Basic Wiki Editing

From Westerly-Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

How to Edit Wiki Pages – a very simple guide.

Anyone can browse the Wiki but to edit and or contribute you need an account. When you have your account you can log on (top right hand corner) to the Wiki and after you have entered your password hit return. You will then see some extra controls appear. The most important of these is the edit tab on the second line at the top of the page. Clicking this link opens the editing window for that page which is where you enter or edit text. There are also edit tabs for individual paragraph as at the right hand side of each paragraph.

Basically all you have to do now is type in the text that you want to appear on the page! It is really that simple but of course there is a little more to formatting a complete page and to give you somewhere to practice you will find a link to the “Sandbox” page at the bottom of the Main page (under guidance for contributors). Click the Sandbox link and you can then try out entering, editing text and simple formatting of text without any fear of messing up pages.

Text entry is just by typing what you want to see. At the bottom of the page is a “Show Preview” Button and you can use this to check what you have entered. The Preview makes no change to the Page - if you don't like it change it again and when you are happy click the “Save Page” button.

Formating

Now let's try a little formatting. A button bar providing a few of the most useful formatting short cuts is displayed at the top of the edit window. If you hover over a button with your mouse pointer some explanatory text appears. To format text the Wiki uses Tags which are simply characters that surround the item to be formatted. These Tags are visible in the edit window but not in the formatted page. Try clicking the large letter “A” on the editing button bar.

A level 2 headline appears like this: == Headline text ==

The two “equals” characters are examples of Tags. (Change the words Headline Text to something else and click “Show Preview” to see the effect. You will have a bold headline with a single underline.)

To create lower level headings just add more equals signs to the Tags. So ===Headline=== is a level 3 heading and so on. Simple!

After headings the next most common thing to want to do is probably to create a link to a new page. The Tag for this is two square brackets thus [[New Page Title]]

If a page exists that is actually called “New Page Title” a link will be created to it. If the page doesn't exist it is created for you. So that is one way to create a new page. (Alternatively type the name of the Page in the Search Box and if the Page does not exist the Wiki offers to create it for you.)

Tags can be combined so ==[[New Page]]== is a level 2 heading which is also a link to new page. With these two basic formatting controls you can really make any page you need.

Adding Images

A little more complicated is adding an image to a page. First you have to upload the image to the Wiki. This is done using the “Upload File” link which, if you are logged on, you will find under the Navigation menu at the left hand side of each page. Just Browse your PC for the file and click upload file. The upload may take a little while if your file is large. Make a careful note of the File name you have up loaded then on the page where you want the image to appear enter something like this:

[[File:File name.jpg |450px|center]]

This will display a reasonably sized image in the centre of the page. There are other formatting commands but this will cover most situations. Note that the | character (called pipe) is usually on the lower left of a UK keyboard above \.

These days' cameras tend to have enormous numbers of pixels so your raw image will probably be too large to display. The Wiki will format the image for you, in the above case to a 450 pixel image, in the center (sic it's US for centre) of the screen – again easy!

So now you can create headings, create pages, create links and display images. If you need more complex formatting just ask the Sysops or read the Help pages and you can work it out yourself.

Finally don't forget to click “Save Page” or you will lose your edit and also remember that all of these commands have to typed in an edit window - not as they are here in a display window!!!

Have fun.