How To Make or Edit Wiki Pages

Please spend a couple of minutes reading this page - re-read it if you wish, and if you have questions please contact me from my link on the home page.

What is a wiki?

In short, a Wiki is one of the most powerful tools for web-based collaborative editing and a prominent example of emerging social software. Huh? In plain English that means a wiki is a type of website that allows many folks to join together in editing duties. The benefit is, it's all web-based; no software is required on the users' PCs. This particular brand of wiki is called Wikka Wiki.

(The full fledged Wikka Wiki help file is here ( http://docs.wikkawiki.org/HomePage )- but I'm giving a short version of it on this page as an alternative.

Special Note on Wiki Names

Wiki Names are special and simple tags you can type into your documents on the fly. The power comes from the fact that the wiki engine (the software that runs the site) will recognize a wiki name and show it as a link you can click on - no special codes required. If the wiki name/link does not have a page associated with it as yet, and you click on the link, it will take you to a new blank page so that you can start to create that new page. It makes creating sites quick and easy.
Now the special part of a wiki name is that it's typed in a format called camel case - in that it's in two or more "words" - each word must start with at least one UPPER CASE letter, followed by lower case letter(s), and there must not be any spaces between the "words". See the homepage for examples of camel case words/links.

First - Register

You must be registered as an editor on the Antique Outboard Wiki site before you can add pages to it. Please contact me using the link on the home page if you can't seem to get registered.

On the page called Usersettings, you can see six fields. To register you will have to fill out the first five:

1. Your Wikiname: This is the username you will be identified by in the Wiki. It has to be a WikiName and must be shorter than 75 characters. It is not possible to use the name of an existing Wikka-page - see notes above on Wikiname formatting.
2. Password: you must choose a password that is at least five characters long. The password will be stored encrypted in the database of the wiki, so it is impossible even for someone with access to the database to know your password
3. Enter the answer of this skill testing question designed to keep spammers out - any antique outboarder should know these....
4. Confirm password: to exclude mistakes (for example mistyping) you have to type your password a second time. You can change it later in your User settings.
5. Email address: you need to enter a valid email address for the case that you forget your password - the wiki can email you your password if you forget it.

Click on the Register button -- that's it!

Edit/Create a page

OK, now onto the meat of the subject, creating and/or editing a page. This is the power of a wiki site - quick and easy on the fly editing with little to no special codes required for most text. In fact plain old unformatted text is best to start out with. If you have documents already, just cut and paste the text from them into this document and the plain text will go right in - special formatting will not though, so you'll have to add bold and italics as needed. You can even create tables, but that's more cumbersome and for slightly more advanced users - not on your first day yet! :-)

For example, if you start at the HomePage you can see links to Evinrude, Elto, Mercury, etc. If any of those have dashed underlines, it means that particular Wikiname (link to a page) doesn't have that page created yet. If you click on a dashed/underlined wikiname it will take you to a new blank page you can start to create from scratch. See below on wiki formatting tips.

If the page already exists, you'll see the formatted page as any visitor would see it. Provided you are logged into the wiki as an editor, you can scroll down to the bottom left of the page and see an EDIT link - click on that and it will take you into the document where you can start to modify it as needed. Note that it's a mix of standard text along with some weird special characters - not to fear that will be discussed below - it's easier than you might think.

Formatting Tips

(For the full document on formatting pages - click here FormattingRules )
Otherwise, here's a brief synopsis. For starters, it's best to get the content, the words themselves onto the page first - you can go back and fiddle with formatting later to your hearts content! You'd be surprised and how much time formatting can take, but the point here is to get the text which is the meat and potatoes on the page. Remember you can cut and paste, or just type away. If you're typing a paragraph, do not hit Enter at the end of the line like an old typewriter, let the wiki automatically wrap it around to the next line - you only hit Enter at the end of a paragraph.

Now say you have some text on the page, play it safe and STORE it to the wiki then you can go back and start formatting it. To save it, look at the bottom left of the screen, you should see a STORE button, press that once and it will take you to the "finished" wiki page. Now you can see how it will look to folks. If you want to spruce it up, click on the EDIT button at the bottom left of the page and it will take you back into the page for editing.

BOLD
If you double-click a word, it will become highlighted - you can then click on the "B" on the toolbar at the top of the page it will add a "**" double asterisk at both ends of the word - these are formatting tags that the wiki engine will recognize and use to display the word in bold when it's viewed normally. These asterisks, or any of the other special formatting characters can be added manually, or you can use the formatting toolbar at the top of the screen to add them.

ITALICS -- uses a "//" tag on either side of the word.

Now play around make a page and be sure to use the PREVIEW button every once in a while to get an idea of how the page will look - when done click on STORE to save the page. You can use the wikkiname links here to create a page if you want TestPage1, TestPage2, TestPage3

CategoryHowto

Antique Outboard Wiki : HowTo