Creating pages
As many are new to this type of website the following may assist those who are unsure how to get started. It may look daunting at first, but it’s really not as difficult as it appears. Just follow the simple steps below and you should have a respectable page up and running in no time. If you have any problems at all, just post a thread here and someone will always assist.
Good luck!
Creating a new page
Have a look at this New page
As the aim of this site is to disseminate information, this is best achieved if all the pages have a consistent layout. The page in the link above shows the basic, preferred layout for all pages. It does, however, leave reasonable scope for individually styled layouts within the main body of the page.
Click the “edit” tab at the top of the “New page” page and you will be presented with a text box containing the “code” which generates the page. Code is perhaps a rather misleading term as it’s predominantly the text that forms the page, just with a few added commands, so don’t be put off.
You can’t edit the code of “New page” as it’s protected, so don’t worry, just copy all the “code” from the text box. If you wish, you can paste this into a simple text editor like Notepad for safe keeping or simply leave it on your clipboard.
Now do a search on the page you wish to create. So, if you want to create a page called "Making biodiesel from windfall apples", search for that page, unsurprisingly the search result tells you there is no such page and asks you if you want to create one.
Click the link that says “Create the page "Making biodiesel from windfall apples" on this wiki!” and you will be presented with a similar text box to the one you have just copied the code from. Paste the code from “New page” into this text box and click the “Save page” button, bottom left. Congratulations, you have now created your new page called "Making biodiesel from windfall apples”.
By clicking the edit tab at the top of the screen you can now start populating and building your page.
Building a new page
Once you’ve created your new page you can start to populate it with text, photos and graphics.
Click the edit tab at the top of the page and just try some experiments. In the text box overtype the text starting “Brief intro ...”. This will be your introduction to the page so give a brief description of what the page is about and then click the “Show preview” button at the bottom of the page. As you would expect to get a preview of what the page will look like. Now click the “Save page” button and your page has been saved to the wiki data base.
Next try altering the text in one of the headings (leave the dashes in place, they are wiki code for formatting the heading and to allow the TOC, Table Of Contents, to list it) and note how the contents box changes to suit when you click preview. Try adding text under a heading or two and see how that looks. You should by now, be getting a feel for what you are doing.
Try adding a picture. Copy and paste this code somewhere on the page:
[[File:Venturi_cores.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Fabricated venturi body and steel cores]] You should be presented with a photo of some fine venturi cores and a body made by a very talented contributor, justified to the right hand side of the page.
In the little piece of code try changing right for left, click preview and guess what happens! Try changing the 250px (px being short for pixels and dictates the width of the thumbnail) to 400px, you’ve guessed it the picture is bigger. Try changing the text starting “Fabricated venturi …” You should by now be getting an idea of how easy it is to edit a wiki.
You can upload your own photos by clicking the “Upload file” link in the "tool box" in the side menu. Try and make them no wider than 600 pixels and no bigger than 2Mb. Give them a pertinent name and follow the instructions to upload. Once uploaded, simply replace the file name “Venturi_cores.jpg” with your file name.
It will take too much space to detail every aspect of editing the wiki (even if I knew every aspect of editing a wiki), but the best advise from her is simply to have a play and see what’s possible. If you get stuck just post a question on the forum and someone will always help.
Below are some examples of wiki code and tags with which you can experiment. Alternatively have a look at other pages and see how they are complied, you can always copy code from that page and adjust to suit.
Good luck!
Put {{WIP}} right at the top of the page and it adds a warning so others will know the page is still being worked on. When the page is finished, simply delete it the code.
Italic = ''text'' = text
Bold = '''text''' text
Italic and bold = '''''text''''' = text
Your name = ~~~ = Bio-rich-time-poor
Your name + time and date = ~~~~ = Bio-rich-time-poor 22:21, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
List = * and ** for second level list etc
Numbered list = # and ## for second level list etc.
Horizontal line = ---- (use sparingly as it causes confusion with headings)
Indent = :
Double indent = ::
Treble indent = :::
Centered text = <div style="text-align:center;">Text here</div>
Small text = <small>Text here</small> = Small text
Large text = <big>Text here</big> = Big text
Not wiki but they seem to work
Degrees = Alt+0176 = °
Microns = Alt+0181 = µ
squared = Alt+0178 = ²
Cubed = Alt+0179 = ³
Quater = Alt+0188 = ¼
Half = Alt+0189 = ½
Three quarters = Alt+0190 = ¾
Times = Alt+0215 = ×
Divide = Alt+0247 = ÷
Plus or minus = Alt+241 = ±
Trade mark = Alt+0153 = ™
Copyright = Alt+0169 = ©
Registered name = Alt+0174 = ®
Links to pages where text is not the page title [[page title|text that will form the link]]
__TOC__ Automatically create a contents box regardless of subheadings on the page, or force position.
To include a file in a page, use a link in one of the following forms:
[[File:File.jpg]] to use the full size version of the file.
[[File:File.png|200px|thumb|left|alt text]] to use a 200 pixel wide rendition in a box in the left margin with 'alt text' as description
[[Media:File.ogg]] for directly linking to the file without displaying the file
Picture Gallery
<gallery caption="title" widths="300px" heights="300px" perrow="2" align="left">
File:file name 1.jpg|Text under pic here.
File:file name 1.jpg|Text under pic here.
</gallery>
Quote box (border and fil)
<blockquote style="background-color: lightgrey; border: solid thin grey;"> Quoted text here. </blockquote>
Categories
You just add: [[Category:Biodiesel]] at the end of a page
(actually, you can make any old category name up, the wiki just groups together pages that use the same category name - no need to "create" a category as such)
Embedding you tube videos:
Add this code to the page and insert the you tube video code where the crosses are in this example, you can change where it appears on the page by changing the part that says right, to left or center.
{{#ev:youtube|XXXXXXXXXXX|240|right|Starting the demething stage of WBD}}
Bio-rich-time-poor 22:21, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
