Help:VisualEditor/VE as the main editor/nb

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

Don't hesitate to request clarifications; we are also building a "cross-wiki taskforce" of community members who have experience with the tasks listed below, and who may be able to provide advice and support. We invite you to join the taskforce today!

Attention, translators: you are welcome to translate this resource. However, please bear in mind that further improvements on it are planned, so your translations may become obsolete soon. Thanks for your understanding!

Involve your community
Discuss with community members; announce the rollout widely; update editing-related documentation; set up a dedicated sandbox for testing.


 * 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 sitenotice, or a 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. Here is an example of how this was done on the English Wikipedia (note the ?veaction=edit string at the end of the URL).

Tell the Wikimedia Foundation about your intentions
File a task with a suggested time for rollout (no commitments until all details in the task are agreed upon!); list "blockers" if any.
 * To help the developers prioritize their work, please file a task on Phabricator (like 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.

Check translations status
The rollout will be smoother once translations for interface and user guide, at a minimum, are in place!


 * There is key documentation to translate, mainly the User guide and the interface itself. The page you are reading now is also a good resource to consider.
 * For more information and instructions, please see VisualEditor/TranslationCentral.

Make sure templates feature TemplateData information
Filling infoboxes and Cite templates in particular will be so much easier with the visual editor.


 * 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.
 * There is now an 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.
 * Check how other wikis did this. For example, 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.

Customize the Special Characters menu
The characters that your community uses the most can get a prominent place in the related visual editor menu.
 * You can add special characters which are relevant to your language to the existing set of characters.
 * See the instructions page at mediawiki.org to learn more about this.

Add locally popular Cite templates to the Cite menu
''What are the templates that your community uses the most to create citations? The visual editor has a dedicated menu, a sort of shortcut to reach them!''
 * Set up a customized menu with the most used   templates at your wiki. Note that when Citoid is enabled, such a menu will be available from the "" tab of the  dialog.
 * See the instructions page at mediawiki.org to learn more about this.

Enable Citoid on your wiki
''Interested in easier and painless referencing? With this powerful tool it's as easy as copying and pasting a URL.''
 * Configure Citoid, which automatically creates a citation template for you from several types of sources.
 * See the instructions page at mediawiki.org to learn more about this.

Make developers aware of issues raised locally
Become an ambassador for your community by making sure the development team knows about problems or wishes you're hearing.
 * Check and communicate about bugs reported on the village pump (or at the local feedback page, if your wiki has one); see if they are already known to developers.
 * Reporting bugs or feature requests directly on Phabricator will catch the developers' attention more quickly. You can learn how to file a task on this site. A mention of the report and any updates to it will also appear live in the #mediawiki-visualeditor IRC channel.
 * You may also report problems by leaving a message at the central feedback page on this site.

Check how things go after the rollout
''We set up a deployment process keeping your needs in mind. So, let us know what you're observing in the first weeks after the visual editor lands at your wiki.''
 * 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 this link (you'll need to change language code and sister project name in the browser's address bar after you click on it!).
 * Experienced users may make more mistakes than expected at the beginning, as they need some time to adapt to the new environment.

Keep yourself and your community up-to-date on visual editor news
We publish a multilingual bimonthly newsletter so you can learn about new, exciting features as they are made available, and about planned improvements.
 * Sign up for the newsletter, and please add your name to the translators' list so that other people at all projects in your language will be able to read the bulletin in your language on community pages there.

Learn about existing gadgets and how to develop new ones

 * This section is a Work in Progress. Please visit again soon.


 * Please let the visual editor team know if you have further questions.
 * Click here to go to the main visual editor page.