Before you begin
You should have a basic understanding of Freebase. See the Data Modeling Guide. Note: the Type Editor is still somewhat complicated to use and is primarily intended for developers and experienced data modelers at this time. Please also read the Conventions for naming types help topic before starting.
Creating a new type
Freebase already has many defined types, but its very possible a type that you're looking for doesn't yet exist. In this case you may need to create your own type.
To create your first type, navigate to the Types page and click on 'Types you've created'. Initially there won't be any types listed. Click on the button header labeled 'Types' to add a new one. You can always return to this page to see the types you've created in your default domain.
Once you've added your first type, you can now add more types from the 'My Profile page', under 'Types Created'. As on the other page, you can create new types by clicking on the button header.
Another way to create a type is to add a new type to a particular topic. Click the 'Types' button on any topic and start typing in the input box. If you match an existing type, you'll be given the option to use it - if nothing matches, you can simply click 'Create New' to create your own. Reminder: You should generally make the type name singular in most cases ('actor' versus 'actors')
Note: new types are automatically created within the domain they are added from. If you don't have permissions to modify types in that domain, the type will be added to your own personal domain.
What to do next...
- View your new type by clicking on it. Note that there are two views, the type filter view and the type definition view. The type filter view lists the instances (topics) of that type as well as a place to add a description of the type. The type definition view is where you can add new properties (data fields) to your type.
- Add properties to your Type. Properties are the data fields that describe each topic instance. You can add them from the schema view by clicking 'Add a Property'.
- Add topics of your Type. You can add new topics of the type you just created either from the type edit page or the filter page. On the filter view page click the 'Add a new...' button at the top of the page to add a new topic of that type. On the type edit page, click the 'Topics' button to do the same thing. You can then click on the name to follow it to that instance to input more data about the topic.
