User talk:Cottrells

Brackets Problem
Steve, I have this interesting problem and David Dilts could not help me. He said that for whatever reason, the template cannot handle single brackets. Here is the page: https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Czech_Republic_Getting_Started Down at the bottom are two tips. Tip: Join a Community of Czech researchers! Ask questions, help others, and share your research success on [Facebook] and/or Skype. Tip: For more learning see the tutorials at FamilySearch Learning Center on [Czech Republic Archives]. We cannot get rid of the brackets. These are external links and every time we do single bracket the text disappears. Can you please help me? Thank you. Pysnaks 22:12, 1 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Sylvie, I have fixed the links in the tip templates you directed me to on the page Czech Republic Getting Started. I have also added an example to the template description page to show how this was/can be achieved. --Steve 06:58, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Steve. I really appreciate your quick response.Pysnaks 15:00, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Search and replace link
Steve, we've found a link on British pages that needs to be deleted and there are a lot of them. We though you could do a search and replace when you have some time. Ramsgate is a good example. Under Census records, there's a link to the FHC portal that shouldn't be in the Wiki. Hostelery added this to many British pages a year or two ago. The link should only be used in the FHC's and by missionaries, etc. Even though it doesn't work to get you into Ancestry, etc. if you don't already have that access on your computer, the link shouldn't be there. If you can help, I'd greatly appreciate it. averyld 18:51, 11 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Lynda, I have replaced the majority of all the external links to the FHC Portal to a new article Family History Center Portal. The handful remaining did not match search string wikicode and will be easier to tackle individually. I found that the link in addition to be included on many English parish pages was included in the template used to create the hundreds of FHC pages. --Steve

Steve, thanks so much! averyld 22:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Template Categories
Thank you so much for the tip about how to deal with these with noinlcude. I did notice the problem but had not gone to our best source, you, to get help. Thanks so much will go back to as many as I can to correct. Sandralpond 20:51, 1 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Sandra, I have changed some myself as it was causing some issues with pages, Infobox/row, Infobox US State and Infobox country being the main ones. For some it will not cause display issues, only add a template category to the page that is not needed. --Steve 20:54, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you I am learning a lot from this. Another question. Is the following really a template or just a holding page for a future template. When I try to put the noinclude it will not stay and if it put the {{ on it is red. Think I will need to remove these categories. Thanks so much. Sandralpond 14:20, 2 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Sandra, it's not clear to me what your question is. You ask " Is the following really a template or just a holding page for a future template." Would you please clarify or link to the object/page in question. Thanks. --Steve 16:09, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry forgot to put in the link: Template:LondonStDunstanEastChurch There are many many of this type pages but they don't appear to me to be real templates. Sandralpond 18:46, 2 May 2013 (UTC)


 * HI Sandra, they are templates but created for a specific purpose. They are used as a workaround to the problem of the rich text editor removes captions from images. The category that has been created for them is Category:Ampersand avoidance templates. --Steve {{toolbar|talk|

contribs}} 12:59, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks so much. Will use it for them. Sandralpond 13:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello Steve, We just removed a strange topic on the Baden page sidebar but were told later that you probably should have done that. If so, It was for Merchant Marine and Heraldic visitations. Has the removal affected others. In the past it hasn't but perhaps this changed.

Sonja

FHL template place link not working
Hi, Steve, I've tried a link using the FHL Template for a place search:. What have I done wrong? I get an "Oops" AdkinsWH 21:44, 29 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I think this is a bigger issue than you first thought. It looks to me as if the format of URL for FHLC searches has changed, and that the FHL template need a overhaul so that the links in the wiki using this template will work. In short it's not something you have done, but changes made by the FamilySearch engineers. --Steve 20:47, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Not good news. So does the FHL template need updating? Or is it fixable by us — or more accurately — you? AdkinsWH 04:13, 5 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Steve, do you suggest I just start direct linking to place instead of the template? AdkinsWH 23:35, 13 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Steve - you are wonderful! the place search is working again, and I understand you are working hard on some of the other searches. Can't thank you enough! AdkinsWH 21:41, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Steve, is the linking to the catalogue changed permaantly. Its been dysfunctional for a long time. I have about 100 links using the format   It looks like its not a good idea to link to the catalog anymore. Maybe will have to wait till the Beta period ends, which appears not to be anytime soon. Donjgen 04:13, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Template help
Steve, could you take a look at the formula over at my Help_me_create_template page? You made a few adjustments while at WDYTYA conference, but I have not been able to remember what adjustment you made, and I can't get the template to work. I need help.Alan 05:47, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Idaho page I messed it up
Hi, Steve, I'm screaming for help. Somehow, I made a serious mistake on the Idaho page this afternoon (using wyzer17 username). The top of the page should have the image, the online collections banner, and probably the counties list. Then below the info box, the text should fill more space right to left. I tried undoing, but not soon enough. So I was trying and trying, but only filled up a lot do edit history.

Hope you can once again come to the rescue. I'll be at the meeting tomorrow, but then out of town until next Tuesday.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Wilma Adkins 10:34 pm, 23 July, 2013. My iPad doesn't have tildes.

Welcoming Committee
Hi Steve,

As the new lead for the welcoming committee I wanted to get acquainted with the other members. I read your User Page and am impressed with your knowledge and experience. It is my hope that you will remain an active member of the committee. Please let me know your intention.

