User:KeybladeSpyMaster/Guide to Talk Bubbles

Step 1: The Template Page
The first step is to decide where to host your talk bubble. One requirement to a talk bubble template's location is that it has to be in the Template:-space. In other words, the page has to have the prefix "Template:" in it. It should also have something to do with your username; you can't host your talk template in "Template:jkdi", even if you can remember that as the location of your talk bubble template. As an example, my talk bubble template is hosted at "Template:KeybladeSpyMaster". However, you can choose an acronym of your username, such as (using me as an example) "Template:KSM".

Step 2: What's You will need
Consider my own talk bubble:

There are a ton of things that can be customized. You should keep these in mind as you build your talk bubble. Some of the basics are as follows (the names uses the template parameters that will need to fill out):
 * image: Pretty self explanatory. The image you want to be your talk bubble's avatar.
 * imagesize: Also self-explanatory. It's the size of your avatar in pixels. It's an optional parameter, mostly in case your image is too big or too small.
 * color: The top color (the navy blue, in this case).
 * color2: The bottom color (the lighter blue, in this case).
 * textcolor: The text color for the top part of the talk bubble (It's silver, in this case).
 * textcolor2: The text color for the bottom part of the talk bubble (it's black, in this case).
 * line: The color of the dividing line (It's red, in this case. This is also optional).
 * name: Your Username. This is required to be your actual username, as in most cases, it automatically will link to your userpage.
 * sig: Some quote that you might like. This may be from the Kingdom Hearts series, it could be totally made up. This is also optional.
 * time: Here, you should put the  parameter. However, you can put in another quote, if you like.
 * text: Here, you should put the  parameter. However, if you're advanced (or want to be), you can put other things. In my case, I put two Diamond Dust Keychains surrounding the text parameter.

In some cases, you don't have to fill out all these things (the text color items, for example, are black by default, so if you want it to stay black, you don't have to fill it out.

Step 3: The Code - Making the first Talk Bubble
For the actual templates, I recommend you use either of these two: Template:TalkTextTest2 or User:Xiggie/TalkTemplate2. The difference? The former makes it easy to link images currently on the wiki for your avatar, while the latter allows for using images hosted elsewhere for your avatar.

Now, simply copy the code above into your template, and fill it out with the information you were supposed to gather from Step 2. Here's how mine looks like (It's been simplified a tad).

There's a couple of things left to make it perfect. At the beginning of your template, you will have to add this exactly:

It now looks like this:

If you only want the talk bubble(s) or code, you may stop here.

Step 5: The Code - Dissecting the Code
You do not have to keep going, if you do not want to. However, I believe that it's better when users try to not only get what they want, but understand how it works; in this case, we'll be going into what the additional code does.

The first part is a simple  tag. This tag makes it so that everything between the two tags (the closing tag looks like this: ) only appears when you use the template, and not on the template page.

Next is the if statement