Help:VisualEditor/VE as the main editor

Here is a quick-start guide so that you can learn how to support your community while VE>VE|the visual editor becomes available by default to editors at your wiki.

The first step is involving your community to let them know the visual editor is now available for editors at your wiki —or may soon be— and to get further help with the following tasks. You can start a conversation at your Village Pump in your language and then link to this page, or you can set up a notice>MediaWiki:Sitenotice|sitenotice, or a watchlist>MediaWiki:Watchlist-details|watchlist notice for logged-in contributors. You may want to create a sort of "WikiProject", or anyway a page where the community members who are interested in supporting you can sign up.

Make sure that local documentation, especially pages read by new editors such as tutorials for newcomers, editing guides etc., mentions the visual editor and its documentation. You may want to provide a dedicated space (a sandbox in the main or in the User: namespace) where even logged-out editors can try the visual editor. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVisualEditor&type=revision&diff=600302691&oldid=598467251 Here is an example] of how this was done on the English Wikipedia (note the ?veaction=edit string at the end of the URL). There is key documentation to translate, mainly the guide>Help:VisualEditor/User_guide|User guide and [https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-visualeditor-0-all&filter=%21translated&action=translate the interface itself]. This page is also a good resource to consider. Tip: For more information and instructions, please see VisualEditor/TranslationCentral. Help:TemplateData contains information about how to add TemplateData information to common templates on your wiki. This is important because if templates do not include this data, they will be difficult to use inside the visual editor. Tip: There is now an tdgui>Help:TemplateData#TemplateData_editor|editing tool that allows you to add TemplateData in a simpler way. Start with templates that are often used in articles, such as citation and reference templates, as well as infoboxes. The MostTranscludedPages special page on your wiki might help you find out which are the most important templates you need to work on. The ones which are heavily used in the article namespace have the priority. Tip: Check how other wikis did this. For example, [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_web/doc&action=edit&section=T-22 here is the TemplateData] for the   template at the English Wikipedia. If you recently imported   from that wiki and didn't customize it further, then copying and pasting their TemplateData will probably work for you.
 * 1) To help the developers prioritize their work, please file a task on Phabricator (like [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T97315 this one]) to flag initial interest or to request an earlier enablement of the visual editor at your wiki, so they can assess any special needs your community may present.  Members of your community can help you identify and build a list of "blockers" or others bugs and feature requests that they view as important. Add the list to the task you filed.

Add special characters which are relevant to your language to the set of characters displayed inside the related tool.

Tip: See the chars>VisualEditor/Special characters|instructions page at mediawiki.org to learn more about this.

Enable Citoid on your wiki to make referencing easier and painless.

Tip: See the citoid>Citoid/Enabling Citoid on your wiki|instructions page at mediawiki.org to learn more about this.

Set up a customized </> menu with the most used <tvar|cite></> templates at your wiki. When Citoid is enabled, it will be available from the <tvar|manual>""</> tab of the <tvar|citetwo></> dialog.

Tip: See the cite>VisualEditor/Citation_tool#Citation_Tool_Definition</>|instructions page at mediawiki.org to learn more about this. Check bugs reported on the local feedback page, if your wiki has one, to see [<tvar|vephab>https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/visualeditor/</> if they are already known to developers]. phab>Phabricator</>|Reporting bugs or feature requests directly on Phabricator will catch the developers' attention more quickly. A mention of the report and any updates to it will also appear live in the #mediawiki-visualeditor IRC channel. howto>Phabricator/Help#Creating_a_task</>|Learn how to file a task. You can also report problems by leaving a message at the fback>VisualEditor/Feedback</>|central feedback page on this site. Patrollers might want to keep an eye on the log of edits made with the visual editor for a few weeks. You can reach it from [<tvar|rchanges>https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&tagfilter=visualeditor</> this link] (you'll need to change language code and sister project name in the browser's address bar after you click on it!). Tip: Experienced users may make more mistakes than expected, as they need some time to adapt to the new environment.

Keep yourself and your community up-to-date on news related to the visual editor.

Tip: Sign up for the news>:m:VisualEditor/Newsletter</>|multilingual bimonthly newsletter, and please add your name translators>:m:VisualEditor/Newsletter/Translators</>|to the translators' list so that other people at your wiki will be able to read the bulletin in your language on community pages there.

Please fback>VisualEditor/Feedback</>|let the visual editor team know if you have further questions. portal>VisualEditor/Portal</>|Click here to go to the main visual editor page.