From Wiki
[edit] Create new Wiki page
- Go to the address box at the very top of your computer screen.
- The address box is the box in which you type the Internet address (or URL) of a website that you want to view.
- If you wanted to go to the Google search engine's website, for example, you would type the following text into your address bar: http://www.google.com
- However, the above mentioned address only gets you to the main page of the BE Wiki section.
- You need to type an additional word (or words) at the end of that address in order to create a new Wiki page.
- Let’s suppose you want to create a Wiki page on watching football.
- To do this you will add Watching_Football to the end of the previously mentioned address.
- So the address for your new Wiki page will look like this: http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Watching_Football
- Click on the Go button to the right of the address bar OR hit the Return key on your keyboard.
- You will now have a blank screen headed by the words, “Watching Football.”
[edit] Populate new Wiki page
- Okay, now you're looking at the new "Watching Football" page that you've just created, but it does not yet have any content.
- Click on the “edit this page” link that appears below, and to the right of, the main heading.
- This will open up a large text box into which you can insert the text of your article.
- In Wiki-speak, this text box into which you type, and in which you play around till you have achieved the effect you want to create, is a sandbox.
- Now go ahead and type your desired text into the sandbox.
[edit] Formatting codes
- If you already know how to post messages on an Internet forum, typing the text of your article should be easy enough.
- However, there are a couple of pointers that you probably would find useful.
[edit] Creating headings
[edit] First level heading
The article name will always appear as the first level heading on a page, therefore all other headings should be at most second level.
[edit] Second level heading
A second level heading is created by typing two equals signs on either side of the title's text.
Let’s suppose your secondary headings will be the names of major Canadian cities for which you will provide lists of bars that have television sets tuned to British football games. You would type the city headings like this:
==Halifax==
==Ottawa==
==Toronto==
==Winnipeg==
==Saskatoon==
==Edmonton==
==Vancouver==
[edit] Third level heading
A third level heading is created by typing three equals signs on either side of the title's text.
Let’s suppose that you will subdivide the list of pubs in each city according to districts within that city. Let’s use the Greater Vancouver Area as an example. You might have tertiary headings like these:
===Downtown===
===North Shore===
===Burnaby===
and so on.
[edit] Table of Contents
The Wiki software automatically uses your first, second and third level headings to create a table of contents that appears at the top of the screen (but that the reader has the option of hiding if they wish).
[edit] Hotlink
- A hotlink (that links a word or a string of words to a website) is created by using the little symbol of the globe that is included amongst the icons near the top of the screen.
- Let's suppose you wanted to provide an embedded link to the Calgary Pubcrawler website, which is
http://www.pubcrawler.com/Template/ReviewWC.cfm/flat/BrewerID=104011 .
[edit] Check new Wiki page
- When you think you are satisfied with the text, click the “Show preview” button near the bottom of the screen.
- Read the version of the text that visitors to the website will see.
- If you notice any mistakes, go back to the sandbox and correct them.
[edit] Publish new Wiki page
- When you are satisfied with the quality of your text, click the “Save page” button.
- Now a link to your new Wiki page will appear on the main Canada page of the Wiki.
[edit] Find lost Wiki page
- If a link to your new Wiki page has not shown up in the relevant section of the BE Wiki, e.g., on the Canada Lifestyle page, there is a way for you to find it.
- Click on the Recent Changes link that appears in the left hand margin of any page within the BE Wiki.
- If your new page was in fact created and saved, a link to it will appear on the Recent Changes page.
- The moderators clean up the Wiki pages every other day or so. If there is a "lost" Wiki page that is not showing up where it should be showing up - owing to a missing tag - the mods fix it fairly soon.
- If you don't know how to fix the tag of your newly created Wiki page and want to be sure that your page doesn't slip through the cracks indefinitely, you might send the mods a private message and ask them for help.
[edit] Create tags for your new Wiki page
- As has been stated above, you can wait for the mods to create tags that will ensure that a link to your new article appears on the summary page of the relevant section of the BE Wiki, e.g., the Canadian Lifestyle section.
- However, if you like, you can add the tags yourself.
- To see what tags look like, go to any article that is in the same section of the Wiki as the one in which you want your article to appear.
- Let's say you've just created an article called "Watching Football," and you want a link to it to appear in the Canadian Lifestyle section.
- You'll notice that one of the other articles in the Canadian Lifestyle section is Resume Checklist.
- You click the "edit" button near the top of the Resume Checklist page, and this opens up the editing sandbox for the Resume Checklist article.
- You see that there are words typed inside double square brackets at the very top of the editing sandbox for the Resume Checklist article.
- These words are [[Category : Canada]] [[Category : Canadian Lifestyle]]
- You now know the tags that you need to insert into your article on Watching Football.
- Go to your article, and click on the "edit" button, which will open up your article's editing sandbox.
- At the very top of your article's sandbox, type: [[Category : Canada]] [[Category : Canadian Lifestyle]]
- Save the changes to your article.
- Now go to the Canadian Lifestyle section of the BE Wiki, and check whether or not the main page includes a link to your new article.
- If you have added the tags correctly, you should see a link to your article.
[edit] Edit existing Wiki page
- Go to the Wiki page that you want to change.
- When that page is loaded onto your screen, click on the Edit button near the top of the screen.
- Make your desired changes in the sandbox. If you don’t know how to do so, follow the directions that have been provided for creating a new page.
- Preview your changes.
- Save your changes.
[edit] It's impossible to wreck a Wiki page
- Don't be afraid to dive in and start working in the Wiki section of the BE website.
- If you ruin a Wiki page, there always is the option of clicking on the "history" button near the top of a Wiki page.
- Once you're on the history page, you can see a link to the previous version of the page. You can roll back to that earlier version.
[edit] It IS possible to wreck a Wiki page
- This section has been added to qualify the above statement that it's impossible to wreck a Wiki page.
- It has been discovered from bitter experience that, when two people are editing a Wiki page simultaneously, one of them can lose all of the changes that he/she has made.
- Well, this doesn't really wreck the Wiki page, in the sense that the original Wiki page is still there. However, it's very frustrating to the person who has invested a lot of time and lost of great deal of work.
- A potential solution, when you are editing a Wiki page, is to post a note to that effect right on the page.
- This will warn other people who come along to that page with the intention of editing it.
- When you've finished your editing process, you can remove the temporary warning.
[edit] Official instructions
- If you want instructions that are beyond the scope of this article, here is the official Help Page for the BE Wiki.
- There also is a tutorial on editing Wiki pages.
