A quick tutorial on the wiki! [Site]
2009 Jun 12
LWB - Good intro.
However, I blush, I am hardly the "go to person" on the Wiki.
With pretty much no programming knowledge, I too struggled thru at first learning by just playing around in the playground (sandbox) and making a lot of mistakes, it was only by trial & error that I was able to build the OF Annual Events and OF Travel Recommendation Wiki Pages... and there are still things that I haven't learned how to do yet... have decided I will do some more testing when the need arises to add more features.
Like you said, the easiest way for someone to make additions is to just copy the formatting from the line above them. And if all else fails, it is good to know one can just get out of the program (not save it) or restore the previous version.
And in the worst case scenario they can send me a Private Message and I'll give them a hand if I can.
However, I blush, I am hardly the "go to person" on the Wiki.
With pretty much no programming knowledge, I too struggled thru at first learning by just playing around in the playground (sandbox) and making a lot of mistakes, it was only by trial & error that I was able to build the OF Annual Events and OF Travel Recommendation Wiki Pages... and there are still things that I haven't learned how to do yet... have decided I will do some more testing when the need arises to add more features.
Like you said, the easiest way for someone to make additions is to just copy the formatting from the line above them. And if all else fails, it is good to know one can just get out of the program (not save it) or restore the previous version.
And in the worst case scenario they can send me a Private Message and I'll give them a hand if I can.
lady who brunches
Disclaimer: This tutorial is completely practical and from my perspective. While I'm not a programmer in any way, shape or form, I'm a bit of a geek and I like to play around with software; so, really this is the perspective of someone who explores, not someone who goes by the book
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Log-in
Your log-in is your screen name and password (not your email).
Edit pages
You can edit a pre-existing page by clicking its edit this page button at the bottom left corner.
The easiest thing to do is then copy and paste the existing format, so for the table in the Swap-and-shop and the Travel wiki pages, the formatting is such:
| User | Have | Want | Lend, trade, give?|
the asteriks (double *), like in the forum indicate bolding, while the "|" indicates the vertical split in table cells (a horizontal/row split is done by hitting enter).
In that case of both the travel and swap-and-shop wikis, I usually copy the line of the person above me and then fill in the information I have to share.
You can always preview your changes before accepting them.
Creating pages
To create a new page, you first make a link to it on host page (in other words, whicever page will link to it).
This is especially useful for sharing recipes.
Say, I want to add a new recipe for Ricotta Pancakes:
Go to the recipe page
Click "Edit this page"
Double open and closed square brackets, [[ ]] act to create a link to the new page. So, I would type "[[Ricotta Pancakes]]" in the edit page section.
(Note: I also created a "Breakfast Food" category by typing ^* *Breakfast Food* *^: The "^" created a little text box and the double-asteriks around the text made it bold).
Now you have a new page for "Ricotta Pancakes".
Click on your fancy link!
The page should read "this topic does not exist yet". That's okay!
Click on "create this page".
The recipe page has a template included, because Fresh Foodie rocks. Follow the template and use the buttons as the top to format the information.
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A reminder that you can always hit the preview button, you can always edit a page and if the whole thing crashes, the revisions are available and changes can be undone. So, don't be afraid! There's also a sandbox for experimenting with formatting in too!