Cover art (style guide)

Uploading Cover Art

To upload cover art to IFWiki use the Upload file link in the toolbox on the left pane.

Most reasonable image formats are accepted including JPEG, PNG, and GIF. You can upload the full resolution cover art, no need to pre-scale the image (see below).

Do make sure that IFWiki has permission to use the image, however. Often for cover art on page about the game this is implicitly allowed but verifying permission is good.

Although the Destination filename: field can be almost anything you want, it's easier if it matches the title of the game (possibly without the leading article). For example, for a game called The Best Game Ever, using Best Game Ever.jpg or Best Game Ever small cover.jpg would be reasonable. Note that the file name cannot be edited after uploading.

Full wiki markup can be entered in the Summary: field, although there is no preview feature available on the upload page. You can always edit the summary after uploading using the normal wiki page editor with preview functions.

The summary should include

1. a game reference as per Game reference (style guide) so we know the which game we're referencing, including the author of the game itself, the game release year, and the game platform;
2. who created the image (especially if the artist isn't the same as the game author) plus licensing information and/or copyright notice as applicable; and
3. a link to a cover art category.

The recommended content is something like this:

Cover art for ''[[Game Title]]'' ([[Author]]; Date; [[Platform]]).
<any image copyright notices or attributions here>

[[Category:Cover art/X]]

where X is the first letter of the game's title. If the file name does not match the title (or starts with A/An/The) you should include the title to sort by in the category line so that the image page is sorted correctly within the category. For example:

[[Category:Cover art/E|Image:Edifice, The]]

(note the leading Image: text).

Linking to Cover Art

Within the game's infobox use one of the following:

• [[Image:filename.jpg|cover art|thumb|center]]
• [[Image:filename.jpg|cover art|200px]]
• [[Image:filename.jpg|cover art]]

depending on the image size. Using thumb uses the user's preferences to determine the size whereas using ###px sets the images maximum width directly. [Which is prefered??] If the uploaded image is already small it may be best to not specify a size at all.

For example:

{{work infobox|<...>|image=[[Image:Foo.jpg|cover art|thumb|center]]|<...>}}

MediaWiki will automatically scale down (or up, but don't do that for cover art) the image as specified. There is currently no IFWiki standard size for cover art; use something that looks good in the preview or use thumb. Note that the scaling is done 'correctly'; that is a new file of the correct size is automatically generated on the Wiki and referenced in an <img> HTML tag rather than referencing the full-size image and using <img> tag attributes to scale the image in the client.