Sincerely, Parrisl 21:33, 29 July 2013 (UTC) Welcoming Committee Lead

Bot?
Hi Steve, A website address has changed on us. Would it be possible to have a bot replace http://www.census.gov/geo/www/maps/stco_wall_2003/stco_wallmap.htm with http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/maps/county_wall.html ? Thanks for your consideration, Murphynw 19:20, 21 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Nathan, I have actioned Special:ReplaceText to replace the URL as given above. I notice that these were all in the File namespace. I used the Special:LinkSearch and the results suggest that I have changed them all. --Steve 15:12, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Excellent. Yes, they should have all been in the File namespace. Thanks Steve! Murphynw 21:59, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Making the width of the Digital Collections templates equal to the width of the infobox templates
Hi, Steve. On nearly every US county page, the Digital Collection banner is above the infobox template, yet they do not exactly line up with each other. See Crane County, Texas for example. Any way to fix the width of those banners? In the ones we were playing with, the instuction     | info-w = 500px    had NO effect, even changing it to 600 px. AdkinsWH 21:09, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you
Steve, I completely missed that you added the silver star to my page last month. Thank you so much! I have really enjoyed working on the wiki and will miss it a lot. And many thanks to you for everything you have given to the program over the last few years. You are one of our stalwarts and deserve a silver star yourself. In fact, I'm going to go give you one now. :) I'm glad to know that although we as staff members might come and go, there are people like you who are always willing to give. Thank you. -- janellv 18:35, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Old/Unused Page and Category
We on the Wiki Support Team have been reviewing categories and their pages in an effort to streamline the categories. In regards to the template page Okina, we were wondering if this page and it's category, Category:MSIE font fix templates continue to be needed. Parrisl 03:15, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi LaVera, it looks like that template is not currently being used in any content pages of the wiki, however I think the need for it could reoccur, so I have added a documentation subpage that explains why the template has been created. Hope that helps. --Steve 21:26, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Digital Collections Button
Steve, I was working on Davidson County, Tennessee on the DC button - have changed from the "keyboard" to a treble clef and clock - and it has changed all other states - of which I had NO intention of doing. Not sure what to do to get the keyboard back into other states. joy 21:14, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Joy, it appears that you edited the DC button, which is the underlying template used on many of the individual state versions. The template that you should have edited for Tennessee is TNDC. I have copied the code you worked on for Tennessee to this template. --Steve 21:59, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

FHL template
Hi, Steve, The catalog has changed for U.S. place name searches. It now requires United States, then the state. Do we need to go in an physically change each one where we have used the FHL template? I don't want to do any changes until I know what magic you can do with this. I don't want a situation where we have {{FHL|United States, United States, [state].... for example. AdkinsWH 16:50, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

New External Link template?
Hi, Steve. We need an external link template for Ancestry.com, since we will increasingly point to specific items for a state or county. (Not census and the big stuff.) The problem arises when we may now need 3 links: 1 for the FHL (AncestryInsititution.com); another for whatever the LDS Account link will be, and the third for just Ancestry.com. What they will all have in common is the database ID. For example: http://search.ancestryinstitution.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2117

If we don't have all three links, do you suggest we just tell people how to access it each time we make the link? Would love your take on how to handle this. Thank you, thank you. AdkinsWH 16:41, 3 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Nathan has previously created three templates Ancestry, AncestryInstitution and AncestryLibrary that creates 3 different URLs. At the moment you can't change the link text - it will always say link. I think that could be changed to allow the contributor to provide different link text. Also is what you really asking for is to have one template that produces all three links in one go? --Steve  17:08, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Creating a list of family organizations
Steve, I have some questions about the design changes on an article that lists family organizations that have a Facebook page. See Surname Pages and Groups on Facebook. We are expanding that list to include family organizations with a website and/or Facebook page. We have questions about the layout design of the page and welcome your suggestions: Thanks in advance for your suggestions. I have added the same list of questions to the discussion page of the article. Fran 20:26, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of family organizations so we want to create alphabetical links to a separate page for each letter of the alphabet. I'm pretty sure there is a template we can use for this. Do you know if there is an article in the wiki that is already using the TOC template with links to sub-pages? I'm thinking it would be easier to copy what has already been done, rather than figure out how to do it from scratch.
 * Should there be a separate column just for the surname of the organization? I believe the content would be easier to visually scan if the surname was the only text in the first column, but there could be 100 "Smith" family organizations, so maybe the idea is not so great. Suggestions?
 * Does a separate column for the Facebook page and another column for the website link work okay? Any other suggestions?
 * The list currently has a short description of the family organization. Should we continue adding this content? Is the description helpful to those who are looking for family organizations?
 * What about family organizations without a website or a Facebook page? There are a lot of organizations who can only be accessed through snail-mail. Should this content be added as well?


 * Hi Fran, good to hear from you. There was already in the wiki a template that did this for categories CatAZ but I could not find a TOC Template that would link to pages in series. I found a suitable template in Wikipedia and have ported it over to the wiki. It is called A-Z multipage list. It's note quite looking as good as it could, so I will be tweaking it. I have set up the "H" page in this series Surname Pages and Groups on Facebook: H, other pages would need to follow that format. I know you have asked for more feedback and I will try to come back on those as well. --Steve 16:58, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Steve! We are going to be making the changes today to the page and add all the subpages. We are trying to decide on the name of the page we should change it to because the purpose of the page has expanded to more than Facebook. We will include all family organizations that we can find, so we need to link to those who have websites, Facebook pages, a Wiki page, or include their mailing address if that's the only way to contact them. So now the page name needs to be more inclusive of all organizations, associations, groups, etc. Hope to have all the pages set up today and ready to populate! Fran 18:09, 30 April 2014 (UTC)