Q&A for How to Write a New Article on wikiHow

No. wikiHow allows users to register and contribute for free. However, wikiHow now offers viewers some paid services.

Think of a topic you are knowledgeable about. Maybe you have an excellent recipe, maybe you love to draw anime, maybe you are good at algebra. Next, search this topic in the search bar. If nothing pops up that is identical to what you want to write, go ahead and write the article. Another idea is to look through the requests for articles to be written. After choosing one, check to make sure there are no duplicates. If there aren't, you can begin writing your article.

If you have an unfinished article, add {{inuse}} to the top of the page so other people know not to edit it. Publish that change, and then you can come back later to make further edits. When you’re all done, remove the {{inuse}} tag again and publish that change.

It is automatically done for you when you publish a step. The bold usually ends after some type of punctuation, such as a period or exclamation mark.

Immediately after you click the "Publish" button, the article is available for reading, but is not fully published just yet. It gets reviewed by volunteer editors who decide whether the article is ready for fully published status. This review usually happens within 48 hours. If your article gets approved, you'll get notified on your talk page. If it doesn't, it probably needs some additional work. As long as it doesn't violate the Deletion Policy , any article can be improved so that it can eventually be fully published.

Publish the page with just text first, then edit it to add images. You can add images by following the instructions in this article .

Click on the Help Us box in the upper right corner of any page. A drop-down menu will appear. Choose Write an Article from the drop down menu and a new writing page will appear for you to write in. Or you can click here to reach our "Create an Article" page . Be sure to read the Writer's Guide before writing the article; being aware of the site's policies and expectations can help to get your article fully published.

This sometimes happens with the Article Creation tool. Copy all of the content and save it locally on you desktop (for example, in a Word or text file). Then hit "Switch to advanced editor" at the top of the page (make sure your work is saved elsewhere, or you'll lose it!). Paste the content in there and publish it.

You can type in any keyword(s) and get a list of how-to titles that haven't been written on wikiHow yet. Keep in mind that some of these might be duplicates, so you'll want to check if we have a very similar topic on wikiHow already.

You can write an article whenever you choose! The more you write, the more contributions you will make to wikiHow, but if you don't have a lot of time, then just write whenever it fits into your schedule! There are also some people on wikiHow who mostly just answer people's questions and edit articles, if they don't have time to write articles or simply have no wish to.

No. Your article can be as long as you like.

You have left an unnecessary line break between each step. Just make sure there are no unnecessary breaks, and this should fix itself.

Unfortunately, no. Unless you saved your article somewhere outside of wikiHow, you won't be able to recover it.

First, you need to get the picture into digital form and onto the device on which you are writing or editing an article. An easy way to do so is to scan them . Then, use the upload page to upload your image onto this site. Include your picture in the article by writing Image:yourImageName.png, inside of 2 square brackets on each side, with yourImageName.png being the name of the image you uploaded. Alternatively, you can follow the instructions in this article .

Generally, no. If an article has already been published, it’ll only be removed if it violates our Deletion Policy . If one of those reasons applies, you can nominate the article for deletion using the steps in How to Nominate an Article for Deletion on wikiHow . If you think your situation is a special case that falls outside those policies but where removal might be merited, you can ask for help on the Help Team page .

A permissions error may mean that the page is protected from editing. If you’re not sure why, or see something that need fixing, you can reach out for help on our Help Team page .

You are not required to do as much preparation as outlined in this article, you can just click on "Write an Article" and begin writing. However, you should try to write a good article so that it gets approved (which is hard now), and this needs all of the deeper preparation. At least, you should get a basic idea of the structure and know the correct wikiHow format before starting. If the topic allows for it, you should also try the instructions you want to write yourself to know that they really work. Don't forget to check whether an article with the same name exists, since duplicates are merged or deleted.

Open the editing tab to the article, scroll down to the "Options," and click on the "Things You'll Need" button. However, if the needed items are food, click "Food Ingredients."

Go to your user page and scroll a little way down until you see the section with your articles in it. Click "View More" if necessary. Once you find it, click on it and then go to the Edit tab to make a change.

Go to Help Us > Write an Article.

You should make sure that your article has enough content. While there isn't a fixed size, it's good to have at least 8 detailed steps. Check your format and spelling. Make sure that the instructions you give are actually useful and not generic things like "Be confident" or "Be yourself". Read the article on how to Get an Article Approved in wikiHow's Quality Review . If you still don't know why your article won't be published, ask another user. Note that reviewing an article can take some time, so wait a day before asking why it wasn't published: it's possible that it wasn't noticed yet.

You must be 13 or older in the US to have a wikiHow account.

Click {{button|Save draft}} at the bottom of the editor. Your drafts will appear in the drop-down menu for {{button|MY PROFILE}} up the top right of the screen.

You have to be above the age of 13 to edit (and create articles) on wikiHow, unless you get a special permission form signed by your parent/legal guardian.

It is moved out of the new article boosting tool and into quality review. Then, the editor has to contact a booster if they want the article promoted. However, the author will likely be asked to do considerable work on the article to bring it up to standard, otherwise it won't be promoted. Be aware that wikiHow's standards are high in order to ensure quality.

Although sources may be used (and linked to) in articles, published articles shouldn't contain plagiarism. We have a boy that identifies plagiarism on the web, so you might see some articles tagged with {{copyviobot}}, if that's the case, an admin will contact the author aspnd ask them about it. If you suspect an article contains plagiarism, you can copy and paste a chunk of it and search for it on the web to see if you get any exact matches. If you do, you can add the template {{copyvio|*link to the page where content has been copied from*}}.

You can do a quick search on it to look for a duplicate. Check out our article here on How to Search wikiHow .

You can make your own, or you can request them from the Wikivisual team.

You can follow the steps on this page to add images to your article.

To edit an article, click the "Edit" button at the top of the article.