Difference between revisions of "Wiki editing overview"

Latest revision as of 22:18, 2 January 2012

Here is a more detailed overview of functions you can use when editing content on this website. For a simple overview see the brief editing overview.

Editing

1. Click the edit link at the top of the page.
2. Edit the text.
3. Click Save page button at bottom of page (this step is fairly vital - don't write reams of text and then forget to hit save...)

Pretty easy.

If the edit is major and you want to see a preview before you commit the changes, click Show preview button at bottom to check how it looks before hitting the Save page button. Also a good way to make a change to see how something might appear without actually doing a save just to 'see'.

If the page is a long one you can edit individual sections by clicking the edit links to the far right-hand side of the heading's line. You should be able to see them on this page.

Creating a new article

To create a new page simply put the title of the new page in double square brackets within the page you want to link it from:

[[Robot]]

Gives:

Robot

If the link you make is embedded in the middle of a sentence don't worry about capitalising the first letter of the link as this is done automatically when the new page is created.

eg.:

Increasingly sophisticated tasks are abe to be handled by [[robot]].

Case sensitivity

Article titles are case-sensitive, so for the sake of consistency the guideline is to use all lower case letters for a title of a new page except when words in the title are proper nouns - and the initial letter, which doesn't matter as it is automatically capitalised.

It is perhaps worth checking a page with the subject you are wanting to add doesn't exist already - use the search box to the left of the page to check for this using main keywords for that subject.

Saving

Save the page (by clicking the save page button at the bottom of the screen) and a link to the new page will appear as a red hyperlink. The red signifies that the page being linked to doesn't yet have any content in it.

Now click the red link, add some text to the page and save it. You have now created a new page.

Internal links

Making a hyperlink to an existing page within the wiki uses the same process as for creating a new page (see above). Find the exact name of the page you want to link to then embed it in the text of the page you want the link to appear, and put double square brackets around it. When you save the page you should get a nice blue hyperlink.

Changing the text of a hyperlink

If you want control of how the hyperlink appears you can change the visible text label by typing the text you want to see after a vertical bar '|' in the link code. As an example you could link to the 'Most abundant elements on Earth' page but have the link read 'abundance of elements' by writing:
[[Most abundant elements on Earth|abundance of elements]] which displays as: abundance of elements

If your link to an existing page appears red instead of blue

If you have added a link to a page that you know already exists but when you save the page and view it, the hyperlink comes up as red, rather than blue (as it should) then check the spelling. Also check the case of the letters, as page names are case sensitive (apart from the initial letter which can be either upper or lower in links). To be sure about the title of the page you are linking to you could cut and paste the title from the target page itself.

External links

If you know of any relevant websites relating to any AdCiv content, then just type or paste the web address directly into the page being edited and it will appear as a straight URL hyperlink. e.g. http://www.adciv.org

If you want control of the text label of the hyperlink, type the web address (including http://) then a space, then the text you want to appear as the hyperlink text. Then put single square brackets around the whole lot. Eg.:

[http://www.adciv.org Advanced Civilization wiki].

Which should produce:

Advanced Civilization wiki

Bullet points

Put an asterisk in front of the sentence (or word). To indent, increase no. of asterisks in front. Eg.:

* Oranges
* Pears
* Bananas
* Apples
** Cox
** Granny Smith

Becomes:

• Oranges
• Pears
• Bananas
• Apples
  • Cox
  • Granny Smith

For automatic numbering of points substitute a '#' for the asterisks.

Inserting HTML

Knowledge of HTML is not required at all to edit AdCiv content but basic HTML can be inserted to give more control over the look of text, if required. Some simple examples are:

• Changing text colour

<FONT COLOR="#C80000">ABC123</FONT>

ABC123

• Strikeout

<s>This is now obsolete</s>

This is completed

<br>

Headings and Automated TOC Generation

Headings are created by typing two equals signs either side of the text. Eg.:

== This is a heading ==

Should appear as:

This is a heading

For sub-headings put three equals either side:

=== This is a sub-heading ===

Gives you:

This is a sub-heading

If there are more than three headings within a page then a hyperlinked table of contents is automatically created at the beginning of the page.

Redirects

To aid swift searching, alternative terms for a subject that might be commonly searched for can be given their own page which does an immediate redirect to another page. For instance on this website CAD redirects to Free and open-source computer-aided design/What is computer-aided design. To achieve this type the title you want to redirect in the address bar of your browser after the www.adciv.org/ - you should then see a new page with the title you entered saying "(There is currently no text in this page)" in the main text. Click 'Edit this page' and type:

#redirect [[TITLE-OF-TARGET-ARTICLE]]

Obviously changing the contents of the brackets. Then save the page and the redirect should now be active.

Rendering mathematical equations

If you need it Mediawiki has the ability to render maths using 'TeX' markup. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Formula.

As an example, entering this:

<math>x_{1,2}=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}</math>

Should give you this:

<math>x_{1,2}=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}</math> (does not currently seem to be rendering properly...)

Keep it simple

The above describes what you can do, but try to keep things simple. Plain text is usually fine for most things.

Sandpit

There is a 'sandbox' for anyone wanting to experiment with editing. Feel free to play.

See other pages for examples

You could always click edit on other pages to see how certain things are done.

Related topics

• Inserting images - for instructions and tips on uploading, positioning and sizing images.
• Creating tables

Stuff to add to this article

• Moving / renaming a page.
• Adding keywords to articles for alternative word searches
• Discussion (talk) page
• Email functions
• Watchlist
• Templates and transclusion
• Deleting stuff
• Sub-pages
• Linking to page sections
• Personal page