Mastering the Visual Editor – Images and Infoboxes

Posted on by Ewan McAndrew

Our page is lifeless without an image to help illustrate it. Wikipedia pages are at least 20-30% more likely to be read if they have an image.

Insert media menu

Adding an image

  1. Click Edit to access the Visual Editor once more.
  2. Place the cursor where you want the image to appear on the page.
  3. Click the Insert dropdown menu (circled in green above) and select Media from the list of options.

You have two options. You can do a keyword search to find an image on Wikipedia’s sister project, Wikimedia Commons (which has 58 million media files openly licensed and ready to use) OR you can select the 2nd tab, Upload, and you can upload your own image to Wikimedia Commons so long as it is openly licensed and you are allowed to release the image to Commons.

Keyword search of the 58 million openly-licensed media files on Wikimedia Commons
  1. Type the keyword of ‘cat’.
  2. Select an image you like the look of and click Use this image.
  3. Type a caption in the next screen (along with adding the same to the Alternative text box.)
  4. Click Insert.
  5. Drag the bottom left corner of the image until you are happy with its size.
  6. Click ‘Save Changes’ with an edit summary of ‘Added an image’.

Adding an infobox

An infobox appears at the side of a page to provide summary information.e.g. The Infobox on Barack Obama’s page.

There are many different templates for Infoboxes so it depends on the article you are writing as to whether you should use Infobox Person, Infobox scientist, Infobox writer, Infobox school, Infobox hospital or many others.

As we are creating a Wikipedia userpage, the Infobox we can demonstrate is Infobox Wikipedia User.

Infobox Wikipedia user
  1. Click Edit to enter Visual Editor.
  2. Click on the Insert dropdown menu, and the option for Template.
  3. Type Infobox Wikipedia user and select the first option. Then click ‘Add template’.

The screen that follows will look like this. It will suggest 88+ fields for you to add to your Infobox. You need only add the fields you feel are relevant and you have information about. We will add a few fields to get the infobox started.

  1. Select the field for Name and type your name.
  2. Select the field for Gender and type your gender.
  3. Select the field for Country and type your country.
  4. Click Insert. This will add the Infobox to your page. This can be added to and amended at a later date as you see fit.
  5. Click Save Changes and add an edit summary of ‘added an infobox’. Click Save Changes again.

Guides

  1. Adding images (video).