
  • -3 (DST -2) Brasilia, Buenos Aires, most of Greenland
  • -2 (DST -1) Mid-Atlantic
  • -1 (DST 0) Azores, Cape Verde Islands
  • 0 (DST 1) United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, mainland Portugal, Iceland (no DST), Casablanca, Monrovia (no DST)
  • 1 (DST 2) most of Europe, West Central Africa (no DST)
  • 2 (DST 3) Bucharest, Kiev, Cairo, Johannesburg (no DST), Finland, Jerusalem
  • 3 (DST 4) Moscow, Kuwait, Baghdad, Tehran, Nairobi (no DST)
  • 4 Abu Dhabi, Baku
  • 4.5 Kabul
  • 5 Islamabad
  • 5.5 India
  • 5.75 Nepal
  • 6 Sri Lanka, etc.
  • 6.5 Rangoon
  • 7 Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta
  • 8 People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Western Australia, Ulaan Bataar, Singapore, Manila
  • 9 Japan, Seoul
  • 9.5 (DST 10.5) South Australia and Northern Territory (no DST)
  • 10 (DST 11) Queensland (no DST), New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Guam (no DST), Vladivostok
  • 11 Magadan (DST 12), Solomon Islands, New Caledonia
  • 12 Pago Pago, New Zealand (DST 13)

The time is displayed in local time, according to the set preferences, in:

  • Recent changes
  • Related changes
  • Page history, Image history
  • User contributions
  • New pages
  • "This page was last modified" at the bottom of pages
  • Special:Imagelist

The UTC time is applicable:

  • In the signing of Talk pages
  • In the Upload log
  • In referring to non-localized events, including things that happen on the wiki.

Keep this in mind when copying an excerpt from Recent Changes, a revision history listing, etc. to a Talk page. Convert manually to UTC or temporarily set the preferences to a zero offset before producing the revision history etc. to be copied.



EditRecent changes and stub display

  • Number of titles on recent changes: You may select the number of changes which will be shown by default on the Recent Changes and Watchlist page. Once on those pages, links are provided for other options.
  • Hide minor edits in recent changes. Registered users may choose to mark edits as being minor (meaning fixes too trivial for trusting users to check up on). It applies to Recent Changes but not to the Watchlist. It also affects Related changes, but currently in an odd way: if the last edit of a page linking to the current page was minor, then neither that nor the last major change is shown.
  • Enhanced recent changes (not for all browsers). Group recent changes per day by article, display the titles of the changed articles in order from new to old latest change, or in the case of hiding minor edits, latest major change.

EditSearch Results Settings

  • Hits to show per page: You may choose the number of results returned on each page of search results.
  • Lines to show per hit is somewhat cryptic; specifying a number n means: "do not show any context if the search term occurs beyond line n in the page"; here a paragraph, as well as the blank line between two paragraphs, each count as one "line"; line breaks in the source, even when not affecting the lay-out of the page (and even when not directly visible in the edit box of the article), affect the line count. Setting the parameter to 5000 or more gives context for every occurrence.
  • Characters of context per line: the number of characters of context per occurrence; however, the context is anyway restricted to the "line" (see above) it occurs in. To get the whole line, put a large number like 5000.
  • Search in these namespaces by default: shows a list of all namespaces (not the same in all projects; for older MediaWiki versions, which do not have Version, this is also a useful indicator what version is used; for even older versions that do not have this item in the preferences, see the list after performing a search), allowing one to select which ones are searched by default.

Article Info

Categories: Your wikiHow Account | Help

Recent edits by: Lutherus, Jazlyn, Prozac4all

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 8,066 times.